February 8, 2010 by Bella @ 5:57 pm | Comments (0)
Is Nick Jonas still aiming his act at the Jonas Brothers’ target teen-’n'-tween audience… or at their parents? That’s the question you might ask after hearing the youngest JoBro’s first solo album, Who I Am. (”Solo” may or may not need an asterisk next to it, since the billing for this album and tour goes to a group name, Nick Jonas & the Administration.) You may recall the famous blues lyric “The men don’t know, but the little girls understand.” Nick is in such a consciously throwback vein, you might want to reverse that famous equation back, to account for the music’s boomer-friendliness: The little girls may not know, but their middle-aged aunties and uncles will understand.
And what there is to understand is this: Nick Jonas is reinventing himself, at the advanced age of seventeen and a half years old, as a soul man. The Jonases have always been a little bit retro for contemporary teen idols, mind you, but this is a slightly different, even more retro brand of pop revivalism. On the brother group’s best album, 2008’s A Little Bit Longer, they had perfected the frantic power-pop style of the late ’70s and early ’80s, and seemed on the verge of becoming a more earnest Cheap Trick for modern youth. But they more or less abandoned that style on their last album, and it wasn’t quite clear what Nick, the creative mastermind of the trio, was going for. Now it’s clear: He wants to revert back past late ’70s new wave to early ’70s pop-R&B. What a difference a few years make, when you’re time-traveling to the recent (but still before you were born) past, right?
Jonas has said repeatedly that he’s a huge Elvis Costello fan, and he did a joint Q&A with Costello in Rolling Stone a couple of years ago. And when it came time to explain the “…& the Administation” name he chose for his backup band, he referred to his fondness for Elvis Costello & the Attractions. So I had some hope he might be trying to make this side project a stab at making an adolescent My Disney-Radio-Ready Aim is True. But taste in ampersand-group names aside, it turns out that Who I Am couldn’t rely any less on his Costelloian instincts. He’s relying on another guy with glasses that he’s hooked up with before: Stevie.
Yes, young Nick is determined to make his wonder years sound like his Wonder years.
Not that he’s aping just one guy or even just one style, but the era he wants to evoke is unmistakable. The album opens with “Rose Garden,” the tale of a girl who grew up in tough circumstances, the toughness designated by… wah-wah guitar! By the third track, “Olive & an Arrow,” it’s clear we will be in for heaping doses of Wurlitzer organ and little or no synthesizer. He does actually wait till track 8, “State of Emergency,” to introduce what sounds distinctly like a Stevie-esque clavinet, although the earlier “Last Time Around,” which is based around funk guitar instead of keyboards, has a very Wonder-struck vocal hook. “In the End” is a very subdued, bluesy ballad that has Nick calling out “Take it, Tommy” to keyboard player Tommy Barbarella, and you won’t be surprised to know that the piano solo that follows is (to these ears) all about the Fender Rhodes. Several of the players are alumni of Prince’s old bands, so it’s surprising that Jonas doesn’t make much effort to cop from the man from Minneapolis–instrumentally, that is. Vocally, his falsetto leaps and occasional yowlings are right out of the Purple Handbook.
How deeply felt is all this? Emotionally, Jonas is on about his hundredth song about being betrayed by some young femme fatale, so either he has had an active love life full of opportunists, or he is still just milking one very bad third-grade experience. It doesn’t all sound like schoolboy conjecture, though: When he sings “I want someone to love me, for who I am,” in the title song and first single, it seems pretty clear he’s been loved for who he isn’t at some point or another, and the stricken-dead sentiments of “Vesper’s Goodbye,” although a little drama-queen-ish, convince me that whatever else he is borrowing from his elders on this album, it’s not somebody else’s broken heart. The closing number, “Stronger (Back on the Ground),” moves beyond the tropes of romantic torture into possible gospel territory.
And musically? I’ve always hated to grade on the age curve, because there are enough young people doing good work that “pretty good for a teenager” doesn’t cut it anymore. (And I’ve maintained that A Little Bit Longer held up just fine against the work of much more veteran power-pop bands.) Yet Jonas is leaping into such mature styles here that I am inclined to cut him a bit of a break here, when the results are only moderately and not quite overwhelmingly successful. If a 30- or 45-year-old had made this record, there are things we would like about it and things we’d consider hackneyed. But a 17-year-old? Come on.
We’ve already come to think of Jonas as a veteran, since the Jonases had four studio albums before this. But that shouldn’t get in the way of some astonishment that a fellow of this age even has these instincts, let alone will follow them–possibly to his own commercial detriment, as these sounds may feel a little peculiar to the “Party in the USA”-trained ear. Natural talent aside, Jonas deserves credit for being smart enough to rip off the past, and also smart enough to do it in subtle enough ways that the references and influences won’t be quite so blatant as I’ve made them sound.
The danger for young master Jonas is that, as seriously as he takes music, he’s on a career carousel that will encourage him to indulge himself as a multi-hyphenate at the cost of being an artist. He’s spoken of squeezing this album in during a two-week break last year–which makes you want to grade it even higher on the curve, but also makes you wonder what he could have done if he’d devoted more time to the project. He put the band on the back album sleeve, to sell it as a true group project, but by his own admission only met them as they were going into the studio. Something may have to be sacrificed if he really wants to emulate his musical heroes.
(That said, I’m hesitant to suggest he call off his acting career, because JONAS, the Disney Channel sitcom, is actually a pretty funny series. And miraculously, they even figured out what to do on it with Nick’s non-smiling, earnest persona, versus his brothers’ comedic goofiness… which was: have fun with and play off that very too-soulful-for-this-world quality.)
It’s always tempting to compare the teen idols of today with the ones of yesteryear, particularly among those who think they’re doing today’s young stars a favor by pointing out that Svengali-driven fluff has always been among us. And certainly there are a lot of terrific pop records being made by Disney-derived singers like Miley, Demi and Serena, who don’t have strong artistic temperaments and are only as good as their collaborators, which is often very good indeed and sometimes not so.
But what we do have now that we didn’t in the Bobby Sherman era is a couple of teen auteurs, in the form of Nick Jonas and Taylor Swift. (Taylor just graduated from that category by turning 20, but she’s counted for the last four years.) These two will be around the music scene in some capacity for the next couple of decades whether you like it or not. I suggest older music listeners opt for the former, because their combination of DIY career independence and reliance on solid musical traditions bodes well for the future, in a time when there aren’t always many encouraging signs. One young man or woman alone does not the future of music make, but listening to Who I Am, I’m again encouraged to believe that the kids are all right, after all.
Joe Jonas pushes up the rim of his glasses as he walks and talks with a few pals after dining at Umami Burger on Super Bowl Sunday (February 7) in Los Feliz, Calif.
We’re not sure which team the 20-year-old musician was rooting for, but according to his tweets, he must’ve enjoyed the halftime show. Joe shared, “The Who’s mullet drummer.. Yes.”
During the upcoming week, Joe and BFF Demi Lovato will be taking over Downtown Disney in Disney World for a private concert.
Basically, because all the albums are Nick J related ; )
HQ – Los Angeles, CA – 01/26 – Credit JonasWorld
HQ – Nick’s interview at the Wiltern – 01/28 – Credit JonasWorld
HQ – Nick & Selena arriving at the Jim Henson Studio – 02/01 – Credit JonasWorld
HQ – Nick grabbing a bite outside of his house – 02/02 – Credit JonasWorld
HQ – Nick Selena Joe JT have dinner at Phillipe Chow – 02/02 – Credit JonasWorld
HQ – Nick greets fans after Jimmy Kimmel appearance – 02/03 – Credit JonasWorld
Re-Doing Fan Center.
February 7, 2010 by Bella @ 9:46 pm | Comments (9)
If you noticed we have a fan center on the site. The fan center includes aim icons, avatars, wallpapers and blends. Most of the stuff that we have in the fan center is very old and we want to update it! I for one am not good at any type of graphic design! So we are looking for a visitor or two that would be willing and qualified to make these! We want to be 100% fair while choosing someone so we have an application that we want you all to fill out when applying, which is located below!
Please email your application along with sample work to JonasWorld.Org@Gmail.Com, We are accepting applications from anyone over the age of 13. Can’t wait to see all your work! If you have any questions please feel free to email us with those as well!
This performance is off the bonus DVD that is sold at target so if you have not picked up nick’s album head out to Target and you will bew able to watch all the performance from the DVD.
This is a reminder post to keep voting for Nick on VH1’s Top 20 Countdown. He fell to number 12 this week and it’s important that every fan takes the time to vote for him. We really want to see Nick reach the top spot! So take a few minutes every day and head over to VH1.com and vote.
You can go directly to the voting by clicking HERE.
Diane Birch just ended a tour with hugely popular Nick Jonas and she lived to tell the tale to People mag. Check out what the 27-year-old singer-songwriter had to say:
On Nick’s stage presence: “The first thing that really surprised me was how much of a leader and how much of a showman he was onstage. [He's actually] very quiet and serious. We spent a lot of time one day in his dressing room just playing around. I was playing keyboard and he was playing guitar and we were just trying to work out something, and that was pretty fun.”
On Joe Jonas being a hugger: “We went to say goodbye and my boyfriend went to shake his hand and Joe gave him a hug. [It was] kind of awkward, and Joe was like, ‘We’re a hugging kind of family.’ It was really cute. Every time I saw them they were hugging and just really friendly.”
On meeting Selena Gomez: “She seemed really cool. I think she’s pretty close to the family.”
On Nick’s insane but sweet fans: “[It's] similar to Beatlemania. I was really surprised at the craziness of the fans and how insane they are – and how genuinely sweet. They would spend hours in the freezing cold just to catch a glimpse of him.”
Joe Jonas’ stint on Brothers & Sisters has been cut short. Very short. As in, it’s not happening.
Sources confirm to me exclusively that plans for the singer to guest star as a young version of Balthazar Getty’s Tommy have fallen through. Make It or Break It’s Cody Longo has been tapped to replace him.
What happened? A source close to the show says Jonas “had a scheduling conflict.”
Longo will play a 16-year-old Tommy in the drama’s upcoming two-hour flashback-heavy episode. As exec producer David Marshall Grant recently told me, the special ep will take viewers back to three different time periods and expose a “shocking and transformative” secret about the Walker family.
Touring with Nick Jonas was an eye-opening experience for Diane Birch.
Thanks to the teen idol’s rabid fans, the retro-pop singer-songwriter, 27, says she witnessed something “similar to Beatlemania” while on the road with Jonas, 17, earlier this year.
“I was really surprised at the craziness of the fans and how insane they are – and how genuinely sweet,” says the retro-pop singer-songwriter, 27, whose song “Valentino” is on the movie soundtrack to the upcoming Valentine’s Day. “They would spend hours in the freezing cold just to catch a glimpse of him.”
Birch logged some indoor quality with Jonas, whom she calls “super normal and super sweet.” And also very mature: “The first thing that really surprised me was how much of a leader and how much of a showman he was onstage,” she tells PEOPLE. Offstage, she says, he’s “very quiet and serious.”
When not performing, the pair swapped “funny stories” during lunch breaks and even worked on a duet. “We spent a lot of time one day in his dressing room just playing around. I was playing keyboard and he was playing guitar and we were just trying to work out something, and that was pretty fun,” she recalls.
Selena Gomez Visits Backstage
Another highlight? Meeting fellow Jonas Brothers Joe, 20, and Kevin, 22, who came to one of their New York City shows. “They were so nice and down-to-earth,” she says. “To just see how normal they are, it was really cool.”
Birch also learned about a Jonas family tradition when Joe gave her boyfriend, art director and model Ariel Stark-Benz, a backstage embrace.
“We went to say goodbye and my boyfriend went to shake his hand and Joe gave him a hug. [It was] kind of awkward, and Joe was like, ‘We’re a hugging kind of family.’ It was really cute. Every time I saw them they were hugging and just really friendly.”
Nick’s brothers weren’t the only famous faces to pop up backstage.
Selena Gomez, Nick’s one-time – and rumored to be current – girlfriend “was there part of the time,” reveals Birch. “She seemed really cool. I think she’s pretty close to the family.”
Even though the tour with Jonas has ended, Birch hopes to hit the road again, this time to Europe to promote her CD Bible Belt.
Jonas, meanwhile, just released Who I Am, his first album with Nick Jonas & The Administration.
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