Once Upon a Time – Victoria Acosta

At the age of 12, south Texas-based singer Victoria Acosta had a hit on Radio Disney and similar outlets with "The World's Gone Crazy," a song dissing Ashlee Simpson's lip-synch fiasco on Saturday Night Live, among other easy pop culture potshots. The irony is rich and multi-layered, considering that Acosta's debut album Once Upon A Time features exactly the same kind of antiseptic, pitch-corrected, completely fake vocals as Simpson's album, but with even worse songwriting and a near-total lack of personality. If the idea of a pre-teen singing a song called "Move Your Thang" isn't tacky enough, try the fact that the album follows it up later with the schmaltzy "When I Lay Me Down To Sleep," a semi-religious song that Acosta attempts to sing as a sultry love jam. As if to admit that the producers don't even have enough ideas to scrape together some extra filler tracks, Once Upon A Time is over and done at eight tracks in about 26 minutes. So at least it's short. Sweet...not by a long shot. ~ Stewart Mason, All Music Guide