Review Summary: Oh it’s mindless alright.
While there really isn’t any other R&B boy bands targeted at a tweenage demographic in the mainstream pop charts at the moment, Mindless Behavior hardly do that niche proud with their sophomore album
All Around the World. The album is a hideous mess of dubstep drops, club synth builds ripped straight from The Black Eyed Peas and Pitbull, snap and trap beats lifted from crunk, the overly polished production and whining wailing/boasting of Chris Brown, and is all wrapped together with a complete submergence in Auto-Tune.
All Around the World does at least attempt to cover more ground and styles than albums from other pop boy bands, trying to strike an equal balance between dance anthems and ballads, but what affects it the most is an overt impression of just plain irritation. Being only in their teens, Mindless Behavior makes music that’s free of blatantly addressed sexual themes and profanity in general, but they don’t go completely clean here, and instead settle on mild suggestive themes. Even then however, it’s nearly impossible to take this group seriously with their over-usage of slang like “shawty.”
The Hooks on
All Around the World seem to try their hardest to be as annoying and insufferable as possible. The squeaky and nasally chorus of “I Lean (Lose It)” – which features Soulja Boy who makes any catchiness the song might have initially possessed unrevivable – is just a few octaves away from being an Alvin and the Chipmunks song, and “Pretty Girl” is almost of parody status in how brainless, lazy, and ineffective its simple and repetitious hook of “You’re a pretty/you’re a pretty girl” is.
Its main purpose is to be music made for fun, but every song on here borrows far too much from other urban dance and electro-pop albums/artists that have done the same sound as this better, and with more addictive beats and an actual sense of maturity. This leaves
All Around the World as a sterilized and inoffensive husk of modern club music that lacks any fire or pizzazz, and only gains its diversity from copycat tactics alone. This album might have the potential of spawning a minimal of one or two short-lived hits at the most.
