It has been a rough day here in the administrative offices of
\n“The Daily Vault” and the Pierce Memorial Archives. All day long,
\nI’ve been living on Pepto-Bismol and Necco wafers, and I’ve been
\nconfined to the couch in my office, with cold compresses on my head
\nand my Grateful Dead “dancing bears” comforter wrapped around me
\ntight.<\/p>\n
The flu, you ask? Nope, worse… I made the mistake of listening
\nto the latest greatest hits compilation from New Kids On The Block.
\nMay God have mercy on me.<\/p>\n
To flocks of pre-pubescent girls in the mid- to late-’80s, New
\nKids On The Block – Jon Knight, Jordan Knight, Joe McIntyre, Donnie
\nWahlberg and Danny Wood – were to die for. Their music – that
\ngeneration’s Jackson 5 (and that’s not doing the Jackson 5 justice)
\n– went straight to the top of the charts, and their faces lined
\nmany a bedroom wall. Even my wife has one or two New Kids On The
\nBlock tapes in her collection. (But, hey, I married her
\nanyway.)<\/p>\n
Granted, I entered into this album with a historical mindset
\nagainst the Boston quintet. After all, when they were in their
\nprime, I was happily banging my head to Motorhead and AC\/DC, and
\ndidn’t want to listen to any other form of music other than hard
\nrock or classic rock. But one would think, now that I’m approaching
\n30, that I could objectively sit down for one hour and listen to 14
\nsongs.<\/p>\n
I tried, I swear I did. But kicking things off with “Step By
\nStep,” a song that doesn’t know whether it wants to be a dance
\ntrack or a decent vocal piece, is not a sign of good things to
\ncome… and I knew I was in for a long day at the CD player.<\/p>\n
Of course, if you happened to like any of New Kids On The
\nBlock’s songs at any time in their career, then anything negative I
\nsay isn’t going to convince you that you’re wrong. Hey – won’t hurt
\nmy feelings. If you get off on the falsetto of songs like “I’ll Be
\nLoving You (Forever)” – I swear, I cringed in pain, ’cause that
\nhigh-pitch sounded like someone got their manhood caught in a vise
\n– or the pseudo-toughness of “Hangin’ Tough”, then go for it.<\/p>\n
For the rest of us, one listen to
\nGreatest Hits<\/i> will show New Kids On The Block to be a
\ncookie-cutter studio band, backed by terrible synthesized
\ninstrumentation. I mean, at least the Jackson 5 (hell, Hanson, for
\nthat matter) played their own instruments in the band. The overall
\nsound to this album is sterile and manufactured.<\/p>\n
And I don’t care that they were the first teen group that hit
\nthe top 10 with five singles from the same album. I don’t care if
\nHangin’ Tough<\/i> was on the charts for over two years. Just
\nbecause it sells doesn’t make it any less crap.<\/p>\n
If anything good came from the New Kids saga, it’s that it
\ntaught teen bands what not to do. Groups like Hanson, Backstreet
\nBoys and N*Sync all show marked improvement over what New Kids On
\nThe Block put out on the market. There’s more substance to the
\nmusic – even if the synthesizers are still overused.<\/p>\n
It’s enough to make you feel faint – and
\nGreatest Hits<\/i>, except for the rabidly devoted fans, is not
\nan album for the faint of heart or those who like their pop pure. I
\nknow I’m going to get flame mail for this review – that’s fine,
\n’cause I know in my heart I based this review on the technical
\nquality of the music and the performances, and not what I thought
\nof the band as a freshman in college.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27501,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[6920],"rating":[5620],"class_list":["post-38875","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-new-kids-on-the-block","rating-rating-f"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38875"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38875\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38875"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=38875"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=38875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}