Tuesday 24 November 2009

Jay Sean - lightweight?


Jay Sean has been around for a while and is a hard-working, ambitious young star. He would have to be to try and crack America as a young British-Indian singer with no huge following outside the US (although his first album sold well in India) and what's more in that most competitive and American of genres: urban music. But blow me "down" (did you see what I did there?) he scored a US no 1 and has had a huge hit all over the world. His follow up single "Do you remember?" is my record of the week. See a short review on the site:
This Week's Best New Pop Song
But despite the boy's huge success (and this catchy, lively single will feed that believe me) some people are a bit sniffy. Looking at R&B fansites before Down made it big in the US there were comments like "nothing spectacular" and "going backwards" floating around. How wrong they were! I think the ambivalence comes from the usual source: the more dedicated, harcore urban fans who are a bit suspicious of anything very commercial or overtly pop which his stuff assuredly is. Down in particular has the melodic, slightly repetitive chorus and lacks the hard edge that a lot of his contemporaries have. Even his good looks seem to count against him and make him appear like a lightweight pretty boy.
My verdict - well I'm a pop fan and he's certainly delivering some catchy fare right now. Some of the hip hop competition is just repeating the gold chains/money/guns formula endlessly in a tuneless way (not to mention being sexist in a silly tittering little boys kind of way). Example: 5 star chick

To be fair this sort of stuff is from a different strand of urban music to Jay's contemporary R&B sounds but I think the public knows what it likes. Good luck to him I say and as he is the song-writer for most of his material that automatically gives him credibility in my eyes. And also he answers fans on Twitter directly - nice man.



My other blog: Spanish Insight featuring comments on Spanish residency and advice on starting a Spanish business

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