New CD brings Justin Bieber's former girlfriend her first Top 10 single, 'Come & Get It'
DIEGO UCHITELGossips recently reported that Justin Bieber banned the playing of all songs by on-again/off-again girlfriend Selena Gomez in his presence.
If true, that edict will soon be hard to enforce.
Gomez's new album has hit written all over it, not because its particularly great, but because it's uncommonly craven.
"Stars Dance" - which has already ushered in Gomez's first Top 10 single ("Come & Get It") - offers a virtual master course in how to nick the styles of as many other pop stars as possible, all while skirting the laws of copyright infringement.
The opening cut, "Birthday," has the bratty sense of entitlement, flagrant delivery and braying hook of Icona Pop's smash "I Love It." "Slow Down" employs a questioning vocal tic, airlifted from Rihanna hits like "Diamonds," while "Like a Champion" finds this apple-cheeked Texan impersonating a RiRi-style island girl, complete with a transfixingly counterfeit patois.
The coattail-riding doesn't end there. In the title track, Gomez mimics Ke$ha's trick of pronouncing hard R's in the title phase to create a hook, while in "B.E.A.T." she gamely references Britney's bent for baby talk.
As a commercial strategy, this isn't bad - especially since Gomez has never given any sign of having a musical style of her own. Her previous three CDs were each co-credited to a band called the Scene. But the "band" never sounded like more than studio functionaries, doing the bidding of a controlling producer. For "Stars Dance," her first official solo CD, Gomez has kept the Scene's bent for dance-pop, only to let her producers hone its cliches to a fare-thee-well.
The songs feature the requisite stabs of synth, dispensed as predictably as the Skrillex-influenced dubstep breakdowns. There's even a late-to-the-party bit of Bollywood tossed into the "Come & Get It" hit. The songs also feature a frisson of sex previously absent from this good-girl singer's work.
Luckily for her, Gomez's writer and producers have aped other stars' tricks gamely enough to create a pretty good time. It helps that Gomez boasts a far richer voice than her idols, Britney, J.Lo and Janet. Then again, so does a chipmunk.
Gomez also drums up interest by making several Bieber allusions. In "Forget Forever," she talks of a love meant to "rule the world" that all went wrong. And before the only song that approaches a ballad, "Love Will Remember," she includes a voicemail from a former flame some say sounds a lot like - guess who?
Back stories like this will help. But gossip isn't Gomez's best weapon. Mimicry is.
jfarber@nydailynews.com
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