BareNaked by Jennifer Love Hewitt

This review was supposed to be a part of KristinaFH's Second Annual May Music Madness Write-Off. It was going to be my second entry into the write-off and I had chosen to write on the fourth category entitled, "I'd Consider Sleeping With...But I Really Don't Enjoy Their Music". And who better to bring to the dance than Jennifer Love Hewitt? The original J.Lo? However, I was side tracked and never was able to get that review in on time. And since I've had this review sitting in draft for almost a month, I figured I might as well finish it.

My love for Ms. Love came about from watching the overly dramatic and sappy, but still good show called Party Of Five. She was the cutest thing on television at that time. I don't think I really thought of her as a sex symbol until she started her movie career. And while she's doesn't lead a sex symbol lifestyle, she's still the cutest thing in my opinion out there.

Her music on the other hand leaves a lot to be desired. She has decent material to work with on this album as Meredith Brooks had her hand in just about everything. It's a safe album to say the least, and you can tell that Jenny Love worked hard on the album, but you don't get the feeling that she's totally serious about her music career. For instance, she does her best singing job on Me And Bobby McGee. It consists of her singing nearly acapella. You can hear only hand drums along with her voice. And she does a really good job in carrying the song with her voice. However, at the end of the song, she starts giggling and you can hear applauding and cheering going on in the background, almost to show how surprised she was to have finished the song. It tells the listener that it took a hundred takes to get the song right and it finally came out right after take one hundred and one. It shows how little confidence her handlers have in her singing ability.

I thought her first single, Barenaked was a good start. It created a semi-buzz. The video did a pretty good job about getting the message of her song across. It's about the feeling you get when things aren't going for you. She sings, "You ever try your luck, with a pick-up line but you just sucked? You tell yourself it wasn't you." She compares that feeling to a vulnerable feeling of being barenaked when you're supposed to be wearing clothes. You've had those dreams. Some of you might've even enjoyed those dreams. The song isn't about how hot she thinks she is, or how she is having relationship problems, it's about something everyone can relate to. The only problem I see is that some people might've thought that because of the title, she was going to sing about getting naked, but those people were disappointed.

Many of the songs that work, are because they're produced well and she's able to sing easy to sing songs. While most all of the lyrics are cheesy, they're not cheesy in a way that's bubble gum cheesy. They're cheesy in a Jennifer Love Hewitt way. If you know anything about Love, she's pretty straight as an arrow. On Can I Go Now she sings, "Say what you wanna say, happy you got your way, what's there to discuss." The song is about her being upset with her man and instead of calling him every name in the book, she just says she's leaving, end of story. It's a nice song that musically is like Barenaked and could've been released as a radio friendly tune. Avenue Of The Stars is also simple musically. In a somewhat autobiographical song she sings about taking her chance at Hollywood and everyone waiting for her to come back home, expecting her to fail. There's a girl who sounds a lot like the late Lisa Lopes who at the beginning of the song that says, "yo, yo, yo". Why this was included in the song, I don't know. The song is nice, but her voice is really lacking on this song. She seems to strain at times.

Most of my problems with the album have to do with the teenage like song writing and her lack of power in her voice. Does she have a voice that is probably better than Britney Spears? Yes. But at least Brit has synthesizers and tools to drown out her voice and make it sound better. Another song where she sounds like she's straining on is You which is the only true ballad on the album. The strength in her vocals is in the mid tempo fun songs. Singing a serious ballad is not. Even on Stronger she almost changes her vocals because she doesn't seem to be able to sing on key comfortably.

I wanted to like this CD. There are likeable things on this CD. But they're outweighed by things that just can not happen in music. Hide her voice. Give her stronger, more mature lyrics. The music is already decent, she just needs to be better produced to hide her deficiencies as a singer.