Fifth Harmony - 7/27


Fifth Harmony
7/27 (Deluxe)
2016
Spotify

These all girl pop groups seem to wain in popularity, every now and again coming on the scene, exploding, then falling apart under their own success and ego. When you think about it there really aren't to many girl groups left these days just as the boy band phenomenon continues to fade into obscurity and Vegas residencies. You can imagine with this kind of pressure what actually creating a decent album can mean. Fifth Harmony burst on to the scene after a run on The X-Factor and their debut album was released last year. The first thing you have to realize is everything about Fifth Harmony is highly controlled. Their outfits, their dance moves perhaps even their personalities to some extent so it is a given that the ladies had very little to no input on actually writing these tracks. With that in mind 7/27 really is not a bad album. It is catchy, modern and has plenty of female empowerment sing-a-longs to last a lifetime. What Fifth Harmony have managed to do since their debut however is find a real unified voice. Instead of being five singers being thrown together and hoping for the best a couple years on the group has really jelled and the music is the better for it. They still all have their own sound and don't totally come 100% together, but at this point it seems like they are getting there.

The hits are always going to be standouts on records like this, with hopes people play them over and over and maybe forget about some of the weaker tracks. "Write on Me" has real potential as a tropical house jam, but it's mostly wasted allowing it to just sort of hover around tropical and not fully dive in. Now let's talk about this "Deluxe" version of the album. It is 12 tracks, the normal length of a record, there is not some kind of distinguishing factor or exciting thing that separates the Deluxe version at all. The Deluxe version seems to be nothing more than a hope people will think this Deluxe and maybe pay a bit more for it. This is absolutely insane. Already to many artists use Deluxe versions to drive traffic to different streaming sites or re-sell the album, but this is just nuts. "All In My Head (Flex)" featuring Fetty Wap is a low point for both rapper and singers. The weak sudo reggae guitar line sounds like something a 10 year old would play in his first guitar classes. It pains me to say but so much of this album is so basic, and it's just the least in depth look at a genre. Despite the occasional earworm like "Work From Home" this album is just far to generic for anything except top 40 radio play.

4.0 out of 10

Comments

  1. I hope to see a review with the next album or Camila Cabello first album. Good review .

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