I'm Secure Enough To Admit It

My nephew The Donald (or El Donaldo, to our Spanish speaking friends!) recently made the bold, brave move of admitting that he's a Miley Cyrus fan. I related to that post, because I really enjoy a lot of Miley's music too... Maybe not quite to the extent that The Donald does - his Miley Glasses are rosy enough that he even likes her ill-conceived cover of "Girls Just Want To Have Fun," which I thought would be great when I saw it on the track listing, but about fifteen seconds in, was reaching for the skip button.

But his post raised an issue that I am actually quite passionate about, and that is how important it is to recognize quality and talent wherever they are, even when you're the minority in an ocean of people groaning that it's fake, lame, terrible, phony, or worse. His key points are valid whether you like Miley Cyrus' music or not. She wrote or co-wrote nearly all of her last two albums, and has sold out concert halls with a fervor that doesn't happen much now that The Beatles have broken up... Come to think of it, The Beatles, in their heyday, had an awful lot in common with young Ms. Cyrus. Their core audience was positively rabid in their adoration, and their core audience's parents insisted that they were talentless hacks.

Please don't threaten to hang me on the cross of culturally sacred cows... I'm not saying Miley is as good as The Beatles (though I'd rather listen to her, any day!) - I'm just saying that the passion amongst her fan base is something that you don't get very often in this day and age, where everything is so on-demand that nothing really builds any sort of anticipation, and therefore, there's never really much to get excited about.

But I have digressed from my original intent for this post - it's almost like I'm out of practice at actual writing, after two months of posting nonstop tidbits of baby news and pictures! (don't worry, more of those will be coming soon...)

Okay, so against the backdrop that I just set up, I get extremely annoyed by things like this:



Okay... Let's see now... When I first heard of the Jonas Brothers, I figured they were a manufactured-for-TV fake band. Then I heard their remake of the Little Mermaid song, "Poor Unfortunate Souls." It was a pretty respectable re-interpretation of it, and I figured that even if they're fake, someone was making them sound good.

My opinion got bumped up several notches when I heard "S.O.S." It was on heavy rotation on the local college station I listen to, and it was an extremely catchy song. I bought their self titled CD for use at the elementary school's Halloween dance in 2007, and ended up playing half of the album, by request. To my amazement, all the songs I played were good!

Normally I'm a total credit reader. I'll scour over the booklet from a CD, taking note of the writers, producers and musicians... but for some reason, I never looked at the JB notes. It wasn't until their current album, "A Little Bit Longer" came out, that I really looked into them.



The first thing I noticed is that the AllMusic Guide gave it a 4-star rating. This caught my eye, because they tend to be rather conservative with their reviews. So I hit up my good friend, Wikipedia. There, I found that they are indeed, brothers with the last name of Jonas. I also learned that they were hardly manufactured. Nick Jonas started out as a Contemporary Christian solo artist, and on one of his demos, his brothers sang backup with him. Poof, the Jonas Brothers were born.

Okay, I am not a happy little cheerleading fanboy here, but Nick Jonas is three months older than my son Andy. At the age of 16, he has written and performed two albums of excellent material. Actually, there have been four albums, including his original solo album... But I'm just focusing on the ones that have made them household names. Looking at the writing credits, he and his brothers co-wrote every song on the new album, and all but the two covers from the previous album.

But it's not just about the songwriting. A few weeks ago, on Dick Clark's Rockin' New Years Eve with Ryan Seacrest And Some Kind Of Robot Pretending To Be Dick Clark, there were several musical guests. Taylor Swift proved that she should never, ever be allowed to sing live. Let her lip sync, for the sake of all those within earshot. Lionel Richie phoned in a medley of his hits... I was beginning to think that maybe since it was so cold in Times Square, nobody would sound good. When the Jonas Brothers took the stage, I was very concerned that they'd justify some of the negativity aimed at them. But no, they did an outstanding set! Vocals in tune, music played tightly... and it was actually LIVE! (unlike the why-do-they-even-exist pussycat dolls, who lip synced.. badly...)

I'm sorry, but to have all that under your belt within three months of your 16th birthday doesn't happen without a rather large helping of a little thing called TALENT!! You may not like the style - after all, it's cool to hate things that people actually like - but the people who claim they have no talent are really just exposing themselves as the purveyors of haterade that they are.

My favorite song on the new album is "Can't Have You," which starts off with a very moody sounding piano and drum loop. It would sound right at home on one of the GOOD Depeche Mode albums. Of course, once it hits the chorus, they go for the straight up pop hook, then blend the two on the subsequent verse. Oh, and that song was written by Nick Jonas. Alone. No help from his brothers, or any other professional writers.

The brothers are just hitting their stride. I'm fully aware that their next album could be the one where they try too hard, and their empire implodes on top of them, but I sure hope not. It seems like there's a lot of good songs still to come.

My name is Mike Brinkerhoff, and I like the Jonas Brothers.