Ah, I can see the metal kids cringing at the thought of The Click Five. Known for their cute matching suits and their pre-teen sing along
Just the Girl they have gained a reputation for being nothing more than your little sister’s music, manufactured pop crap. This is most certainly because of the way they marketed, girly songs, girly suits, and girly videos. The fact that they have opened for teen queen Ashlee Simpson and boy band The Backstreet Boys. And the music itself attributes to The Click Fives reputation, perfect power-pop. Hella catchy lyrics about the simple things: good days, perfect girls and the like. Don’t let the reputation fool you though, The Click Five aren’t bad. In part due to the fact they honed their music skills at one of the best music schools in the country (Berklee) but also The Click Five have some good tunes. Not since Hanson has an actual band made a song with as much pop appeal as lead single and mega hit
Just the Girl .
Cars sounding guitar and keyboard lines make up the perfect base for lead singer Eric’s whiney voice. The lyrics are absolutely the cheesiest thing I’ve heard. I don’t mean that in a bad way though, Fountains of Wayne did an incredible job writing the perfect model for a pop rock love song. Tight is a great word to describe the songs instrumentation, you could easily mistake the music as DJ created, that’s how clean cut it is. When I hear a more perfect pop song I’ll alert you.
Unlike contemporaries and label mates Simple Plan, The Click Five have yet to attempt to be a “Punk” band. They don’t wear ripped black tee-shirts and pretend to love The Misfits; they wear tailored suits and acknowledge The Cars and The Beach Boys as influences, This I admire. Although Simple Plan may write songs that sound like The Click Five’s the fact that they masquerade as a “Punk” band makes me respect them less.
It’s hard for me not to think of The Click Five as a guilty pleasure. Their songs are just so manufactured sounding. Let me explain, songs like
I’ll Take My Chances sound like they were written specifically to sound so pop and so cheesy, but I just can’t hate it for some reason.
Baby I’ll take my chances with you…You know its true just sounds like a Backstreet Boy’s song. It makes me wonder if The Click Five are just tools of their record label to be the next Boy Band hidden behind guitars and cheap suits. This is when I convince myself that all 5 graduated from Berklee College of Music and maybe, just maybe they are smart enough to write such perfect pop songs, I don’t know and may never find out.
Friday Night and
Angel to You (Devil to Me) sound like they are straight of the 80’s pop charts. The previous could be a cover of an 80’s or 90’s teen queen song and the later could ever be a pop version of a Kiss song. Featuring stupid lyrics, Queen-esque 3 or 4 piece harmonies and some watered down guitar riffs. At least 4 members of The Click Five sing, a lot of times at the time ever. Another stolen Boy Band trait, that sounds great on top of guitar, bass and drums.
Pop Princess is catchy should-have-been 2nd single. The keyboards in this song are great, unlike other songs on the CD the keyboards aren’t the icing on the cake in this song, they are the cake. The main hook in the chorus
Pop princess, drive me wild/Pop princess, I need you now is so corny and great it makes you want to dance. If you can’t sing along to this song then there is something wrong with you. The harmonies towards the end of this song are superb as they are throughout the whole CD.
With no song much over 4 minutes this is as good a pop record as there has been in a while. Easy to sing along to, easier to dance to, clever and corny and quite good. If you like pop music and you don’t own this I recommend it, if you hate pop music I recommend you leave this thread alone and go rave about Slipknot and Metallica or whoever your band of choice is. Don’t rate this a 1 (unless you’ve heard it) and don’t neg my review because I think
Greetings From Imrie House deserves a solid…
3/5
-Dan
