American Idle – Achin' Aiken – [Insert Pun]

Originally written for Realbuzz 

There’s something deliciously lame about Clay Aiken’s new album, On My Way Here. On all his previous outputs, Aiken’s milked his boyish, Pee-Wee-esque persona, happy to satisfy both the teenie-boppers and their wannabe moms. On this release, though, young Clayton is trying to mature. Sadly, it seems he’s playing dress-up in his father’s clothes, without realizing he’s just playing.

On songs like "Ashes," Aiken is full of angst, sadness, and remorse (lately this has become the standard emotional cocktail for young, disgruntled pop artists…perhaps it’s always been that way). Maybe it’s an unfortunate condition of having come up knowing nothing but the interior of the industry, but whatever emotions he has can only be expressed through the most commonplace clichés.

"Someone told me what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger," he leads off. Which sets him up for the reprise, "Now I can rise above the ashes."

But "Ashes" presents us only with general, widely relatable emotions. It’s not until the introspective "The Real Me" that Aiken really gets into his groove.

"Foolish heart/looks like we’re here again
the same old game of plastic smile/don’t let anybody in
hidin’ my heartache/will this glass house break?"

I haven’t done the investigation, but there’s no way this wasn’t ripped from the journal Aiken kept in junior high. Unless maybe Jewel helped him with his songwriting. The Chorus:

"You see the real me/hidin’ in my skin/broken from within"

Apparently The Real Him is a fourteen-year-old boy whose date to the spring dance has just rejected him. Now he’s looking in the mirror, of course.

Underlying each track is a predictably undulating progression: When the songs are loud and over-produced (which is often), Aiken is defiant and/or angry and/or triumphant; when the instrumentation dies away and we’re left with only his voice (which is also often), Aiken is morose and/or contemplative.

The guitars have been filtered through so many computers they sound like electrical currents; the drums have been softened and tweaked so they sound like guitars. Sure, Aiken’s got a good voice. But it’s so obviously manipulated that even this, which should be his strength, gets ruined. The term for magazine models is airbrushed; I’m not sure what it is for musical artists.

I guess what it comes down to is, Aiken is now professing sincerity, and yet his music hasn’t really changed at all. Before, at least, he was (outwardly) content to be a poster boy for the industry. Now it seems he wants to break away and become independent – if we’re to take his lyrics seriously at all, this is the message he’s sending – and yet, he is completely without the faculties to do so.