Here’s the latest offering from that ever growing fraternity of American Idol nominees. Produced by Clive Davis, The Real Thing is pretty disposable and predictable. According to his bio, “he has music in his blood”. That may be true, but how can a guy that grew up listening to the Rolling Stones be this boring? Another oddity from the Bo Bice Bio: though he has been playing guitar since age nine, when his parents bought him a brand new Telecaster, Bo only plays guitar on one track of The Real Thing and he only co-wrote two of the songs. Hmmm.
Pretty formulaic, there’s a little bit of Matchbox 20 here, a little bit of Nickelback there (wait, one of the guys from Nickelback co-wrote some of the songs!!) I just don’t think that anyone over 20 years old will dig this. That being said, I’m sure that a couple of these songs will show up in a Disney movie somewhere in the near future.
This kind of stuff is the kind of thing that really makes me lose my faith in music. Every time I hear something by a cool new band and tell my fellow boomers that this generation still has talent, I hear something like this. Right down the line from the trendy website with the hunky promo picture (featuring just the correct amount of chest and facial hair) I want to wrap some closed cell foam around my forehead and bang it against the nearest wall. Just when I thought Bon Jovi was dead, he’s been reincarnated again.
– Jeff Dorgay
