Nick Jonas' 'Last Year Was Complicated' is actually pretty simple
Last Year Was Complicated's biggest flaw is that it isn't very complicated at all.
Nick Jonas said earlier this month that he views Last Year Was Complicated -- out Friday -- as "an opportunity to just lay it out. I was trying to be as honest as possible – it really is pulling from this chapter of my life."
While he definitely succeeds in being honest -- "You're not the first to try and diagnose what's wrong with me/ And I'll be the first one to admit that I'm hard to please," he sings on "Unhinged" -- there's not a lot that Last Year Was Complicated reveals about Nick Jonas as an artist.
You May Also Like
On his eponymous sophomore album, Nick Jonas where he broke the "Chains" of his boy band past, said the f word and sang songs about alcohol and sex. On Last Year Was Complicated, the f word is said and sex is had and alcohol is imbibed, but there's no real indication that he's grown all that much.
Jonas does manage to deliver a few very, very good dance-pop numbers -- like "Champagne Problems," a breakup song disguised as a boisterous club banger--- and some genuine and tender ballads. But like its predecessor, there's not much of a sense of self that tie them together.
And when it is revealing, it might not be in the ways Jonas intended.
On the problematic-ain't-the-half-of-it "Good Girls," Jonas sings, "When did all these good girls decide to be bad?/ Dancing up on a table getting back at your dad/ Who’s the asshole who told you that that’s what you had to do/ Yeah but when did all these good girls decide to be bad?/ You know I love your skin but is it deeper than that?"
In a year that brought us "6 Inch," Beyonce's tribute to a stripper who works hard for her money and "she worth every dollar/ she worth every minute," perhaps he should be asking himself those judgmental questions of morality, not her.
Oh, and as if that wasn't enough to make any remotely woke person cringe, Big Sean threw this rotten cherry on top: "You don’t strike me as a club girl, you seem more residential/ To keep it real I just want a bad girl tonight, and a good girl for life/ All I see is potential."
But if you can manage to not let "Good Girls" completely spoil the bunch, Last Year Was Complicated is an altogether enjoyable listen. But until he manages to find his own musical lane in the pop landscape -- which he's already done outside of his work -- he will inevitably continue to be compared to the boy-banders gone solo who came before him. And we're still waiting for his Justified.
Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.
Topics Music
