You know, I thought about writing this review in other ways,
but I quickly realized that I’d lose some of the essence of what I’m trying to
say if I don’t make this as approachable as possible. Plus, I want to prevent
this from devolving into a rant, so a letter is probably the only way this sort
of thing can work.
So let’s deal with introductions. I’m Silens Cursor, a
semi-professional music critic and – pay attention, this is important – a
former fan of yours. Yes, I liked your music. Your first two albums are pretty
damn good pop-country, and you earned a lot of kudos from me by actually having
a significant hand in writing your own material. It lent a certain ‘realness’
to your lyrics and simple style that was surprisingly appealing. Granted, I’m
fairly certain lurking inside me is the spirit of a teenage girl who listens to
Avril Lavigne and Panic! At The Disco and Fall Out Boy and the Backstreet Boys
and, well, you and who appreciates
all these acts completely without irony. I get that some of your appeal was the
‘cuteness’ of it all, for lack of a better term (I’ll come back to this), but I
genuinely think you have some well-written material that has some widespread
appeal outside of the target demographic.
And then something happened. I’m not sure where, but I’m
fairly certain it started with Speak Now,
the first album of yours of which I wasn’t really much of a fan. Don’t get me
wrong, I liked ‘Back To December’ a lot, but it was here I was beginning to
observe a dichotomy I think it’s important to discuss, because it’s an
interesting phenomenon I saw both in your music and that of Avril Lavigne, an
artist you really have a lot in common with. I guess that also makes this
letter something of a warning, because I don’t
want to see you go the way she did, and a lot of the major symptoms are
starting to crop up.
You see, Avril Lavigne came from the world of pop-punk with Let Go and Under My Skin, two albums I still hold are pretty damn excellent
for an early 2000s female act. She had a certain bratty authenticity in her
delivery that didn’t drain her of the very real fragility she could display on
her ballads. There’s a reason why ‘I’m With You’ is the best song Avril Lavigne
ever wrote – it played to all of her strengths, and really turned her into a
captivating performer. You know, sort of like with you and ‘Teardrops On My
Guitar’ (for the record, ‘I’m With You’ is better – sorry).
But here’s the dichotomy – you both were treading a very
fine line between mainstream pop success and artistic authenticity. I’ll grant
that Avril had it easier – she was working with a pop climate that was
marginally more mature and ‘real’ in 2002 than yours was in 2008. But make no
mistake, your careers have charted similar paths, and it’s an unnerving thing
to know that it’s only a matter of time before you hit the tipping point.
You see, it’s a terrible thing, but there tends to be a
shelf life for artists who work to preserve ‘authenticity’. That’s why you hear
about acts ‘selling out’ – the point where artistic integrity is cast aside in
order to produce trend-riding material that might sell well, but lacks a
certain individual flavor. And given the alarming trend of acts selling out in
the past few years – Maroon 5, Pink, Kelly Clarkson, Avril Lavigne, I could go
on – I knew it was just a matter of time before everyone’s favourite country
princess might be coerced over to that dynamic. It wasn’t a matter of ‘if’, it
was ‘when’. Sorry about the cynicism, but in this day and age, particularly
when it comes to pop music, it only makes sense.
Now, I’ll admit that branding an act a ‘sell-out’ is a very
serious charge, and not one I would level without very good reason. And it’s
also particularly hard with acts that rely on certain definitive qualities that
are central to their artistic integrity. You know, how with Pink it was her
vindictive, painfully raw feminism, and with Avril Lavigne it was her bratty,
shockingly sincere adolescence, and with Maroon 5… well, they always wrote the soundtracks of douchebags,
but there was a distinctive loss of personality in their material.
But outside of isolated incidents (the autotune and Wiz
Khalifa’s presence on ‘Payphone’), it can be a bit tricky to find the precise
elements to truthfully brand an act a sell-out. To me, there are two main
elements I can pinpoint: a shift in instrumentation, or a shift in subject
matter. And while some elements remain consistent between Red and Speak Now, there
are a few things that I can spot that make this album much less tolerable.