Nick Lachey
Pieces of Me

Overwrought, melodramatic, emotionally raw in a way that seems performative, the work has a hard pop sheen covering a tender, heart broken middle.

The thing about it, is that he doesnt speak anything specific, any details are underspoken, and universal emotion rises to the surface. It feels odd for a 30 year old man to be singing withe the same style and skill as fourteen year olds, where sexual desire is an abstraction. After bedding one of the world's most famous virgins, one would expect this to be more about that unpeeling.

It's almost a peice of kitsch, a reality show knockoff, and while his ex has turned to gleaming pop machines, he attempts something like real emotion, and it kind of works...scratch that, it really works.

The best thing about it though, is how unhinged he becomes. All of the songs start with a pretty acoustic introduction, and basic, well contained, pretty singing, and then a mess of electronic, studio gloss wells up, he sings over it, and its like watching a surging wave go over a tidal wall.

As for the scandal (because people are listening to this as the Blood on the Tracks of Euro-American meta-pop (if they are listening to it all). He talks a good obsessive game and there are telling details of how the famewhoring of Simpson made it difficult to be her husband, the message you get from Newlywed's, namely that she was very good at being the hollywood spoiled bitch, and he was very good at being the solid midwestern voice of reason, is present here, epseically on the truly angry I Do IT For You, with the lines: I want you to burn/I want you to steal/I want you to bleed and see how it feels/I want you to beg, etc.

Actually, I Do it for You, is the best track on the album. it takes grunges soft/loud/soft musical cues, and the viscous, pure bleeding of nu:punk, and masculinizes it. It sort of sounds like Courtney, and it defiantly sounds like Ashlee at her most raw, and its strange, after 10 years of being used to this kind of work being sung by women for women, having a man singing it for men, seems radical. Of the boy versions, it whines less, is obviously about one lover, so is less misogynstic, and is powerfully emotive in a power ballad kind of way.

I wonder why this didn't do better, why it sold so little?

Sidenote: The pictures on the cd booklet, wandering in the desery, in a pick up truck, playing a broken piano despondently, are really hot.

Sidenote II: his thank yous are hiliarous, including God, his family, Four Cincinatti sports teams, and 5 products, including miller beer, fiji water, red bull energy drinks, two clothing companies, and two sneaker companies. Plus something called Underarmour.