This is a review of the album soundtrack to the film, 'Bratz'. The film - according to the press release - is “a story that touches upon teenage life and friendship lost and found”. The album soundtrack - according to me - is “the sonic equivalent of having your head wrapped in candy floss and then thrashed repeatedly with a bike pump”.
We kick off with a track called 'Rock Star' by a group called Prima J. While the song masquerades as an electronic, pre-pubescent Grrrl Power anthem, the lyrics – upon closer examination – represent a neatly potted history of serious mental illness. The below is taken, line-by-line, from the first verse:
“So tell me what you think you're looking at?” (Paranoia)
“So I think I'm Queen Elizabeth” (Demented Schizophrenia)
“Now I'm stuck inside your memory” (Potentially Psychopathic Tendencies)
“That's why it's so hard to get rid of me” (Social Anxiety Disorder/Manic Depression)
“I'm incredible, so unforgettable, so no-one can take my place” (Delusions of Grandeur)
“I'm unbreakable, highly flammable, so, girl, get out my face” (Explosive Temper)
“It ain't my fault the boys are following” (Nymphomania)
“Cos I make walking look like modelling” (General Stupidity)
Track 2 features Daechelle – a gap-toothed micro-bint of questionable ethnic background – claiming that she “never want(s) to be predictable” over a slice of soulless RnB so generic it sounds like it was produced by a computer full of Love Hearts.
Track 3 is called 'Love Is Wicked'. That's all that needs to be said about track 3.
Track 6 sees the album's first male appearance in the form a band called NLT. I use the word 'male' in the loosest possible sense, of course, since it is quite clear that no member of NLT was actually born with a penis. 'Heartburn' – the semen-drenched robo-ballad they vomit forth here – has all the soul of an Egg McMuffin, and makes Daniel Bedingfield sound like Tom Waits.
Hip Hop's resident Judas Iscariots, The Black Eyed Peas, make a brief and wholly unwelcome cameo with 'Express Yourself'; a song that sees them carving out what little dignity they had left and leaving it to suffocate under a flapping heap of diseased herring.
Aside from being the musical equivalent of the stinging headache you get when you drink a Slush Puppy too fast, the Bratz Soundtrack is genuinely the most horrifically self-assured album I have ever heard. Every track is simply bursting with ill-founded arrogance; from Prima J's chest-thrusting and head-swelling above, to Chelsea Straub's diabolical 'It's All About Me', via Daechelle's ambiguous claim that she was 'born to do this' (a statement that is only becomes palatable if we take 'this' to mean 'endure phenomenal physical suffering').
To summarise then, please
– PLEASE – do not buy the Bratz Motion Picture Soundtrack. Thanks.
Rating: 0/5
Label: Geffen
Words: Tom Ellen
