Can't Review Them All-Maroon 5, Don't Yell At Me Singers

In our latest installment of CRTA.  We take a look at a band that took off after changing their name and the phenom we call Don't Yell At Me singers. 

The point of Can't Review Them All is that these are bands that I don't take much interest in.  I do buy a lot of used and cheap stuff but even the cheap stuff won't get me to review such media darlings or fan favorites.  Or they're overexposed on CCC radio formats.  Or somebody from Clear Channel/Cumulus loves them to keep on that overplayed list that makes me want to shoot out the windows at Dollar General.

The first band of note is Maroon 5 and at least they have a sense of humor, their next album is called Overexposed and ain't they?  They started out as Kara's Flowers which made a listenable album for Reprise in 1998 to the point that I called them an up and coming band.  It's mostly straight ahead power pop with a nod toward Freedy Johnson but it didn't sell and Reprise dropped them (they would reissue it via Rhino when Songs About Jane took off).  One change was making their music more pop and R n B, the second getting Adam Levine to become lead singer and lastly changing the name over to Maroon 5.  A label change over to J Records and with Clive Davis putting out a better promo Songs About Jane became a top 5 smash album.  Perhaps the reason I never bought it was She Will Be Loved, a song that is overplayed on KDAT, certainly it has that milky Adam Levine falsetto that women love but the guys cringe when they hear it.  And This Love the other big hit  could make Hall and Oates jealous in a way.  In a wasteland that was 00 music, Songs About Jane is like Matchbox 20's first album was.  You may not like it much but it does earn its spot in music history.  It Won't Be Soon Before Long was more harder rocking but more schizophrenic due to no fewer than 4 producers working on it but still if I had to pick a Maroon 5 album to review that would be it.  Hands All Over featuring the hit Moves Like Jagger is where most of the hate comes from,  even Lady Antebellum duets on one number to which they embrace a country sound.  And they got Robert John Lange to produce it, the guy behind Def Leppard, his ex wife too although he made more sense being a producer of the 70s to Graham Parker and The Rumour, Mallard, and The Motors.  Reviews of that album shows the they were all over the place and tried to be too many things.  With the new album Overexposed, they go for Max Martin (Britney Spears)  and I'm sure they will sell a few copies of that.  But as for myself they never really topped The Fourth World........

 The epidemic today is the Singers that oversing.  You hear them on American Idol, you can blame Whitney Houston or Mariah Carey or Martinka or Celine Dion for the GRAND FINALE on the chorus of that GD Titanic song.  To which we call it the DONT YELL AT ME singers that when you hear them on the CCC owned stations everywhere.  Whitney Houston (RIP) first album back in 1985 pretty much set the tone of what to be but I actually listened to the second album just to impress some woman I was trying to date at that time and the duet with her mom was my favorite.  I wanna Dance With Somebody was the big hit and continues to be overplayed on KDAT.  Booze, drugs and Bobby Brown just about killed off that high end voice but I think her last couple albums had some worthwhile moments.

With Mariah Carey, she has nothing in her catalog that I ever want to hear.  And everybody knows if Chris Blackwell still owned  Island Records, she'd wouldn't be on that label.   Martinka had a 1989 hit with Toy Soldiers.  She was ahead of American Idol by about 20 years.  Less said the better for Celine Dion too.  I think Columbia marketed her as a new wave singer in the early 90s for a odd reason.  And she covered You Shook Me All Night Long (The Ac/dc song) which riled up the rock crowd.  But with My Heart Will Go On, is where the Don't Yell At Me term came into play, or maybe Miss Carey.

And the oversingers continue to be the big thing.  Fantasia for one, Carrie Underwood another and Jessie J more examples of Don't Yell At Me.  Underwood marketed as a boneified country singer is the most successful of the American Idol franchise but her new album 19 records has an eye for pop market.  And Underwood to me was more pop singer than actual country.  And her latest seems to have more autotuner as well, she really doesn't need autotuner, she's  a fine singer in her own right.  It's just that we don't need to hear her whole vocal range on one chorus line.   Jessie J comes across as a screamer and one of the worst kind.  Kids love it I guess but not the old folks. Fantasia just screeches.

There's a long line of Don't Yell At Me singers that have albums out, Kelly Clarkson, Jordin Sparks, Pink etc etc etc.  It would be fun to make fun of them all or comparing them to cat screeches or peeling tires on the pavements but here at Can't Review Them All Incorporated we just don't have the time nor money to really do that.  Time is too precious for that.