roheblius's Full Review: The Return by Ruben Studdard
Ruben Studdard was the winner of the second season of American Idol. It was a season in which he went head to head with Clay Aiken. Ruben was a favorite from the start and when it was all said and done, a possible force on the R&B music scene. His rookie album was released and it was mix of R&B and wannabe club music. I say wannabe because no DJ in his right mind was going to play Ruben alongside Fat Joe in the clubs. It didn't fit the persona he created on American Idol which was this soulful ballad singer. The album was a decent success, even though the single was an ode to apologizing in 2004 (Sorry 2004). And though we didn't get the updated version of being sorry in 2007, Ruben is back (he released an all gospel album as his second album) to trying to be what Gladys Knight thought he was. It's the supposed return of the velvet teddy bear.
Ruben is a hard artist to sell to today's pop music stylings of R&B music. He's a much better retro artist, singing old soulful tracks. When he tries to bring it to today from a lyrics and production standpoint, it's a failed attempt because you just can't buy him as a sexy and seductive singer. He has a fabulous voice, but it's not comparable to Luther Vandross, who he's usually compared to. Vandross' voice is boisterous effortless silk while Studdard's is more forced and lazy at times.
(Though he does a very good version of If Only For One Night, and it's the best song on the entire album.)
Do I think he can succeed in 2007? Yes. But in order to do so, he needs smart ballads that cater to his cuddly, charming, shy, nice guy image that he sold so well on American Idol.
But with songs like Change Me which sound fine, but really get him nowhere, he's just going to crumble under artists that sound just as good as he does, and are more genuine. I'm not sure I'm in the majority here, but I want to hear Ruben put women on pedestals, making music about love. But rather, we get this.
What if I talked about your face in the morning
Cause we know that you ain't cute in the morning
What If I criticized the way that you be eating
And when you sleeping, you be doing that heavy breathing
What if I was at or 'bout your house creeping
Change Me is just silly from a lyrical perspective. Produced by the Underdogs, it's fine, but nothing special. And for this album to be successful, he needed a home run first single. This one barely made it out of the infield.
The Return tries hard to make Ruben relevant with soulful ballads, but for the most part, they are all very similar and none of them really stand out. Our Story is one of the better ones, but it's more adult contemporary than straight up R&B. Make Ya Feel Beautiful has a nice hook and features Ruben sounding his best, but it just doesn't stand out. There's no magic to it. It's just a nice song.
Get U Loose is like a B-side song at best. For some reason I was thinking about this song and thought to myself, "Would Usher include this on his album?" and then thought no, that it wouldn't have even made the B-side on an Usher double disc.
The album isn't all boring ballads. While I hated many of the faster songs on his debut, What Tha Business Is isn't as horrible as the song title implies. Ruben hits a falsetto for some of the song and for the most part, it's just a mindless banger, which in today's music is pretty much par for the course. Ain't No Party is interesting in it's production with it's heavy dull beat and dreamy sequence in the background. But that's the only interesting part of the song. While this album is so much better put together than his debut, you'd wish that the maturity would've increased as well.
Probably the most telling song (and the song with the most possible pop clout) is Rather Not Know which is a simplistic, but fun slow tempo'd jam. It's about Ruben's fear of getting cheated on. The story follows Ruben's girl who he knows is cheating on him, but he'd rather just not know. This should've actually been his second single as it's the closest you get to what I'd expect to be the real Ruben Studdard.
The Return is one of those albums that grew on me as in the stuff that I thought originally was ok, became good, and the stuff that I originally thought was horrible, was just average. It's an album that isn't going to do him any favors in his career and it's already a commercial failure. Let's hope they learn for his next album. He definitely has some talent, but he's a hard one to place in the music scene. He can be guided. He just needs to find his way.
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