Rebirth is incredible in that in its own sterile way, it delivers a great album of utterly depersonalised, ruthlessly realised pop music so polished it will be the envy of Mr Sheen.
After the disasters that have been the film Gigli and her relationship to Ben Afflick, Jennifer Lopez is in sore need of the sweet smell of success. Throw in the stinker that was her last album and the fizzled chemistry between her and Richard Gere in the flick Shall We Dance, and J-Lo is surrounding herself with so many turkeys that the people from Bernard Matthews are in danger of mounting a takeover bid.
Fortunately, with the ridiculously titled Rebirth, we have proof that Lopez Inc. is not about to fold its stall. Rarely, can we enjoy such a fabulously cynical album. The full industrial weight of Epic / BMG has swung into operation to protect its investment and produced an unfeasibly slick and ultra professional product.
So sinisterly ‘on the money’ is Jennifer’s fourth studio album, that you begin to wonder if the Jennifer Lopez Corporation (J – Lo Co) hasn’t abducted you and probed your subconscious.
“So you don’t like the name J-Lo? Sounds like a lightbulb? It’s gone. Oh, you don’t like her Latin American roots? She sounds like a Gloria Estefan wannabe? It’s gone. In spite of yourself, you want a thumping dance track with a car alarm going off?”
And so the relentless and irresistible ‘Get Right’ opens the album. This is the kind of track that eases into your subconscious like an eel slips into water. The slinky Eastern-sounding, ‘Step Into My World’ sees our gal “ooh’ing” and “ah’ing” as a breathless come-on merchant. “I need you to / Kiss on me” she whispers in a faintly ridiculous manner before promising an “odyssey of dreams”.
‘Cherry Pie’ is a ghetto-blinging slice of Princesque funk, which Jennifer’s squirrel-on-helium vocals cannot diminish.
Songs like ‘I Got You’ and ‘I Love’ are wispy wafts of gossamer-soft vocals, their harmonies lulling you into a trance like state where you might fail to notice that Lopez has failed to lay down anything other than back vocals.
Given her notorious inability (alongside those other emotion-free creatures, the Daleks) to ‘do’ stairs, you get the impression that much of this album might have been recorded on a second or third floor. It’s the only explanation for Jennifer’s lack of vocal presence in one track after another.
Rebirth ends with an unexpected and impressive power ballad, ‘(Can’t Believe) This Is Me’ with Lopez belting out, “I Feel I’m Lost in A Dream Between What Is and What Seems”. It’s almost a ‘mea culpa’ confession between the ‘what is’ of the Lopez single-ply vocal’s of her ill-judged duet with new hubby Marc Antony on the Grammies and the ‘what seems’ of the J-Lo voice that the best tweaks money can buy have produced for Rebirth.
There are industrial lasers that can’t slice as thin as Jennifer’s voice and yet here it is sounding extremely strong - this is musical airbrushing to the max.
Physicists say you can’t make something from nothing and yet to disprove that, we have an entire album whose lyrics would make a vacuum feel crowded. Even avoiding the inclination to self-refer to her tabloid self a la, “I’m still Jenny from the Block”, the lyrics have less substance than the swimsuit which J-Lo sports in the glossy accompanying artwork.
Rebirth is incredible in that in its own sterile way, it delivers a great album of utterly depersonalised, ruthlessly realised pop music so polished it will be the envy of Mr Sheen.
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