A Public Affair has very, very, very bad cover art. I mean, just look at it. Yeah, it’s Jessica Simpson. She’s kind of sitting there, you know, looking like hot sh
it. Look a little closely, and she even looks a little…frisky, maybe? However, looking past her obvious hotness, the cover is rather vapid. It’s a terrible photograph of her, not flattering in the least, and there is almost nothing of interest going on. The seemingly intended message of her being an average woman, just sitting there with nothing but a t-shirt on (get it?) is lost, due to the fact Simpson is so absolutely ingrained in pop culture, you can’t get the image of her saying “Is this chicken or fish?” out of your mind. It’s a hollow album cover, if that makes any sense.
Why is this important? Because, in surprising fashion, the album itself seems to contradict those sentiments. Simpson has always had a voice, it’s difficult to deny her at least that. However, she’s never put it to great use, and its not like she’s ever had anything produced for her that was really workable for her. It’s always been flash in the pan, vapid, manufactured pop with a pretty face and a good voice. However, perhaps inspired by the psuedo-battle with ex-husband Nick Lachey, Simpson and her producers have somehow come up with an excellent meld of dancey club tracks, more than a bit hick-ish country tunes, and (albeit the weaker of the three) soft love ballads that prove to be the most fulfilling album of Simpson’s career thus far.
With the whole
Dukes of Hazzards debacle, we saw Simpson had some country leanings, and for the album she produced one of the strongest songs of her career,
These Boot’s Are For Walking. Here, she expands on that sound and creates an interesting meld of burlesque and country. It sounds slightly unorthodox and un-enjoyable, but just bare with me. Jessica is not a country singer; her voice is too bombastic and soaring (even in the unusually dulcet tones she uses on this album) to be able to fit in that mold. However, it doesn’t stop her from trying her best, and nor does it stop the producers and studio musicians; as they produce some eclectic country on songs like
Swing With Me and
Let Him Fly.
The only two true country tunes on the album (while there are flourishes elsewhere, they never come to fruition), the two songs are on near opposite spectrums of the genre.
Push Your Tush is very reminiscent of a much better version of
These Boots Were Made for Walkin’, with huge amounts of strange country-tuned bass and guitar work, along with cowbells a plenty and some fun, yet cringe-worthy lines from Simpson (“Come and get it!” being pronounced at the beginning of the song nearly causes me to go into a violent s
hitstorm of annoyed-ness). It’s fun, but can’t really touch on what
Let Him Fly accomplishes. Being a very slow, smooth and flowing country ballad, Simpson discusses quite honestly (and unremorsefully) her feelings on her breakup with Lachey, and far from being whiney and overly-sentimental as her counterpart was, she instead frankly describes why she left him, and really leaving it at that. It’s poignant and emotional while not going over the top at all, and Simpson’s voice her is fantastic, finally freeing itself of the constraints it faces on much of the album.
Yes, her voice does seem to be limited on the album. The most unfortunate aspect of this is that the times where it’s most noticeable are also by far the most interesting songs musically, and they almost all come on the discs “club” tracks. Making up around half of the album, it’s also the albums veritable strong point, as nearly all of the songs are extremely danceable, catchy, and intricately produced.
A Public Affair, the first single and title track, is certainly one of the finest singles of the year; what, with it’s 80’s pop synth’s and multi-layered vocal tracks, its nearly un-unlikable. The following two songs (one being a cover of
You Spin me Round (Like a Record), and the other sampling The Car’s
Just What I Needed) round out the strongest section of the album, with the former being a rather strange europop tune (mostly for the fact that it’s …Jessica Simpson singing in it) and the latter being what one could only refer to as a “club banger”. The remainder of the club tracks are all equally fun and interesting, and are a welcome departure from the overly wholesome material Simpson has traditionally put out.
However, it also brings up the largest complaint with the record: Simpson’s voice is often horribly distorted. While it’s probably unfair to do so, it’s difficult not to compare the album to the recently released Christina Aguilera album,
Back to Basics. On said album, Aguilera ditches nearly all of her vocal effects, and shows that you can easily make a solid album without the use of tons of vocal effects. However, Simpson here has constant limitations put on her voice by them; whether it’s the strange digital quality they take on
Spin Me Round (Like a Record) or the rather annoying reverb that’s pretty much present on every single track. It’s a mystery to me why she would allow that; weaker songs like
Back to You are saved by her natural vocal talents, and many more songs could have been better without the computerized sound she too often has on the album.
As a complete contrast, the slower, ballad-y tracks on the album are quite uninteresting musically, while as just stated, are also the vocal highlights of the album.
Back to You is something of a generic sounding love ballad, with some slight country influence and claps that make it somewhat distinguishable by itself. However, it’s Simpson’s towering voice that propels the song into the solid-quality song heights, and she does so with a few of the following songs. It seems she likes to group her songs by sound instead of spreading them throughout the album, and it hurts the ballads the most; even with her voice, they began to sound too samey when they go on for 3 or 4 tracks, and it doesn’t help she uses the same clapping rhythm in two separate songs. However, when the most hardcore of hardcore Jessica Simpson songs comes up, you realize why she and the producers would decide to do so:
Fired Up is a molten chunk of crunk styled hip-hop (yeah, wtf right?) influenced pop, and its sudden appearance after the previous slow, plodding tracks gives it a greater effect than it normally would have. And who doesn’t like Indian horn sections in their pop songs?
Saucy numbers are the order of the day here, with the lyrics being a slight afterthought mostly everywhere. Instead of getting trapped in the cliché lands of sentimentalism and sweetness, Simpson instead gets tapped in the cliché lands of partying and general silliness for much of the album. Songs like
Push Your Tush are inane without making any real sense, as Simpson just babbles about dancing and how awesome it is, and occasionally yelping silly country cliché’s. However, she does occasionally hit smart topics, even if her and her writers never do make any lines of particular note.
A Public Affair is a sassy bite at all the controversy her divorce caused, and how she really doesn’t give a f
uck and just wants to have fun. Childish? Entirely. Surprising coming from Jessica Simpson? Most certainly. The previously mentioned
Let Him Fly is really the only song that specifically addresses her divorce, and does so in high horse fashion. As the risk of being redundant, it’s one of the most frank and honest songs I’ve heard from a female singer in quite some time, particularly one that has to deal with this level of fame. Oh, but wait a second…it’s a Patty Griffin. Damn you Jessica Simpson for tricking me into thinking you were a good songwriter! Damn you’s dirty Simpson!
What Jessica Simpson has put out here is nothing groundbreaking or spectacular, at least in the grand scheme of things. Nearly all of this has been tread elsewhere, and most of the time, it has admittedly been done better. However, for today’s current top 100 pop standards, and even more-so for Jessica’s previous outgins, this is an excellent release, worthy of praise and accolades. She has turned in what will likely be the album of her career, and while looking at the album in that respect may be a little under-whelming, it certainly can’t detract from the fact that this album has some show-stopping tunes and plenty of variety. While the misses are large (the vocal effects and lyrics are really quite depressing at times, and not in a moody way), the points where it connects more than make up for it. [i]
A Public Affair[/I is a triumph fo the once wholesome, and now nearly matured singer, and it would do you very little good not to check out
A Public Affair,
B.O.Y, or
Let Him Fly at some point in the near future.
Oh, and just for the record, this absolutely
obliterates Nick Lachey’s pusillanimous release
Whats Left of Me. No, really, it does. The album cover isn’t nearly as sexy, though…
