Review Summary: I'm past that.
Dear Diary,
I HATE YOU. I HATE YOU AND EVERYTHING I EVER WROTE INTO YOU. In case you haven't noticed, she left me. What a devil. I swear to you, she seemed so nice, but in reality she really was too extreme. I thought I had her all figured out, but I didn't. But now, let me get into detail, you see, she isn't just a devil, she is...
We all love us some pop-music. Don't even try to deny it! A catchy rhythm, a catchy melody, a nice singer, these are all things we can immediately agree on. But we still have to look, are the lyrics good? Is it well produced? And, seen as an album, does it work together?
These things should all be easy to achieve for Andrew Huang. Having shown times and times again that he is a more than able songwriter, melody-writer and producer, it should be one of his easiest tasks to produce a great pop-album. But now, I will tell you right from the start, it didn't work. At all.
And it is baffling, because there are just some glaring issues on this album that you just simply cannot avoid. First of all, the production values are weirdly low on this particular album. Where on his other albums his production was top-notch, transparent and airy, here his music is strangely over-compressed, his vocals sound flat and sometimes you can't even tell the sounds apart from another. Also, his singing, he never sounded worse than on here, and it hurts me to say that, because he normally is such a great singer, but when he busts out into his falsetto on this project my toenails roll up.
Another point that is weird here is that his melodies on this record just aren't catchy. Like, at all. Normally you would leave a record by Andrew with at least one or two melodies from each song stuck in your head. Here, it is a struggle to really remember most of these songs. And don't even get me started on the lyrics. He really struck a low point here, with his topics getting just more and more redundant around every corner. Because, we get it, this is an album about people who are selfish, cruel and whatnot, we really do. And also, we don't talk about „Shark“.
That is not to say that there are no redeemable qualities on this album. His songwriting is still intact, as hindered as it may be with his confusingly sub-par production. He has all these genius little details put into each song that make the album flow well and don't bore us. Songs flow and ebb, have interesting ideas and the ways they are handled are mostly good, too.
It is really easy to pick out the highlights on this album, because they are just such a fresh breath of air when they come around. First of all, the bluesy and hard hitting Smells Like The Devil with it's crunchy guitar solo is bound to stick in your head for quite some time. The two covers on this album, from Kanye West and Taylor Swift respectively, also serve their purpose more than satisfyingly, with Dark Fantasy being made more complex by Andrews cryptic wordplay, and We Are Never Getting Back Together having a more soaring chorus than before. Last but not least, Ring Around My Finger convinces with the most catchy original melody on this project and the best production-values, although being slathered in autotune and generic club-synths.
This album is a very mixed bag. While it definitely features Andrews absolute worst songs and worst production and worst singing and worst lyrics, the little details not only catch your interest most of the time, they also give this album a very weird replaying-value. Also, the flow of the album is very smooth, with each song hitting just the right sounds to not feel out of place. As far as pop-albums go, however, this is a very mediocre project, and not really something I would recommend you all to listen to, except, of course, if you are a die-hard fan or just interested.
..And that should be enough for you to understand why I absolutely loathe her. But, like, whatever, I already found a new girl to obsess over! But I don't have the time to tell you at the moment. But man, moving on is easier than I thought it'd be.
Signed,
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