Review Summary: So you think you got me figured out?
Pop-punk is kind of like a great white shark, not that it’s an unstoppable killing machine, but that over the course of its existence, it hasn’t evolved much. But also like the great white, pop-punk hasn’t really had to as both have been finely tuned to thrive in their respective environments. Unlike great white sharks however, pop-punk consciously refuses to evolve. This has resulted in a sad garage sale of a genre, a place you poke around in, maybe pick something up, shrug, and ask the seller how much. After you lowball him and you’re walking back to your car you see a Simon Says game on the table and chuckle as you walk away reminiscing. And next to the Simon Says? That old baseball mitt every garage sale has.
AKA Simple Plan
Like that baseball mitt,
Taking One For The Team functions perfectly fine. As a collection of sugary pop-punk tunes, the hooks are catchy enough and the lyrics check off all the boxes you’d expect: romance, being different, the good old days, romance again, and breaking up. The inherent issue with
Taking One For The Team is the infuriating lack of imagination Simple Plan utilized while creating it. Even the variety within the record comes off as hackneyed. The album’s funky number “I Don’t Want To Go To Bed”, sounds ripped straight from the mind of Adam Levine with its teenage coming-of-age romantic lyrics and dancey bass line which as soon as it opens the song fades into the background of repetitive vocals and obligatory poppy horns. The band even enlists the aid of hip-hop megastar Nelly who peppers the song with affirmatory statements (namely "yeah" and "uh-huh") before tossing out a forgettable verse near the conclusion of the song, the end product smelling suspiciously like Simple Plan wrote a song specifically to brag that they got Nelly out of hibernation.This is far from the only case, even the reggae (a la Train) number, where the lead singer Bouvier attempts to be one of the Wailers, the ballad, and the synth-laden closer are so devoid of soul it’s hard to absorb any message the songs may be trying to convey.
Taking One For The Team is so banal, so derivative,
so ordinary it’s difficult to actually critique its contents analytically. It’s simply another tree in the forest, another fish in an ocean of power chords, anthems, and shallow romantic metaphors. The positive vibes Simple Plan exude are certainly refreshing and I’d be hard pressed to honestly say that
Taking One For The Team is
bad pop-punk. It has its audience it’s targeting, and ultimately
Taking One For The Team lives and dies on the Simple Plan brand that gained fame back in 2002 rather than the quality of its music. And sadly, I think the band itself knows that too.
