The Jonas Brothers - A Little Bit Longer

A Little Bit Longer (2008, Disney) The Jonas Brothers' third studio album. **1/2

I was extremely disappointed in Rolling Stone's award of "excellence" to this album. It's not that the Jonas Brothers are awful or that they will never become anything, but Rolling Stone's reasoning is beyond ridiculous. Jody Rosen's first line in her review of four Disney-released albums is "History teaches us not to dismiss kiddie pop." I would actually say the exact opposite. Why? Rosen claims that we have to thank teen pop for results such as Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, and all associated wannabes. But let's look at this fact; of the teen pop sensations Spice Girls, Backstreet Boys, N*Sync, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, and Justin Timberlake (solo), and a combined twenty-two albums between them all, only two have not been met with middling or poor critical reaction (Back to Basics by Aguilera and Blackout by Spears, the latter of which did receive a few mixed and poor reviews). And don't get me started on Katy Perry.

So if that's the logic you want to use, Jody, then we need to be wary of Vanessa Hudgens, Miley Cyrus, and the Jonas Brothers. But that's actually the opposite, because like Cyrus, the Jonas Brothers aren't bad. Is there album great? Not by any stretch of the veritably screwed-up imagination. Teen pop is useless, but they use it the correct way. They aren't going out of their way to try and be cool; basically, there's no mention of partying, sex, or the like. These guys are responsible to their fan base, and that's great. As far as the music is concerned, it's fairly bleak. Yeah, Nick and Kevin can play the guitar pretty damn well for their age. But Joe's vocals are so horribly predictable - complete with lines of "Tonight!" and forced voice straining - that they help fulfill all the cliches one can expect. There are two moments where the brothers get it right; the first is "Shelf," a genuinely straightforward rocker that loses the excess of traditional generic pop. Switch the vocalist and you could believe it was any trapped-in-the-late-90's band. Another is the gentle ballad "Lovebug," a simple acoustic number that turns radically electric as it progresses. Beyond that, the boys fail to be as adventurous or clever as their female counterpart. But that's okay, if they ever adopt a respectable genre they could transpose their skills. It's easy-going and honestly harmless music, because their full commital to Christianity doesn't seep in anywhere for an unwarranted and unwanted moral lecture. For fans it's their best yet. For anyone else, that last sentence doesn't mean a whole lot.