PureNRG

It seems that the world of CCM can’t go without a band of teen pop artists whose message is safe enough to be totally inoffensive and their music peppy enough to appeal to tweens and, well, not much of anyone else. For a while it was Jump5 before the members moved on to other things; now, in the midst of the rousing popularity of Miley Cyrus, the minds behind the marketing department of your local Christian record label have given us, PureNRG, and their new album, The Real Thing. The liner notes reveal that this band is actually stretching that descriptive term, as they do not appear to have had any hand in writing the songs, nor do they appear to play any instruments, but are more of a paid karaoke group.

The music is your standard, garden variety teen pop. Bland beat with a peppy melody and vague lyrics, except when being overly specific to the point of being painful. Take, “Radio,” which is, naturally, a single. It begs the listener to let the song play if they hear it on the radio, because love can make us one and everybody has a song to sing and such generically sappy sentiment. It’s the sort of song that one can imagine being written in five minutes and recorded just as quickly. Then there’s “Savior,” which is pretty generalized for the verses, but then the chorus gets painful with the repeated line, “Let me introduce you to Jesus.” It’s all well and good for a band to sing about their beliefs, but when personal lyrics are sacrificed in favor of heavy handed and blunt lyrics, it becomes hard to listen. If the band really wanted to reach non-Christians, a little more honesty and personal testimony would be more effective, instead of vague preaching. This repeats for every song, bland music, vague and clichéd lyrics, to the point where addressing the songs on an individual basis becomes a frustrating attempt to avoid repeating the same criticisms.

The problem here goes a bit deeper than just this particular album. It may, in fact, be a problem with the genre as a whole. Let’s face it, teen pop is filled with watered down lyrics that assume teens are stupid, bland pop beats that may get stuck in your head, but all kind of blend together after a while, and singers with pretty faces that lose some of their audience once they get older and start to behave like adults. Then the crowds will flock to a new teen sensation and the pattern starts all over again. In that respect, PureNRG, doesn’t overcome the comparisons to Jump5, who were the last big teen pop band from the CCM world before they broke up and moved on to other things. They were preceded by Plus One, who were there to cash in on the boy band craze before they decided to take creative control and show they did have real talent.

As it is, PureNRG fails to show that they have any creative, or even any, ideas of their own. Their songs were all written by other people with nothing coming across as personal or sincere. As mentioned earlier, it very much sounds like they were paid to sing karaoke for a bunch of songs they don’t believe in. Thus, this album can’t really be recommended to anyone. A quality teen pop album may come from a Christian artist, but this is not it.

Tagged as: pureNRG, The Real Thing

↓ 2 comments

#1 Aaron on November 14th, 2009 at 6:34 am

HAHAHAHAHA!

#2 GRACE S CARTWRIGHT on November 24th, 2009 at 10:28 pm

i have to agree…

Does it Resonate with you?

Name (required)

Email (will not be published) (required)

URL