Have you ever felt like you can do anything you want? Like the whole world is your oyster, and you’re ready to strike out into a world where anything can happen? So has Adam Young, who goes by the pseudonym Owl City, and apparently he’s felt like that every moment of his life because each of his songs, despite their disparate names, are all about how you can do anything.
It’s easy to get tired of metal bands screaming about politics and folk music crying in a corner about their lost love, so perhaps this form of pop-electronica’s new calling card is reaching your dreams. However, that doesn’t make it any less annoying.
It’s a small complaint to file, but after a while the lyrics get intensely boring and tedious. In fact, some of the songwriting is downright laughable: in the song “I’m Coming After You,” he rhymes the word “out” with “hideout.”
Of course, while the lyricism might fall flat, it’s hard to argue with a really catchy melody, and there isn’t anything so frustratingly memorable as an Owl City song. It’s easy to not enjoy his music, but that doesn’t keep the “Good Time” opening notes out of your head. Young’s real skill seems to be in the non-vocal part of songwriting. If he played his way into the industry as a straight electronica artist and not include his wimpy-sounding, Disney-music-video-wannabe lyrics, then he could strike into a really loyal fanbase.
Instead he made a song called “Speed of Love.”
For all of the album’s faults, it does have a saving grace: its first song, “Dreams And Disasters,” is almost criminally catchy. It has a simple chorus that’s intensely singable and a really great drop to the meat of the song that just combines to make it a first track that really puts the rest of the album to shame. It’s easy to get too high an opinion of Young’s entire album if you only listen to the first track. Compared to the other 10 tracks of the album, “Dreams And Disasters” is a diamond in micah. Is the micah worth something? Sure, but the diamond makes it nothing in comparison.
The album isn’t particularly bad; it’s just not interesting. It doesn’t hold anything that really could affect a person. Aside from its first track, it’s not notable. I can’t see it going down in history as anything other than “the album that ‘Dreams and Disasters’ was on.” Some albums are horrible, some albums are fantastic, some are mediocre; and this one has ten tracks that shoot for mediocre like some people shoot for the Olympics. This is not an album for anyone to buy in its entirety unless you’re truly committed listening to music that people listen to when they cry in front of their ex girlfriend’s house every night.
