One of the best things about being friends with Money Mike is that you can discuss music with him and he never gets sick of it. More importantly, he rarely has an ego about his music knowledge even though he’s forgotten more about music than I’ll ever know. I’m sure we’ve been in some petty arguments, but never because he simply had to showcase his knowledge about something. Thus, we decided to take that style of conversation and turn it into a column. Here’s your first edition of Sound Dialogue where we’ll look at albums, topics, or whatever else we want to chat about music wise and give it to you here. This time, we tackle the New Kids On The Block’s comeback album, The Block.
GG: Why now? After 14 years, why did the New Kids On The Block come back now? What’s different about 2008 than say, 1998?
MM: Your guess is as good as mine, because it doesn’t really make sense. If they were looking for a hit or the quick money, they would have done it ten years ago when Backstreet & *NSYNC were popular. Then again, at this point in time, they have the whole pie for themselves.
I also think that enough time has passed that there’s a certain nostalgia for them. People don’t see them as a joke anymore.
Photo By Alan Light
GG: Do you think they fit into today’s pop music landscape? Is there a place for the New Kids? The whole guy group thing has pretty much died down unless your last name is Jonas.
MM: With the difference being that the Jonas Brothers actually play instruments. You know, the landscape is so wide open right now. It’s more of a production style that works as opposed to any particular kind of artist. So I guess that if they have the right production, they have as much of a chance as anyone, and it looks like that’s what they went after with this album.
GG: Speaking of the production, what did you think of it? They utilized many “hot” producers and one can argue that the music is actually overproduced.
MM: How about “very” overproduced? The album almost sounds robotic. The instrumentation is almost completely electronic and the singing is covered in a ton of effects. It’s not like these guys can’t sing. There wasn’t pro-tools and auto-tune in the Eighties.
GG: I want to get into the auto-tune stuff in a bit. But first, let’s talk about some of the songs. In my opinion, I think the best songs on the album are the ones in which they just sing in harmony with catchy hooks featuring pop style production that is simple and blends with the harmonies. For instance, “Single” with Ne-Yo isn’t a barn burner, but it’s the perfect song to reintroduce the New Kids. You mentioned the electronic instrumentation. One of my major complaints about the album is an over abundance of that style, and less of a smart “radio” style song in the same vein as “Single”. Why do you think they didn’t go more of that route?
MM: I don’t necessarily know that that’s the route Top 40 radio is in right now. I agree that the more melodic songs like “Single”, “2 in the Morning” and “Stare at You” are by far the best songs on the album, but I’m sure someone at the label convinced them that the sort of amelodic club bangers were the way to go.
GG: Do you think they’ve gone the right route single wise? “Summertime” didn’t seem to catch on, and really, there’s only one chance to make that first impression from a 14 year lay off. I loved the song myself, but it might not have been the big single to get people to perk their ears up. I really like “Single” as well, and if you can’t rise up on the charts with Ne-Yo, who can help you with that? Don’t say Chris Brown.
What did you think about the choice of the first two singles, and secondly, what do you think will be the third single?
MM: I think “Summertime” was the right look, and while it wasn’t a huge hit, it did hit the Top 40 and has been downloaded almost half a million times. I honestly don’t know that they’re capable of expanding beyond what their target demo initially was. I mean, it’s not like cats on the street are suddenly gonna switch off from Lil Wayne to New Kids on the Block.
