Jordin Sparks’ Now Begins, Um, Now

noah | August 24, 2007 10:30 am
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ARTIST: Jordin Sparks TITLE: “Tattoo” WEB DEBUT: Aug. 24, 2007

ONE-LISTEN VERDICT: The new single by the most recent American Idol winner opens with some “Umbrella”-like dirty keyboards, but those are quickly pushed to the background in favor of a midtempo ballad that has its percussion dotted with a sampled “hey!”–for edge, maybe? “Tattoo” tries really hard to synthesize a lot of the big pop trends of the last month–the aforementioned synths, the easy strum of “Irreplaceable” (who “Tattoo” shares a producer with), that almost-distracting “hey!” that made me wonder for a second if she was going to break into “It Takes Two”–and it would be almost successful if not for the vocals: They are mixed way high, giving the whole thing an adult-contemporary gloss. I know, I know, Idol is a singing competition so of course you’d want to put the vocals front and center, but wasn’t Jordin’s selling point the fact that she was “only 17”? This track makes her sound like she’s older than me–and that’s not even taking into account the fact that the age of consent for getting tattooed in her home state of Arizona is, in fact, 18. WHERE TO FIND IT: PopEater has the officially sanctioned stream, but there are Webrips of the track floating around out there, if you really need to hear it again.

[Photo: AP]