Review Summary: Beauty is only skin-deep.
After Johnnythewell said I had no taste in music on an insidiously begrudging staff blog (leading me to refute, and simultaneously detail my exact music taste for those deceived by my gleefully diverse and nuanced ratings), he immediately seeked me out, to insert into my life some albums I should review. The man’s tact is blunt and cold, for he is a staff member of Sputnikmusic. Perhaps it’s his personality, or perhaps something about his role encourages him to see Sputnik users as statistics, and worker bees under one banner. The funny thing is, this review isn’t only about Johnny. This is all one large analogy for how I feel about Chanmina’s Naked album. Naked is pop machine music, it does what it needs to and checks ordinarily desired boxes with zero tact. Whether that’s good or bad will depend on the listener. Personally, I’m the kind of person that that can take bluntness with extreme force, but if bluntness is transferred to assholery on a continuous basis, I say fuck it and am no longer on board (may that be a warning to would be wrongdoers). Unfortunately, Naked is that type of album. All of the bad things in this paragraph — yup, that kind.
As the album plays out it gets worse. It starts off with the most generic of pop songs, one impossible to remember. The next track brings a generic hip-hop beat with fat bass, clicky fake cymbals, and obnoxious auto-tune over-usage, as she yell-sings. The third track is a waste of time including three gentle notes repeated and average whisper singing you wouldn’t expect in a professional album. The fourth track is another generic hip-hop beat, but this time with awful, awful rapping. The first four tracks are not good. The fifth track is saved with a catchy beat and feature with ASH ISLAND. Perhaps hope lies after the fifth track? Only vaguely, though if you survive the first four tracks you deserve mad props.
Everything decent in the album stems from severe editing. Chanmina often doesn’t know how to sound good, she either puts too much brute force into her singing, or she sings as though half asleep. Either way, the sloppy notes are drowned in auto-tune to the point where it’s a legit question whether or not she can sing without auto-tune hand-holding. But then a song like
naked now comes on and suddenly I enjoy her voice again. Unfortunately, the generally haphazard, lazy singing is but a symptom of the overall issues with this album. It is robotically created pop, there is no care in anything except creating catchy beats. Chanmina has a generic pop swagger that doesn’t tell me anything about her. The lyrics likewise sound like typical pop trash, using somewhat relatable stories that leave no lasting positive impact. I love pop and K-pop pop, but this emotionless calculation does not reek of substance, and the album is enjoyable in the same way a sandwich with no extras tastes. It is not good, and it is not recommended. As for Johnny…… ;]
