Review Summary: The most predictable rating ever?
Charity Shops may have a cheap reputation, but for those that persist there is treasure to be found. I, for instance, have found relatively rare material from bands I love including Queens Of The Stone Age, Rage Against The Machine and R.E.M. in such places, so for me, they’re always worth a try. The problem with looking for music at charity shops, though, is that to find anything worthy of attention you have to sift through oceans of crap which used to be popular, but has been passed on as previous owners have realised the errors of their ways. At the moment, in the UK at least, the shelves consist largely of names like Blue, Sugababes and Busted, who once dominated the charts but who’s fans now look back in shame. In five or ten years time, it’s pretty reasonable to assume that the same shelves will instead be filled by the wades of disposable X-Factor stars such as Shayne Ward, Alexandra Burke and Rydian, and if so, Jedward will all but certainly be joining them.
Shooting to fame on the 2009 season of the show, identical twins John and Edward Grimes split opinion in a way that entertainment in the UK has rarely, if ever seen, with hordes hailing them as natural entertainers while even more raged at their TV screens seething with hate. Lets get one thing straight; the duo are totally and utterly talentless. That much was evident to each and every viewer of the show, who witnessed them progress through the process singing out of tune, out of time, and utterly destroying literally every composition they touched. The argument that they’re entertaining is a valid one, but only because their car crash LCD TV performances were as laughable and cringe worthy as they were horribly transfixing.
Sadly, ‘Jedward-mania’ didn’t halt when the pair were belatedly ousted from the show, with them gaining a record deal with Sony all but instantly and releasing a shocking Vanilla Ice assisted cover of Queen and David Bowie’s
Under Pressure. Despite the fact that enough morons actually bought that single for it to miss out on topping the charts by a mere twenty-four copies, Sony dropped them due to disappointing chart performance. That should have been it, the point when the joke that was never funny in the first place ended, but Universal mystifyingly moved in for them recently, eventually leading to the moment every self-respecting music fan has been dreading – the release of
Planet Jedward.
Unfortunately, if you thought that
Under Pressure (Ice Ice Baby) was bad, then you haven’t heard anything yet, as other classic songs are utterly mutilated beyond recognition. Just seeing Undertones anthem
Teenage Kicks on the tracklist prompts fits of rage, and the less said about their infuriating version and that of
All The Small Things the better. Even the disco staples that appear such as
I Like To Move It,
Rock DJ and
I Want Candy are abused unimaginably, appearing as even less soulless and enjoyable imitations of the originals. It’s the kind of garbage that’s fun when your about five, but even then then there are established and respected artists such as the Tweenies and Bob The Builder that have already done exactly what Jedward are doing, only better.
The thing is, pretty much everyone expected this to be one of the worst things ever recorded – but
Planet Jedward fails at even achieving that! When you hear a cover, you tend to expect an original or innovative interpretation of the original track, but all these provide are the irritating voices of the twins singing over backing tracks that are all but identical to the originals. Also, the onstage antics of the two irritating attention-whores simply don’t transfer onto record in the slightest, meaning that even those looking for a little throwaway entertainment will be left disappointed. In truth you’d be better off going to see a local karaoke singer – they’d probably provide more laughs and cringes than this hapless duo.
So what exactly is there to be gained from listening to
Planet Jedward? As mentioned, none of the songs here are even remotely entertaining, so the fun factor can instantly discarded. There have been worse albums, so your lucks out if you’re on some kind of quest to discover how bad music can actually get. Then of course there’s the age factor, but I’m assuming that no one reading this is under the age of ten, so that’s irrelevant. The only slight positive I can bring from my experience is that my objectivity score is slightly better, and in the grand scheme of things, there are certainly more significant achievements in life. The sad fact is, I wasted just over half an hour of by being listening to this, and I know that those were moments, which, come my death, I’ll regret not doing something vaguely worthwhile with. For your, and everyone around you’s sake, avoid this like AIDS.
