What's that saying? Everything that is old is new again. I spend a lot of time on my album reviews talking about influences and who someone reminds me of etc., but in this case this album reminds me more of a moment in time than anything else. In the early 80's there were a lot of things that happened to affect the music industry and the movie industry. You had MTV which greatly impacted the music scene, as well as the explosion of FM radio. You also had cable TV which begat MTV and also movie stations like HBO and Cinemax. All of this led to this odd mix of movies and music and the need for a lot of content. All of this led to movies like Lunch Wagon.
Lunch Wagon was a B comedy tailor made for things like Cinemax. It also tapped into the new trend of MTV by putting the Missing Persons' Dale Bozzio as a character in the movie. It was an excuse to add musical interludes into the movie and add another B star to the movie. The same way people like Bozzio were taking punk and fusing it into pop with the new wave sound, movie makers were taking the traditional movie and fusing it with music and pop culture to make straight for TV movies that were aimed at the same audience as the music created by artists like Missing Persons. Hope all of that makes some sense to someone besides me.
Anyhow I go through all of that to say that this album from Charli XCX reminds me of that time period. This album is an odd mix of sounds to create a sort of B version of what is popular today. Not to knock on Charli XCX, but truth is this album sounds like something that was cheaply produced to create an album for someone who is going to promote the heck out of it with videos and social media, etc. The whole idea of this album and this person makes me think of that period in time in the early 80's when things were changing all around us.
Anyhow all of this was an excuse to give you this video.
Following the Rhapsody rating method I give the album 1 out of 5 stars for Just OK.
This is an interesting review.
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