The Illiterate

John Mayer
“Half of My Heart” (featuring Taylor Swift), #25
“Heartbreak Warfare”, #100
What bothers me about these records, both above average in execution, emotion, and intelligence—especially “Heartbreak Warfare”—is Mayer’s apparent inability not to wear his influences on his sleeve. “Half Of My Heart” not only borrows the easy heartbeat groove of Fleetwood Mac, but is layered with an almost embarrassingly accurate imitation of Lindsey Buckingham’s guitar, while “Heartbreak Warfare” is a barely disguised rewrite of U2′s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.” Considering the subject matter of both songs, the borrowing makes sense, but it also makes me wonder if Mayer has any musical identity that he truly feels is his own. Maybe “Half Of My Heart” is a reference to his music as well as his love life.

Glee Cast
“Lean On Me”, #50
“Don’t Stand So Close To Me/Young Girl”, #64
“I’ll Stand By You”, #73
“Endless Love”, #78
Welcome, to paraphrase Dylan, to the old folks home in the high school. For anyone who didn’t already believe that boomer culture is a dead issue, Glee is the ultimate proof—or the final nail. These kids aren’t singing their parent’s music, after all, they’re singing their grandparent’s music. There’s a certain amount of wit, I suppose, in pairing The Police with Gary Puckett and the Union Gap (though it’s unfair—not even Sting deserves to be chained to such deathless smarm), but the joke is lost in the blank earnestness of the performance. This might as well be Sing Along with Mitch or The Lawrence Welk Show for a new generation—once meaningful standards reduced to a level even lower than muzak. As glad as I am that Bill Withers and Chrissie Hynde will never have to work again unless they want to, they deserve better. We all deserve better. Even the people who actually buy this crap deserve better.

Alicia Keys—”Try Sleeping With A Broken Heart”
#58
Even at her best, and this is close, Alicia Keys makes what might be called R&B for home schoolers. She gets all the details right, down to the smallest nuance, but her music lacks the give and take, the rough and tumble of actual human contact, and it’s full of a self-importance bred of isolation. It’s as if she were building a museum of her emotions, displayed on pedestals behind glass, with dark velvet curtains and perfect lighting and little explanatory plaques for our edification.

Justin Bieber
“Down To Earth”, #79
“Bigger”, #94
“First Dance” (featuring Usher). #99
Four of the songs from his eight-track EP already having charted as singles, it only makes sense that the three others that are available as individual downloads (the eighth is technically an “album only” bonus cut) should chart as well. The first two are even blander than the singles, but “First Dance”, at least lyrically, is something else again. It’s the prom, you see, and there’s no one else on the dance floor, and their are no chaperones, and… “I promise I’ll be gentle, I know we gotta do it slowly” Bieber croons in his most seductive 15-year-old tones. “I couldn’t ask for more, we’re rockin’ back and fourth,” he says later, and then assures the young thing that “our parents will never know”. If both consenting partners are under age, is it still considered statuatory rape? And people think Adam Lambert is controversial.

Rihanna featuring Jeezy—”Hard”
#80
It is hard, and it gets even harder with Jeezy’s rap, which, unlike so many guest spots, lifts the song to a higher level, and is immediately followed by Rihanna’s best-ever vocal performance. She sounds so enraged she’s incoherent. Better this than the self-pity and mixed messages of “Russian Roulette”, not to mention the rest of Rated R.

Melanie Fiona—”It Kills Me”
#88
Like Jazmine Sullivan, Fiona sounds as if she’s immersed in early ’70s soul, specifically of the Chi-Lites variety. She’s more emotionally restrained than Sullivan, though, her music less zaftig, so to speak. Which makes her a little less interesting and more generic, at least in ’70s terms. Today, the sound of this record stands out, but back in ’73 it would have been lucky to make top 30 on the R&B chart.

50 Cent—”The Invitation”
#97
The good news is that 50 Cent sounds interested again—this is as tough and angry as it ought to be. The bad news is that he’s still 50 Cent, and apparently the only way he could revive his interest was by going over the same ground he and thousands of others have worn down already. Not bad for retro-gangsta, but it doesn’t go anywhere, largely because it never had anywhere to go in the first place.