Exactly As Droll As One Might Suspect: Maxim: The Hot 100 Disappoints

The Good: Decent photography, Good interviews
The Bad: Stupid concept, Addy, Lowbrow writing
The Basics: Maxim: The Hot 100 lives down to what one might expect of the annual magazine issue, though I was pleasantly surprised by the interviews!


One of the animated sitcoms - Family Guy, American Dad or The Simpsons has a line about Maxim that was utterly hilarious; something about their “Most Rape-able Celebrities” list. My wife recently gave me a gift subscription to Maxim, ostensibly for review and when Maxim: The Hot 100 (the annual special issue) arrived, I found myself trying to remember the joke from television about the publication. Maxim: The Hot 100 might not be quite the sinister issue that the joke insinuates, but it is pretty damn close.

Comprised of photos and a blurb for the 100 women that Maxim has decided (apparently through votes somehow) are the most desirable in the world, Maxim: The Hot 100 is like a catalog for shopping for unobtainable women. In addition to being a preposterous exercise (ranking women on their “hot” factor, as if there were a universal standard for the subjective emotion of desire), Maxim: The Hot 100 undermines itself far too frequently to be at all useful or even engaging. It’s not just some form of weird sour grapes that I write that; - favorites of mine like Anne Hathaway and Ellen Page did not make the list, but Bar Paly and Candice Swanepoel did(?!) – but any list where Katy Perry is ranked as more desirable than Sophia Vergara or Avril Lavigne ranks 44 and Anna Paquin is 78 seems skewed toward the absurd.

In addition to having a purpose that is ridiculous – are Maxim readers so stupid that they need to be told whom to be attracted to?! – and somewhat inscrutable (what are the readers supposed to do, exactly, with this information?), the Maxim: The Hot 100 special issue seems remarkably lowbrow in terms of the writing. Take, for example, the listing for Gal Gadot (who made #84 on the list) on page 13 of this year’s Maxim: The Hot 100. The blurb for Gadot reads, “Hollywood’s newest Wonder Woman is a total badass. She not only owns a motorcycle but also served two years in the Israeli army” (13). Gal Gadot is Israeli. You know who else served two years in the Israeli army? Every other Israeli citizen; it’s mandatory. Does that make her more of a badass than #39, Gina Carano, who was a MMA-brawler? Probably not. My point is that virtually none of the blurbs say anything useful, interesting or insightful about their subjects.

What keeps Maxim: The Hot 100 from the most dismal of ratings, then? First off, the photography. Most of the photos are incredibly good, exactly what one might hope for from a celebrity spankbook with a ridiculously low cover price of $3.99. The price of the magazine might make one think that it was not going to be a glossy, good-looking magazine, but apparently advertiser dollars subsidize the magazine enough that the special issue needs not charge an arm and a leg. Maxim: The Hot 100 features photographically solid pictures; in terms of color, contrast, and composition, the photographers utilized in Maxim: The Hot 100 clearly know what they are doing. In fact, because the photographers seem able and their subjects are undeniably photogenic, it is astonishing that they get some of the celebrities in remarkably unflattering looks (there’s something horrid about calling someone “hot” and smacking up a picture of them looking haggard, as at least one of the women was).

The other aspect that sells the magazine – the one that pleasantly surprised me – is the interviews. Maxim: The Hot 100 features interviews with cool celebrities (this year, it was Bryan Cranston and Nick Offerman). The questions asked of these celebrities are not the typical ones that have been asked to death and the answers are fun and informative.

Unfortunately, the two articles and a smattering of the hundreds of pictures throughout the magazine are hardly enough to justify the magazine’s existence. Several pages of the magazine are wasted debunking movie plot/effect issues (like would reversing the Earth’s direction a la Superman: The Movie turn back time). Does Maxim believe a large population of its readers are physicists who somehow slept through basic temporal mechanics? Or biology students who do not know the average size of a great white shark? Other preposterous articles focus on the latest supermodel, hot trends, and a short story about joining the mile-high club. The average length of an article in Maxim: The Hot 100 is one page, which suggests that the average reader’s attention span is ridiculously limited.

Not overflowing with impressive diction or vocabulary, Maxim: The Hot 100 is fairly ad-filled. The 120-page magazine features 22 pages of full ads (not counting the inside and back covers), along with 3 pages of partial ads and 8 pages of style articles which list all of the items in the photos, with a price (which is pretty much an advertisement to me!).

Maybe I’m not the target demographic, maybe I’m not desperately looking for unobtainable women or maybe I just don’t need a magazine to tell me what to like to have opinions. But, for those who don’t care about smart (the most common comment by women on the Maxim Hot 100 list is about their own butt; none of the quotes capture the intelligence of any of the smart women on the list), aren’t looking for a woman even close to 40 (Jennifer Lopez seems to be the most senior member of the list) and who want something more respectably portable than a hard-core magazine, Maxim: The Hot 100 is enough to entertain those who want to spend the four bucks on it.

For other magazine reviews, please visit my evaluations of:
AAA Living
Ladies’ Home Journal
Buffy The Vampire Slayer Magazine

2.5/10

For other magazine reviews, please check out my Magazine Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Avril Lavinge Manages To Get Under My Skin When I Give Her A Fair Listen.

The Good: Some surprisingly well-written tracks, Good musical diversity, Hints of voice
The Bad: Still some terribly rhymes, Much of voice is still produced over, Short
The Basics: Meet Avril Lavigne, Artist and Performer away from the Image of Avril presented on the radio by picking up this album that will go under your skin.


So, there's a steaming plate of crow somewhere for me that is waiting and it will be served to me by those who read my reviews and have suffered through my fairly continual knocking of Avril Lavigne for the past few years. Lavigne is the current angry pop princess on the pop-rock charts who is basically filling a niche once owned by Alanis Morisette and . . . others. For years, based on the radio singles like "Complicated" and "Sk8er Boi," I've loathed Avril Lavigne for her simplistic rhyme schemes and obvious lyrics. When her second album, Under My Skin, was released, I found her first two singles - "Don't Tell Me" and "My Happy Ending" - to be continuing her pattern of angry young woman and I didn't so much care. When her third single, "Nobody's Home" hit the airwaves with the Lavigne-esque rhyme of "She wants to go home / But nobody's home" I cringed and felt justified for my distaste of this young woman who I had figured was a one-hit wonder who was slowly burning out her time in the spotlight.

Then, something happened (I'll write about that when I review her current album) and I decided to pick up her albums to review them. I was shocked to discover that her debut, Let Go, had some substance to it and there were songs that were not condemned to singsong rhyme hell. Then I gave Under My Skin a number of spins (actually, it became the album I listened to most on a recent drive from New York to Florida and back) and I had to grudgingly admit that while the few singles that have defined the career of Avril Lavigne thus far have left me feeling somewhat sour, this young woman has a lot more going for her and her albums are a lot stronger than her individual singles.

With only twelve tracks sliding in at under forty-one minutes, Under My Skin is knocked down mostly because it is short. All twelve tracks were written or co-written by Lavigne with most of them having music written (or co-written) by her as well. Avril Lavigne provides the vocals (sort of) for all of the songs and she plays guitar on the final song on the album. Lavigne receives no production credit on the album and I suspect that is why much of the album sounds the way that it does.

Under My Skin is a generally well-written, well-developed sophomore album that exhibits a strong sense of growth in the artistry and sound of Avril Lavigne. What it lacks is a sense, still, of Avril Lavigne, the actual performer. After listening to Lavigne's first two albums in high rotation for over a week, I still have not heard a track with her natural voice. Every song on Under My Skin includes moments where Lavigne's voice is robbed of its natural sound to produce and blend it into the music and make it something of an accessory at the mixing board. It turns out Avril Lavigne has the ability to sing, as evidenced in glimpses on virtually every track. But those glimpses are just that. There is not a single track where her voice properly dominates the song and showcases the full range of Lavigne's ability.

So, for example, Lavigne ventures into the higher ranges of her pitch when she sings the chorus to "My Happy Ending," but by the end of the chorus when she is simply repeating "So much for my happy ending," her voice is being mixed into the electric guitars and keyboards. For some reason, the producers of the album insist on forcing the listener to listen to the auditory Frankenstein monster they have created as Avril Lavigne, TM, The Product.

The thing is, that Image of Avril, who appears in the liner with the dark mascara, angry scowl and prohibitive body language, is at odds with Avril Lavigne, writer and artist. The young woman who appears as a doll as a red dress in knee socks and disaffected lonely image, laying on a cot in the liner notes is a fabrication used to sell the idea of Avril the Angry Pop Princess and despite my problem with some of the terribly obvious rhymes, Lavigne can forego that admit who and what she is.

Avril Lavigne is deeply connected to exploring and expressing the angst and desires of the late teen experience. That means Under My Skin is something of an emotional roller coaster, but what it certainly is not is a static, angry album that is lashing out at the establishment. Indeed, Lavigne becomes downright inspirational on "Who Knows," when she declares, "I think there's something more / Life's worth living for . . . So you go and make it happen / Do your best / Just keep on laughing / I'm telling you / There's always a brand new day." She offers hope, insists on not giving up. This is not an artist simply bitching about being a teen and wanting the world to go to hell without caring.

Similarly, for someone who became famous angrily lamenting the loss of her dreams on "My Happy Ending," she presents a remarkably dependent and emotive persona on "Fall To Pieces." I mean, who would have thought that pissed-off young woman who shouted out "It's nice to know that you were there / Thanks for acting like you care . . . All this time you were pretending" ("My Happy Ending") would be singing about how "I don't want to fall to pieces / I just want to sit and stare at you . . . I just want to cry in front of you" ("Fall To Pieces")?!

And Avril Lavigne actually has the ability to write some lyrics that can be described as clever. So, for example, on "My Happy Ending," one of the lines I grudgingly enjoyed even from my first listen was when Lavigne sings "You've got your dumb friends / I know what they say / They tell you I'm difficult / But so are they." I like this line because it's insightful and actually says something different from what most young people say. Here, Lavigne tacitly acknowledges that she is difficult, she is the angry pop princess and does not deny that, but she pushes the issue further; she's not the only one. As the narrator in "My Happy Ending," Lavigne takes responsibility for being herself, but she calls the object's friends out for being just as much of a pain in the butt. I like that a lot.

Which is not to say that this is a flawless album by far. Despite rhyming "home" with "home" on "Nobody's Home," most of the lyrics have better rhymes than on Lavigne's first album, though many are still too obvious for my tastes. The worst come on "Freak Out," a guitar and percussion-driven rock anthem that is probably the archetypal angry teen song to be yourself and thumb your nose at authority. The problem is, it also suffers from the most juvenile poetics of any track on the album, foregoing reason and making a statement for stupid rhymes. So, for example, Lavigne insists her listeners, "Stand up for yourself / And put up a fight / Walk around with your hands up in the air / Like you don't care" ("Freak Out"). Call me out of touch, but I've not seen any movement where walking around with your hands above your head makes a statement of indifference. I mean, yeah, protesters pump those fists of rage, but just wandering around with your hands up is more ridiculous than sensible. Lavigne sacrifices the sensibility for the rhyme.

What's worse, is she repeats it. A lot.

Which brings me to a track that grew on me quite a bit. One of the instantly most repetitive tracks is "How Does It Feel," a track that repeats "How does it feel to be / Different from me / Are we the same . . ." over and over again. This should have been, by my standards, a loathsome track. Instead, it's a close second to the best track on the album. Why? While Lavigne plaintively repeats the line over and over again, the instrumentation accompanying it becomes more and more dissonant. This is a powerful song of lost identity and existential questioning and as Lavigne desperately repeats the title against a background of violins, viola, and cellos the effect is astonishing. I'd love to hear a version where the production elements are eliminated and she is simply presented against the music with her natural voice.

But, it's enough to impress me. In fact, the music throughout the album is fairly impressive. While Lavigne might be presented as a female version of Blink 182 or Green Day on tracks like "Don't Tell Me," Under My Skin is a lot more diverse than that. On the opening track, "Take Me Away," Lavigne sounds more like Amy Lee of Evanescence on The Open Door (reviewed here!)! And "He Wasn't," an exhortation to young women to not settle and have standards for a guy, sounds more like an public service abstinence jingle than an angry pop princess.

Ironically for all of this, the track that stood out most on Under My Skin is also the one that falls most in line with the Image of Avril that I've so not enjoyed on the radio. "Together" is an angry breakup song wherein the protagonist realizes a relationship is dead. Lavigne laments, "I'm living a lie / When I'm alone / I feel so much better / And when I'm around you / I don't feel / Together. . ." ("Together"). She has predictable rhymes, like all/wall and she annoyingly rhymes fall with itself. But, the song rocks and it's the one that stuck with me most. So, even though the dissonant, lonely presentation of "How Does It Feel" haunts me, "Together" is the deserved hit that never was from Under My Skin.

She might not be as angry as she presents herself on her radio tracks, but she certainly is a budding pop princess. Despite the musical diversity, most of these songs are solidly, conventional pop-rock of the guitar-bass-drums bent. Lavigne's vocals are often blended in in a way that loses some of their natural resonance, but there are hints of her potential.

The best track is "Together" and the low point is the abysmal "Freak Out."

For other Avril Lavigne works, please visit my reviews of:
Let Go
Live Acoustic
The Best Damn Thing
Goodbye Lullaby

7.5/10

For other music reviews, please check out my Music Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission
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I Let Go And Admit The Impossible: I Might Like Avril Lavigne

The Good: Moments of voice, Musical diversity, Even *shudder* moments of lyrics
The Bad: Some of the dumbest rhymes in pop music history, Nasal vocal productions, Frontloaded
The Basics: Avril Lavigne surprisingly reveals a musical sense that presents a strong - less disaffected than on heard on the radio - young woman with just enough to recommend.


Well, let's start with the obvious: never in a thousand years did I believe I would be sitting down today to write a positive review in which I recommended Avril Lavigne's debut album Let Go. No, for the last few years, Ms. Lavigne has stood as my sterling example of how bad pop music can be. From the first time I heard her infectious pop hit "Complicated" through the wincing moments when "Sk8er Boi" rhymed "boy" with "boy," Lavigne has been my poster girl for why writing is so important to making decent pop music. Whenever I've heard an artist repeatedly rhyming the same word with itself, I call it "Avril Lavigne Syndrome." So, what changed? Well, I often listen to albums that challenge my expectations of what I will like, if for no other reason than to keep perspective and truly relish those things I actually love. Every now and then, I find myself surprised by the results.

With thirteen tracks, clocking in at forty-eight and a half minutes, Avril Lavigne's Let Go is a pop-rock album that has far more diversity to it than the radio-friendly tracks would seem to indicate. Produced by famed producer Antonio "L.A." Reid - whose last work I reviewed was the disappointing Pink album Can't Take Me Home (reviewed here!) - Let Go is a weird combination of much of what is good and much of what is abominable about pop-rock music.

Let's start with why I didn't like the works of Avril Lavigne before listening to Let Go. Lavigne burst onto the music scene in the United States in 2002 with her single "Complicated," a song that was anything but. From its infectious singsong melody to the insipid and obvious lyrics, I found "Complicated" to be anything but. I mean, how hard is it to come up with lines like "You're not fooling anyone when you become / Somebody else / Round everyone else . . ." ("Complicated")? The rhymes were so obvious and juvenile with almost every rhyme being an unsophisticated, unchallenging line ending with for/before, be/see, are/car, etc. So, I had her pegged as the next pop princess trying to make it big with a sound that was produced, unclever and plain dull.

Then came "Sk8er Boi" (that's "Skater Boy" for those needing the IM shorthand to American English translation - yes, for some reason the youth of the nation believe is somehow takes less time to spell "boi" as opposed to "boy") and Lavigne's sound was a pop-punk fusion that was just plain awful. After all, with a refrain like "I'm with the sk8er boi / I said see you later boi . . ." ("Sk8er Boi") I was terribly unimpressed. Sure, it's a reasonable song telling a story with a decent message (don't judge on looks alone), but the rhymes were terrible and the vocals illustrated no sense of talent. Anyone can shout out lyrics and at this point, I had Lavigne pegged as a female Green Day.

Lavigne's two radio singles illustrated a young woman whose music was produced, whose voice was not presented anywhere near a semblance where a listener could determine whether or not she actually had a decent set of pipes to her, and she illustrated no genuine musical ability. In this regard, some of the experience of listening to the album Let Go did not change my opinion. Most of the songs are so produced that it's hard to tell what instruments are actually being played by Lavigne's bandmates Evan Taubenfeld, Matthew Brann, and Mark Spicoluk. Songs like "Losing Grip," "Mobile," and "Unwanted" are listed in the liner notes as "All Guitars, Bass, Keyboards & Programming: Cliff Magness." Lavigne's music is largely assembled, like a factory product to yield the maximum results of a hit album.

How this album became a hit on the strength of the lyrics and vocals from the radio hits is baffling to me. After all, it took until the third single Lavigne released - the ballad "I'm With You" - before she sang anything that hinted she even had a modicum of singing ability. Her voice is so overproduced that it's impossible on the album to tell what is her natural voice and what is enhanced in some way.

Moreover, this problem has the effect of obscuring some of the lyrics. As embarrassing as it is to admit, one of the songs that was turning me around on Lavigne when listening to Let Go was her song "Mobile." I thought it was something brilliant and expressive to start with an almost folk-rock sound and sing about how she is manipulated by the world. When she repetitively degenerated into ". . .Everything's / Changing when I turn around all out of my / Control I'm a robot . . ." (not quite "Mobile"), I was so impressed. Lavigne made the track sound robotic, mechanical, and oppressed. I was actually thinking that Lavigne had something impressive to say and she was doing a good job of showing, not telling. The problem is, after ten listens to the album, I checked out the actual lyrics and was surprised to find that Lavigne is not singing about becoming a robot, but rather a "mobile." Even knowing the correct lyrics, I've gone back and listened to the song and her voice is so overproduced that it truly does sound like she is singing "robot" instead of "mobile."

But, it was enough to get me to actually listen to her. She follows "Mobile" with "Tomorrow" and "Anything But Ordinary," two tracks that sound like they could have been from Michelle Branch's debut, The Spirit Room something I was surprised to hear on Lavigne's album. Had Lavigne actually been playing her guitar on "Anything But Ordinary," I would have been both surprised and suitably impressed. As it is, she plays guitar on a lone track, near the end.

But let's finish with the last nightmare of "Let Go;" "Nobody's Fool." On "Nobody's Fool," Lavigne is a little, angry Canadian, rapper. Sigh. This is why the Canadians never conquer . . . well, anything (all due respect to famed Canadians Avril Lavigne and William Shatner). Lavigne's public image for her first album is disaffected young woman with anger, it's little surprise her music is noted for many of the rebellious traits (as well as inconsistent drumming) of the punk music movement. She appears on the cover of her album - and many of the interior pictures - with eyes rimmed with dark mascara, arms crossed. She's one of the guys, she's nobody's "chick," she's a strong, independent young woman. That's the image, but even with that inherent toughness, she can't pull off rapping and be taken seriously.

But moreover, "Nobody's Fool" illustrates the real fracture in Lavigne's music vs. musical persona. "Nobody's Fool" is an anthem all about the importance of being yourself. Lavigne sings, "I'd throw it all away before I lie so don't call me with a compromise / Hang up the phone I got a backbone stronger than yours" ("Nobody's Fool") that exhorts the listener to stand by their own creative vision. She sings defiantly about the importance of being yourself, which resonates as an anthem to young women.

This follows close on the heels of the pure pop "Things I'll Never Say," one of the few tracks that insinuate that Lavigne has a vocal talent to be exploited. "Things I'll Never Say" fits nowhere near the hardened image Lavigne presents on the front cover and most of the tracks when she sings "If I could say what I want to see / I want to see you down . . . [ellipses hers] on one knee . . . [ditto] / Marry me today." This is a track that is, well, downright girlish. And while the lyrics might be no more sophisticated than "Complicated," "Things I'll Never Say" is pure pop candy in its sound and writing.

But, it sounds good. Like "I'm With You," that track illustrates Lavigne can sing. In fact, the album opens with the last single Lavigne tried to market, "Losing Grip" and that song is easily one of the best on Let Go. She actually emotes when she plaintively wails the refrain of "Why should I care / Cause you weren't there / When I was scared / I was so alone / You need to listen / I'm starting to trip / I'm losing my grip / And I'm in this thing alone" ("Losing Grip"). Lavigne has something to say and she sings it well, even though the lyrics have unsophisticated, singsong rhymes.

Which leads us to one of the things that pushed me over the edge on this barely above average album (it's about a 6 out of 10 in my pantheon); for all its faults, Let Go appears to be heavily Lavigne's vision. All thirteen tracks are co-written by Avril Lavigne. It does appear to be her sense of poetics and coming from a young woman who was less than eighteen when most of the tracks were written, this provides a very real sense of who she was at that age. Perhaps that's why the album resonates so much with younger listeners.

Does it have enough to offer to adult audiences? Surprisingly, yes. Musically, the album is more than just the pop of "Complicated," the pop-punk of "Sk8er Boi," and the obvious ballad "I'm With You." Let Go contains pop rock that uses the heavier guitar tracks ("Losing Grip"), the rap experiment (shudder) "Nobody's Fool," and a set of lighter pop-rock songs after the known singles are out of the way that keep the listener surprisingly glued to the album. Would I love to hear an acoustic or a cappella version of "Naked?" Absolutely; Lavigne's production managers almost universally overshadow her voice with production elements (more on that when I review her latest album in a few days) and that song seems particularly misproduced.

What the album offers to all listeners is a strong, female voice who has something to say. Many of the songs have an almost folk sense of storytelling and while the rhymes might not be sophisticated, most of the songs have something to say. And musically, the album sounds good. Yes, even the hard to decipher "Mobile" has a tune that resonates with the listener.

But more than anything so far, Let Go implies that Lavigne has some talent and that this is the starting point for her. As such, it has many of the problems of a first album, but it also holds the promise that with her success, she might be able to branch out and present her own musical vision and - more importantly - voice in the future. But the truth is, it's been a while - not since I reviewed Macy Gray's On How Life Is (that’s here!) - since I've reviewed someone I was so prejudiced against and found so much merit in the actual body of the work.

I still wince hearing "Sk8er Boi;" it's a lame song, but it's overshadowed by the quality of eight of the nine non-single tracks that follow it. And if you had told me before I listened to this album that I'd ever list anything other than "Sk8er Boi" as the worst track, I would have declared you crazy. It feels crazy to acknowledge that Let Go has enough to recommend it and is a surprisingly diverse pop-rock debut.

The best track is the rocking declaration to be extraordinary called "Anything But Ordinary," the worst is the similarly-themed rap "Nobody's Fool." I'll be happy when her albums become more about her art than her executive producer's sense of artistry.

For other Avril Lavigne works, please visit my reviews of:
Live Acoustic
The Best Damn Thing
Goodbye Lullaby

6/10

For other music reviews, please check out my Music Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Avril Live Acoustic Might Be A Collector's Item, But That's About All

The Good: Good voice, Good songs
The Bad: Lyrics! Not the best demonstration of voice, Short
The Basics: While the alternate recordings of Avril Lavigne's songs are good, they're not enough to bother with the Avril Live Acoustic e.p.


Recently, I've been giving musical artist Avril Lavigne a chance (more on why in my review of The Best Damn Thing, here!) and I've been generally surprised and impressed, more than I ever thought I would be by her. Lavigne has a voice and a musical vision and yet she is frequently overproduced by her record label and those who produce her albums. Indeed, the prime fault with Let Go, Under My Skin and (to a lesser extent) Goodbye Lullaby (reviewed here!) was that the albums barely reveal even a hint of the voice Avril Lavigne actually has. So when I had the opportunity to pick up and listen to Avril Live Acoustic, I actually was looking forward to it.

With six tracks, clocking in just over 21 minutes, Avril Live Acoustic is a limited edition e.p. that presents six songs from Avril Lavigne's first two albums in versions that lack the production elements that might have smothered them on the album cuts. It's an interesting mix, wisely leaving out the overplayed "Complicated" in favor of some of Lavigne's b-sides. In fact, three of the tracks were singles and the other three are re-presented album tracks. There are no songs unique to this disc.

The other thing that is important to note is that none of the tracks truly reinvents the song being sung. They are simply acoustic versions of each song, lacking the electric guitars and other production elements. So, the sound of each song is a bit more stark; it's Avril, her guitar and backup Evan Taubenfeld. But none of the tracks is truly reinvented, so much as it's a less assembled sound.

"He Wasn't" opens the disc and it's a decent song to present live and without much accompaniment. Lavigne sings the song faithful to the original and it's a decent pop number about being disappointed by one's boyfriend. Lacking much in the way of musical accompaniment or production, the song sounds somewhat silly when she gets to the point of singing "We all have choices / We all have voices" ("He Wasn't").

"My Happy Ending" is perfectly rendered as a live, acoustic version. Sadly Lavigne and her mixer for this outing include the usual "live" noises, as if the listener would not believe this were a different track if it were not for the sound of the crowd. It's not as obtrusive as on the next track, but it's enough to be a problem. "My Happy Ending" is wonderful as a live, starkly produced song because it is about loss and without all of the sound backing it, the track takes on a truly lonely feel and it's almost enough to make one buy the album on the strength of its message and delivery alone.

Then there is the insipid "Sk8er Boi," whose lyrics are no better live and acoustic than they were on "Let Go" or the millions of times it was played on the radio. The live version clearly is live and with Avril, her guitar and her accompaniment, it sounds so dramatically different as to almost be a different song. It has a folksy sound and were it not for the still lame lyrics (I'm not sorry to say that her rhyming "boi" with "boi" just is irritating) this might be a good version of the song. It's still a better version of a still crappy song.

"Don't Tell Me," her first single from Under My Skin, which was the first track that made me sit up and think maybe there was something redeeming about Avril Lavigne is presented next and it's a fair rendition. It becomes less angsty in this version and I have to say that I kind of like the whole "I'm not giving it up" attitude when it lacks the . . . attitude. Lavigne seems less snotty and more assertive as a result of the lack of vocal production. And, you can actually hear her voice!

"Take Me Away" might be the superlative track of Avril Live Acoustic. On this song, we hear Avril Lavigne sing and she's got an impressive voice. When she plaintively cries out the refrain ("Take me away!") it sounds heartfelt and real.

But then, her voice can be heard remarkably well on "Nobody's Home," another track I've previously criticized for her lyrics. But wow, I'm humbled. Here, the vocal performance is real, the guitar work is wonderful and accompanies the lonely feel of the song perfectly. When Lavigne begins singing "She's lost inside. . . " ("Nobody's Home"), it's actually heartwrenching and sad. It's the only way to hear the song.

So, why am I not recommending this e.p.? First, it's short. It's short and for the effort one will have to go through to find it, it's not truly a value. Second, some of the lyrics are still as bad as in their original versions. Finally, while I definitely prefer these live acoustic versions (I could have lived with just acoustic, no need for the crowd noises), they do not truly reinterpret the originals or do anything extraordinary and different with the songs, so it's not really new so much as it is repacking. On the off chance that Lavigne's people are actually reading this review; when it comes time to assemble "Avril Lavigne's Greatest Hits," something like this as a bonus disc (without the "live noises" and with more tracks) would make for added value for a two-disc set.

Even I might buy that!

The best track is "Nobody's Home" (despite the rhymes) and while "Sk8er Boi" sounds completely different, the lyrics are still too lame.

For other albums by interesting female artists, be sure to visit my reviews of:
21 - Adele
South - Heather Nova
Highest Hopes: The Best Of Nightwish - Nightwish

4.5/10

For other music reviews, please be sure to check out my index page on the subject by clicking here!

© 2012, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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I Suppose It Might Effect Those Still Eating In The Fast Food Nation.

The Good: Generally informative, Decent acting
The Bad: None of the characters pop, Message becomes overbearing, Overreaches itself
The Basics: Fast Food Nation fails to balance well between a documentary's informativeness and a sense of entertainment, resulting in an underwhelming viewing experience.


I cannot recall the last film I sat and watched where my reaction to it was that it was too ambitious, though I occasionally run into a movie where the writer and/or director attempts to take on a bit too much for the time frame. Bobby might have been the last movie where there was just one too many plot/character threads. Far too often, my problem is not that a movie is too ambitious, but rather that it does not try hard enough. It's a rare thing when a movie can manage to be both too full with plots or characters and also predictable (which is almost always one of the chief difficulties with a film that's not ambitious enough), yet Fast Food Nation manages to do that. Fast Food Nation is a broad work that explores the cattle processing plants and fast food industry in a Colorado city with a storytelling angle, as opposed to a documentary style.

Raul, his wife and her sister are Mexicans who cross into the United States illegally. Raul soon gets a job working at the local meat processing plant cleaning up the kill floor. His sister in law works in the same factory, mostly getting high and having sex with a supervisor there. Meanwhile, Amber, one of the workers at the local fast food establishment which is home to the Big One, becomes disenchanted with her job and falls in with a group of college students who are working to fight the powers of the fast food industry.

Enter Don Anderson, head of marketing for that company who is sent out to Colorado when his company faces a marketing nightmare: some college students tested some of the frozen burgers and found they were high in . . . . feces. Mmmm, yum. Don is sent to find out what the problem is and he essentially discovers that the problems are systemic and the viewer is treated to a series of lessons on where exactly the meat in fast food patties comes from and why they are so inexpensive for his company.

The problem with Fast Food Nation as an entertainment piece is that it is far too erratic and preachy to be genuinely entertaining. Sure, there's the cameo from Avril Lavigne as the disenchanted college student (which is pretty much her public persona anyway) and there's the surprise appearance of Bruce Willis midway through the picture, but outside moments like that, the film suffers because it is trying to tell far too many stories and the result is none of them get told very well.

Take, for example, the saga of Don. Don begins to learn the realities of the meat-packing industry, from the use of illegal immigrants in the factories to the presence of fecal matter in the meat. When he is disturbed by the revelations made to him, his contacts within the company simply respond that "they are fine if you cook them!" He is outraged, as writer/director Richard Linklater no doubt intends the audience to be. Don leaves the film about halfway through with a sense of indignation and the plan to risk his life, wellbeing and career to stand up for what is right. As the closing credits begin rolling, his story is simply resolved with a scene that completely lacks any real sense of resolution because it robs the viewer of his character struggle and process between where he left the movie and where he pops back up.

Similarly, while the movie starts with a strong presence of Raul and his journey, he and his family exit the movie for most of the beginning and middle so that Don can have his story. By the time we revisit Raul, we do not genuinely care about his struggle. And watching him and his family devolve into drug addicts and the miseries of whoredom becomes something of a pointless exercise. Why? Because by the point in the movie when Raul's story becomes front and center again, it is pretty much to be predicted what will happen with him and his wife.

Part of the problem is certainly structural. In the first half of the film, Don is given a great deal of information. Don is told about the various evils of the meat packing industry and all of the terrible things that he is not being shown until he cannot even eat his company's product. The viewer gets it. There's a lot of exposition, there are a lot of people telling Don (and the audience) just what the stakes of the game are. We get it. The latter half of the film, with Raul, simply shows virtually everything that the viewer has already been told.

So the movie has a sense of being more multiple personalities than a rich tapestry. Amber's story seems almost redundant and pointless for the brief time she is focused on. The problem here is that Fast Food Nation makes the argument that there are systemic problems in the food supply, but illustrates no genuine hope for changing it. In fact, it does just the opposite. Amber and her friends are completely ineffectual.

As a result, most of the character quickly begin to feel like "types" as opposed to individuals. Don is a pretty generic cog in the machine suit who learns the evils of the world he works in and is faced with a decision about what to do about that. Raul is the immigrant everyman whose life is turned upside down b moving to the United States where every argument for a better life is gutted as he becomes a drug addict and his wife decides she will do anything to make money for their family. It's a pretty predictable storyline and in the absence of real characters, the film suffers and begins to take on the feel of a lecture.

Indeed, on DVD, Fast Food Nation is a virtual baseball bat to beat the viewer over the head with information. The bonus features are almost exclusively reiterations of the arguments contained in the film. One of them, "The Backwards Burger" animated short, traces the process of making fast food meat patties back from the burger to the cow and basically acts as an educational substitute for the two hour film. It's about as entertaining as Fast Food Nation ultimately is.

What the movie does have going for it, in place of entertainment, is the presence of actors who are acting well. Greg Kinnear does well as Don, taking his enthusiastic smile and slowly working it away as his character takes in the information being thrown at him. Wilmer Valderrama is completely convincing as Raul and he holds the viewer's attention quite well in all of his scenes.

But ultimately, the enlightenment that one receives from Fast Food Nation might be better gotten from a documentary, like Super Size Me (reviewed here!) and the entertainment value is not on par with similar movies, like Thank You For Smoking (reviewed here!). Instead, there is so much going on that none of it is well developed and despite seeing actors in very different roles, none of the roles here are particularly great. The result is a thoroughly average film.

For other works with Luis Guzman, please be sure to check out my reviews of:
Old Dogs
He’s Just Not That Into You
Yes Man
Waiting . . .
Magnolia

5/10

For other movie reviews, please be sure to visit my index page on the subject by clicking here!

© 2012, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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An Overnight Crush On Avril Lavigne Might Be The Best Damn Thing

The Good: Some very catchy tunes, Moments of voice
The Bad: Some exceptionally erratic songs, Album fails to come together well
The Basics: Avril Lavigne's latest musical endeavor is a serious disappointment, especially for those of us who have come to realize she DOES have a great voice!


So, it's worth noting that for years Avril Lavigne has been my punching bag in reviews and short stories as one of the least creative rhyming talents in the world. Indeed, I cannot do rhyming poetry or anything with a meter, but I openly admit this and the result of my endeavors is not a collection of songs with the most predictable rhyme schemes in the history of pop-rock music. Here I am with my fourth Avril Lavigne disc review and one might wonder how that happened, especially considering I recommend some of her albums, though not Goodbye Lullaby (reviewed here!).

The year The Best Damn Thing was released, I was up late and I caught part of Jimmy Kimmel Live and Avril Lavigne was performing live atop the Pontiac or Chrysler Building (don't care, it's not important for this review) and two things happened that impressed me. The first was, it was raining as she began to sing and she pulled her hood up on her sweatshirt. As stupid as it might seem, this impressed me as my general negative impression of most young people these days extends to the idea that most of them wouldn't be bright enough (or willing to mess up their hair) to cover their head when they're out in the rain. The other thing was that as she began to sing "Girlfriend," an insipid single I had only heard three times on the radio before that, something became painfully clear; Avril Lavigne has a pretty amazing voice when she's not being overproduced. For an evening, I was painfully taken with Avril Lavigne.

On her latest complete and original endeavor, The Best Damn Thing, Lavigne presents twelve tracks, clocking in at barely over forty minutes of music which almost completely obscure that beautiful voice I heard one Spring night. No, this collection is perhaps her most solid pop endeavor and it's . . . well, it's remarkably average and it seems to mortgage her public image pretty effectively. Sure, on the inside of the c.d. liner, there's Avril looking disaffected, bored, seductive or darkly playful in her short skirt, fishnets and omnipresent black eyeliner, but her songs are neither written nor sound like that image.

Take "Girlfriend," a pure pop melody with one of the ultimate pop hooks of "Hey! Hey! You! You!" (everyone in the room looks). It's a song certainly dissing (is that common enough vernacular now for reviewers to use without sounding like poseurs?) the subject's current girlfriend, but it's a cry to let the singer be the subject's partner. This, of course, is wonderful irony to the teenage boys who would love for Avril to be singing to them as she is now happily married. Yes, it took marriage and settling down for Lavigne to produce and album that seems to be primarily concerned with having fun.

That is, when the album is trying to be about anything coherent. In many ways, The Best Damn Thing is the archetypal pop-rock album with a majority of pop tracks ("Girlfriend," "Runaway," "Hot"), with a few rock tracks ("Everything Back But You") and the requisite pop ballads ("When You're Gone," "Keep Holding On"). The problem is, despite the somewhat typical nature of the album on one level, some of the individual tracks are so fractured as to make it near impossible to define along any sort of reasonable spectrum.

Take the title track, "The Best Damn Thing", which starts as a ridiculous cheerleader song with Lavigne crying out "Let me hear you say hey hey hey / Alright (sic), now let me hear you say hey hey ho." The song sounds strangely like the classic "Mickey" from Toni Basil. The song then turns into a list of complaints against guys, in a typical pop way, before entering a loud rock refrain that is basically Lavigne screaming at those who have rejected her. This effect is much more pronounced on "Everything Back But You," which sounds like it would be more appropriate coming from a band like Blink 182 or Green Day.

Sadly, after her beautiful ballad "Innocence," Lavigne presents "I Don't Have To Try," wherein Lavigne shrieks a refrain of "I don't care what you're saying / I don't care what you're thinking" after a trademark intro featuring the lamest rhymes ever (in this case "I'm the one I'm the one who knows the dance . . . who's got the prance . . . who wears the pants"). So even when there is the hint that Avril Lavigne can sing, she quickly mortgages it with examples of how she refuses to.

Perhaps the most disturbing thing about The Best Damn Thing (the album) is that it seems like since Under My Skin, the only word Avril Lavigne has learned is "Hey!" "Hey" appears on the album (according to the liner, so this is not including responses of "hey" or the repetition of it in cannons while she is singing other things) sixty-nine times, forty of which are in the first track, "Girlfriend." I understand some of those "heys" are used on this version to cover profanities that are used in the deluxe versions, but still, that's a lot of "hey!"

The other disappointing thing is the way the album seems to be utilizing "cheerleader pop," which is a marked departure from Lavigne's darker material on Under My Skin and Let Go. "Girlfriend" and The Best Damn Thing include cheerleader interludes where Lavigne leads a cheer, including a self-promotional on the latter track where she spells out her name. This is the type of amateur mistake or self-buoying technique I would expect from a much younger artist. Or Eminem.

At the end of the day, it's not good music and it buries more poignant messages like those in "I Can Do Better," the latest Avril-teen anthem about holding out for someone better than whoever one is with at the time. Indeed, Lavigne seems unwilling to commit to the same depth with a darker song like that as she degenerated near the end into another beat-heavy "cheerleader pop" bit that breaks the song out of its harder rock mold.

And it's hard to take the rich sound of "Innocence" seriously when it's sandwiched between the pure pop of "Hot" (which isn't bad) and the insipid "I Don't Have To Try." The result is an album that is, at best, average, and at worst a trainwreck of conflicting sounds. Lavigne seems to not know what direction she wants to go on this album, whether she wants to be a pop princess, a rocker, a cheerleader or even a decent singer/performer.

And the responsibility (okay, blame) falls squarely on Lavigne, who co-wrote every song on the album. As well, she is the executive producer of the album, though she does not play any instruments on the disc. Usually, I recommend in a situation like this that one hunt down the deluxe version of the album because more is usually better, but if the rest of the material is comparable to what's on the single disc version, it's not worth your time, money or attention.

The best track is probably "When You're Gone," but so many of the other tracks - especially "I Don't Have To Try" - are just plain bad.

For works by other women who rock, be sure to check out my reviews of:
Wilderness - Sophie B. Hawkins
@#%&*! Smilers - Aimee Mann
Closer: The Best Of Sarah McLachlan - Sarah McLachlan

4.5/10

For other music reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2011, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.

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Avril Lavigne's First Full Failure: Goodbye Lullaby Leaves Me Unimpressed.

The Good: Some fun songs
The Bad: Derivative sound, Some truly lame lyrics, Thematically disappointing, Fairly short.
The Basics: Goodbye Lullaby has Avril Lavigne trying to follow Katy Perry down a skanky road, disappointing listeners looking for something and someone original.


Avril Lavigne is a musical artist who managed to surprise me. I, like many back in the day, got sick of hearing "Complicated" on the radio and wrote her off as a one-hit wonder when she followed it up with "Sk8er Boi." When I began my music reviews, I was looking to balance my reviews and I started picking up some of Avril Lavigne's albums, figuring that I was biased against her work and I would have something to easily pan. But then, the unthinkable happened and I fell for the albums and I was surprised to find myself recommending her albums, save a limited LP that she released. So, earlier this year when Lavigne announced she would be releasing a new album, I was actually at a point where I could admit I was excited. I found myself grooving out to "What The Hell," despite not being wild about its message. But, it took until last week for me to get in Lavigne's new album, Goodbye Lullaby and I've been listening to it in pretty high rotation since.

And it was not worth the wait. Sadly, on Goodbye Lullaby, Avril Lavigne seems determined to sell out to the lowest common denominator of people who are still listening to pop music. Yes, Goodbye Lullaby courts Katy Perry's fan base. Gone is the audacious loner who stands strong and does what she wants, in her place is a vacuous skank in the mold of Katy Perry. I cannot recall the last time I was so disappointed in a musical artist whom I had once respected and the truth is, despite my initial impressions of her, I had come to respect Lavigne's works. But Goodbye Lullaby mortgages that.

With fourteen tracks (how can a track be called "hidden" if it's on the tracklisting?!) clocking out just over fifty-two minutes, Goodbye Lullaby rests mostly on the talents of Avril Lavigne, so she takes most of the blame. Lavigne wrote or co-wrote all of the tracks, seven written on her own, and she produced two of the songs on her own as well. She is also credited as a co-producer on the album. She provides all of the lead vocals and piano on four songs, guitars on two. So, there is little denying that Goodbye Lullaby is the album Lavigne wanted to create.

Goodbye Lullaby is a pretty solid pop album, but it is not the album fans of Avril Lavigne might have wanted. "Last night I blacked out I think / What did you, what did you put in my drink / I remember making out and then oh oh / I woke up with a new tattoo / Your name was on my and my name was on you / I would do it all over again" are not lines from Katy Perry's ode to teen irresponsibility (though they might as well be) "Last Friday Night"; they are lines from Lavigne's song "Smile" on Goodbye Lullaby. This sums up the phase shift in Lavinge's music for this album. Gone are the ansty desires to be loved, demands to be respected and the anthems insisting her lyrical protagonists be given the opportunities to prove themselves and excel in a world they did not create. No, on Goodbye Lullaby, Lavigne is tired of all that and she just wants to get laid.

With pretty standard pop-rock guitar, bass, drum songs, Lavigne augments her sound with pianos and keyboards. Unlike her prior albums which were pretty straightforward pop rock with more of a rock and roll flavor, Lavigne's sound on Goodbye Lullaby is more poppy and soft. The opening and closing tracks, "Black Star" and "Goodbye" are bookends which repetitively and simply muse into the pop and leave the listener with an "oh well" feeling. The piano work on them is simple, like random, deliberating tapping of keys more than creating an actual melody. That is happens on one track is unfortunate; that Lavigne opens and closes the album with songs with the same issues is a bleaching of whatever talent she once had and that is beyond disappointing.

Vocally, Lavigne is back with her overproduced vocals that illustrate little of her actual talent. What has always gotten me to give Lavigne another chance when I hear her works is live performances of them. Indeed, it was hearing a live version of "Girlfriend" off Best Damn Thing that made me realize that Lavigne was not just another manufactured pop diva. She had some real talent. Vocally, that is almost entirely absent on Goodbye Lullaby where her vocals are so overproduced as to be almost unrecognizable at points as a human voice. Sure, she is articulate on most of the lyrics to "What The Hell," but none of the other songs even have that song's tempo, so remaining comprehensible is not much of a challenge.

What is a challenge is listening to the album and wanting to listen to it more than once. Having had to subject myself to the album more than eight times for the purpose of reviewing, I can honestly say the album has terribly low replayability. While I was as happy as anyone to hear Avril Lavigne get a song on the soundtrack for Alice In Wonderland, it wasn't until listening to Goodbye Lullaby that I actually heard the song. And I heard how bad the song actually is, which is an unfortunate slam to Lavigne, but when she created a song that is supposed to be about empowerment and apparently wrote it just based on what rhymed, she deserved that criticism. Lines like "I'll play the game / But I can't stay . . . I'll win the race / Keep up with the pace / Today's the day / That I start to pray / You can't get in my way" ("Alice") are just plain juvenile.

And when I had hopes that there might be some hope for the old, articulate Avril might be somewhere on the album, my hopes were soon dashed. Her new solution to relationship problems? "Just shut up" ("Push"). And instead of going out and getting her partner, she waits on the sidelines in "Wish You Were Here."

The album is all like that, songs where if one has the expectation that Avril Lavigne will be smart, ballsy or strong, those expectations are defied. On Goodbye Lullaby, she is submissive, she is defiant only when it fits a predictable and basic rhyme scheme, and she is strangely whorish. All in all, Goodbye Lullaby is the big letdown from an artist who seems to have completely sacrificed art for commerce on her latest album.

For other female artist's album reviews, please visit my reviews of:
500 Days At Sea - Heather Nova
21 - Adele
The Singles Collection (Boxed Set) - Britney Spears

3.5/10

For other music reviews, be sure to visit my index page on the subject by clicking here!

© 2011 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.

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