New Kids On “The Block” Should’ve Grown Up a Little
September 16, 2008 · Print This Article
Let’s be honest. You don’t listen to the New Kids On The Block for musical mastery. You listen to them for fun. We tried hard to keep that principle in mind when checking out The Block, but found ourselves generally more disgusted than entertained. It’s one thing for teenage boys to indulge in fluffy, female-focused pop; it’s another for mature men to form a record in which nearly every song seems to contain the word “girl,” “sexy,” or “hottie.” Shouldn’t near-40-year-olds be singing about women by that point? Shouldn’t the Kids’ former fans be more self-respecting than to put up with such misogynistic nonsense? And shouldn’t young girls be listening to music that contains better messages than “men value girls with hot bods”?
We liked “Summertime,” a sweet song remembering summers gone by. The tune featured a mellow groove and some semi-interesting vocal overlays. In contrast, many other tunes on The Block compose “Summertime” sound like the work of a different group, both musically and lyrically.
“Grown Man,” featuring the Pussycat Dolls, is one of the questionable tracks. The song has nearly a pedophilic feel, thanks to the language and intonation used (not to mention the title). The Kids aren’t precisely old (though Jonathan Knight’s nearly 40!), and the Dolls themselves couldn’t be considered jailbait (the youngest is 24), but the setup of the song is still rather disturbing. In the chorus, the Dolls ask, in harmless, girly voices, “Do you like my body? Do you think that I’m a hottie?” The Kids reply, “Girl, you know I do… Ima give you some grown man.” Creepy much?
The creepiest song on the block, after the jump.
Feeding into the stereotype of a young, insecure girl (not a woman) who “needs” the approval (and whatever else might come with it…) of a “grown man” seems unnecessary and even damaging. It’s certainly not strange in pop music—but that in itself is lamentable. The mere fact that it’s so acceptable, to the point of unnoticeability, to “girlify” grown women in pop music points to a need for the genre to wake up a little and try something new, particularly when the artists are by thirty. The Kids may be “grown men,” but they haven’t adopted mature attitudes to match their age.
Perhaps even more disturbingly, “Big Girl Now” compliments Lady Gaga (age 22) for finally growing up (“Good things come to those who wait”), reiterates the notion that the Kids are “grown men,” and features the highly contemplative chorus, “I’m a big girl, you’re a big boy now.” We may be reading too much into that, but the combination of these factors still skeeves us out. The lyric “With a body like that you’ve got a grown man ready to blow” may be what pushed us by the edge—we remember NKOTB being a lot more harmless back in the day. possibly that was just us being young and not knowing better? No, upon checking the lyrics to “You Got It (The Right Stuff),” which actually mentions the beloved girl’s “thoughts” (girls have thoughts? no!), and “Hangin’ rigid,” which uses the word “hottie” not three, not two, not one, but zero times, we can confirm that the boys have grown up—into misogynistic sex machines who apparently hope their former fans are as horny as them. [Even a fan who claims to have been waiting 18 years for the new NKOTB can’t stand “Big Girl Now.”]
We perused the lyrics of the iTunes top 5 songs for comparison—maybe pop music these days is just more sexed-up and demeaning than we thought. Pink’s #1 tune features her dumping her husband—a poor example of fidelity, but arguably a (twisted) example of female strength. TI’s “Whatever You Want” swings amoung glorifying and criticizing pimp culture, but does at least compliment the “girl” for a “brain so good, coulda swore you went to college”—of course, that in itself implies that the girl didn’t go to college, considering she didn’t need to, considering everyone just wants her body, not her brain. Ugh. At least Rihanna doesn’t signal herself a “girl” in “Disturbia,” “Just Stand Up” is a decent stab at female empowerment, and Jason Mraz never calls the object of his affection “girl” (though he does want to nibble her—his?—ear) and even commands everyone to “rid yourself of vanity.” So TI isn’t precisely a model of, uh, female empowerment, but the rest of the tunes do all right. The Kids could at least produce an attempt to show some respect for women, rather than lust for girls.
Continuing the depressing trajectory, the only song on The Block that deems “love” vital ample to include in the title is “Sexify My Love,” which suggests that love itself is not adequate sans sexification. Sigh. At least “Dirty Dancing” has a yelpy chorus with a funky stutter, and we must confess that the line “She’s so crazy, she’s like Baby, I’m like Swayze” is pretty killer—though it does reduce us women to our “crazy” roots.
Perhaps due to the presence of New Edition—this is boys-into-men group heaven!—we dig the funky, driving “Full Service.” The song even reverses the usual trope of women serving men, which makes us like it that much more. (“I want to protect your assets” is a nearly unforgivable pun, but we’ll pretend we didn’t prepare out it.)
“Looking Like Danger,” though a tired play on the old trope of woman as temptress, has a decent beat and a chorus (the same as the title) that we can actually sing. (We really can’t manage to whimper, “Do you think that I’m a hottie?”) whether the whole album were like these songs, we’d be thrilled. As it is, we might put a track or two from The Block on the iPod, but will probably forget most everything else relatively quickly—as soon as we write some angry emails about the misogyny we’ve unearthed.
The Kids’ latest is by no means terrible, but it’s not the sensation we wish it had been, nor does it constitute much of a musical advancement since 1990. Today’s pre-teens already have the Jonas Brothers, and in all honesty, the Bro-tunes are kind of moving us more than the Kids’ new stuff. We’ll always have a big space in our heart for “The Right Stuff,” but The Block isn’t inspiring us to love the Kids’ latest incarnation much, whether at all. We can’t ever expect pop music to be some sort of paean to feminism, but it would have been nice to see the Kids mature in 20 years. The boys just haven’t grown out of horny teenagerdom. whether that appeals to you, great; whether it makes you feel a little uneasy, join the club.
[Source] Kerry Skemp
