Kendall Payne

KENDALL PAYNE
"JORDAN'S SISTER"
(Capitol, 1999)


Ten years before "Glee", co-creator Ryan Murphy started out in television with "Popular", an hour-long comedy-drama, also set in high-school and with a similarly larger-than-life style, that ran for two years on the WB network. Chosen for the theme song to the series was the track "Supermodels" from Kendall Payne's debut album "Jordan's Sister". It was the perfect choice: a pointed commentary on body image versus self-worth, a struggle that the majority of teenagers go through at some point, and one of the ongoing themes of the entire series. I loved the show and its theme song so much, that I decided it was worth giving the album a try.

For a debut album by a nineteen-year-old, "Jordan's Sister" is a remarkably mature work, and sees Kendall Payne following in the finest singer-songwriter tradition of her contemporaries like Paula Cole, Joan Osborne, and Sheryl Crow. Sure, she's got an assist from veteran, award-winning producer Ron Aniello, but listening to this album, one can easily get the impression that she probably didn't need his help. Just check out the tuneful, upbeat tracks "Hollywood", "Closer To Myself", and "It's Not The Time", or the beautiful, delicate ballads like "Honest", "On My Bones", and "Wonderland".

The album may not be perfect -- her lyrics are often straightforward instead of subtle, and can therefore tend to seem out-of-place alongside such keenly composed melodies -- and her strong religious faith occasionally forces its way into the songs, and I much prefer my music to stay cleanly secular -- but the songs as a whole are catchy and enjoyable enough that I can look past these arguable shortcomings. This was Ms. Payne's only major-label release, but she's kept recording on independent labels since then, her fourth and most recent album appearing in 2009.

Buy it digitally on iTunes
Buy it on CD from Amazon

Welcome To The 24th Century

Holy crap! Holy crap! Did you know about this? I didn't until yesterday! Holy crap!! If I'd known about this earlier, I wouldn't have bought the last dozen or so CDs I did buy (well, not necessarily the last consecutive dozen, but a dozen) and would have saved up for this instead! But I still bought it anyway, 'cause I just gotta have it. Seriously, I honestly don't know how I would be able to go on living without having this in my possession as soon as humanly possible. Want to know what it is? Maybe you'd better sit down, 'cause I myself had a geek-out on a transphasic level when I found out about this.

It's a limited-edition box set of not four, not six ... no, not even eight ... no, keep going ... would you believe a whopping 14 -- yes -- FOURTEEN CDs jam-packed with never-before-released music from dozens of episodes of "Star Trek: The Next Generation"! Devoted solely to the work of Ron Jones, who traded off scoring duties with Dennis McCarthy through the first four seasons of "TNG", "Star Trek: The Next Generation -- The Ron Jones Project" includes nearly every note written and recorded for 42 of the series' first 94 episodes (the score for "The Best of Both Worlds" two-parter is already available on the GNP Crescendo label, so just some bonus tracks from it are included here) plus numerous outtakes, as well as a disc devoted to his work for a pair of "Trek" video games released later.

The panicked evacuation of the Enterprise in "11001001" ... the tearful farewell of Tasha Yar in "Skin of Evil" ... the appearance of the Romulans in "The Neutral Zone" ... Riker's escape from the Mintakans in "Who Watches The Watchers" ... the terrorist attack on the ship in "The High Ground" ... Lal's tragic demise in "The Offspring" ... the perilous journey across the arid wasteland in "Final Mission" ... they're all cues that I've been waiting 20 years to hear unobscured by dialogue and sound effects, and now's my chance! With this doozy of a package being limited to a production run of just 5,000, I couldn't waste any time in seizing the opportunity to add it to my collection, since the price is certain to only start going up on the aftermarket.

Widely regarded as the best composer that "Star Trek: The Next Generation" ever had, Ron Jones was known for delivering sweeping, attention-grabbing, feature-film-worthy scores for countless episodes. The problem was that "TNG"'s producers didn't want attention-grabbing music; they wanted the episodes' scores to lay quietly in the background. So after almost four full years of flying in the face of the producers' demands, Jones was fired and replaced by Jay Chattaway (quite a dandy composer in his own right, to give credit where it's due). But I always thought the "Trek" producers were not only making their episodes just a bit less memorable by taming down the music, but they were also forsaking a perfectly good merchandising outlet. Fans have been clamoring for Ron Jones' scores to be commercially available for years, and I have to wonder how many CD sales they missed out on by missing that opportunity and never licensing retail releases until all these years later.

If you can't live without it, like I couldn't, this incomparably amazing Trek-a-thon of music will set you back a healthy $150 (plus shipping), but at 14 CDs that ends up coming out to less than $11 per disc, which is a great price, especially for something that's a limited-edition collectible like this. It's available for purchase now at SAE and at Intrada, and further information is available from the Film Score Monthly website (and thanks to them for the links to the audio clips!). A friend of mine has all but challenged me to bundle it up in giftwrap when it arrives and not open it until Christmas morning ... but that's gonna be a really tough test of my will.

A. J. McLean

A. J. McLEAN
"HAVE IT ALL"
(Avex/Japan, 2010)


As far as his image and appearance are concerned, I never cared much for A. J. McLean, but I've always thought he had one of the best voices out of all the Backstreet Boys. So I was understandably pleased when I found out that he had released a solo album while I wasn't looking, and I didn't waste a whole lot of time in getting around to buying myself a copy.

By and large, A. J. McLean's solo debut sticks fairly close to the core Backstreet Boys sound: a mix of sweeping pop balladry ("London", "I Hate It When You're Gone") and energetic electro-tinged blue-eyed R&B ("Teenage Wildlife", "What It Do"), with a bit more of a leaning toward the latter. But at the same time, he does put just enough of his own mark on this set to make it unique. A. J. gets his Prince on with "Gorgeous", puts out a heartwrenching piano ballad on "Sincerely Yours", lays down a first-class Motown groove with "Love Crazy", and gives an entertaining try at a cross between Billy Joel and Gavin deGraw on the cheeky "I Quit".

As if that isn't enough, this album is a fine showcase of A. J.'s songwriting talents, since there isn't a song on it that he didn't have a hand in -- and, interestingly, two were co-written with one-time rival boyband singer-turned-solo-artist (and fellow two-initials-for-a-first-name guy) J. C. Chasez. I am a bit puzzled as to why this album wasn't released in the U.S., since I would have thought the domestic BSB audience is still strong enough to support one more of its members' side projects. But at any rate, with a debut this good, I sure hope this isn't the last we hear from a solo A. J.

Buy it on CD from Amazon

The Track 4 Hypothesis

Allow me to introduce you to "The Track 4 Hypothesis". A friend of mine once told me that, when he browses or shops for music, he pays particular attention to the fourth song of an album when checking out audio clips. It seems to have been a reliable gauge for him; a good track 4 bodes well for the rest of the disc. Ever since he shared this strategy with me, I've been tempted to put it to the test ... and now, some two years later, I've finally remembered to.

As it turns out, it's not an entirely half-baked theory. The other evening I perused my CD collection, surveying quite a few of my favorite albums and several other titles at random, to see just which songs lay in that normally unremarkable position in the track list. Many of the ones I found were more-or-less representative of the albums they're on, but I was pleasantly surprised to see how many favorite songs of mine just happen to reside on track 4. Among the most noteworthy, in no particular order:

• "Everything We Are", on The Shore's self-titled album
• "Boy Meets Girl", from Bleu's album "A Watched Pot"
• "Racing", Erik Faber's duet with Marte Wulff on his album "Passages"
• "Don't Say Sarah", that scrumptiously Hall-&-Oates-y tune on Wave's album "State of Mind"
• "Ghosts In My Machine", from Annie Lennox's album "Songs of Mass Destruction"
• "I Gotta Move", on Ben Kweller's self-titled album
• "Over You", by Matt Wertz on his album "Everything In Between"
• "It's Gotta Be You", that should-have-been-a-single on Backstreet Boys' opus "Millennium"
• "You Make Me", one of my all-time favorite "Weird Al" Yankovic tracks from his "Even Worse" album
• "That Girl", perhaps the best song on McFly's debut "Room On The 3rd Floor"

There are more, but I figure ten examples was more than enough. (I could have listed Ben Lee's "Catch My Disease" off his album "Awake Is The New Sleep", but since nearly every song on that album is great, finding a good one on track 4 was pretty-much a given.)

Of course, every rule has its exceptions, so there were a few albums I came across from which I can remember most of the songs, but in which case track 4 ended up being one of the forgettable ones (but not necessarily one of the worst), such as:

• "Tail of the Sun", on Stroke 9's album "Nasty Little Thoughts"
• "Kettle's On", from The Feeling's debut album "Twelve Stops And Home"
• "Save The Day", on Train's album "My Private Nation"

And then there were the ones that are memorable, but only for how unimpressive they were compared to the brilliance of the rest of the album:

• "Hollywood's Not America", from Ferras' album "Aliens & Rainbows"
• "Curly's Train", one of the less-appealing George Huntley penned songs by The Connells from their album "Still Life"
• "I'll Sue Ya", "Weird Al" Yankovic's bland nu-metal style parody on his album "Straight Outta Lynwood"
• "Just Got Paid", one of the duller gems (and one of two covers) on NSYNC's tour-de-force "No Strings Attached"

... and I've saved for last the most stunning example of all ...

• "Always In My Heart", the least impressive track by far on my favorite album ever, The Moffatts' "Submodalities"

So, the conclusion I've reached is that my friend's theory is pretty sound (no pun intended), as the average or outstanding examples seem to significantly outweigh the bad. I'm not sure if it'll change my shopping habits or not -- I usually take the time to sample as many sound clips of an album as I can before making a decision on whether or not to buy a title -- but I might end up paying a bit more attention to what's on track 4 than I used to.