Jesse McCartney Albums (4)
What The Critics Say
Like any 21-year-old, Jesse McCartney is eager to prove that he's no longer a kid, something that the very title of his third album, Departure, makes plain. Departure isn't merely a break from his Radio Disney past, it's also a departure from the stuffy adult contemporary vibe of 2006's Right Where You Want Me, which found the then-teenager acting far older than his years. Despite McCartney's role as a co-author of Leona Lewis' international blockbuster "Bleeding Love," the song that defined the new wave of mature pop in 2007/2008, Jesse is smart enough to act age appropriate here, patterning himself after the ultimate new millennial teeny bopper turned player, Justin Timberlake. McCartney dips heavily into JT's bag of tricks, recycling some Off the Wall grooves and draping his ballads in icy analog synths straight out of FutureSex/LoveSounds, moves so transparent they could hardly be called thefts -- they're more like savvy marketing. As always, McCartney's strength is his flair for playing the pop game with sincerity, happily giving himself over to the clichés as that's what the rules demand. Sometimes, this can lead to awkward situations -- Sean Garrett does well as the producer of "How Do You Sleep?" but the duet on "Rock You" is too insistent -- but more the canny calculation of Departure is appealing, as McCartney has a weakness for big melodic hooks, a weakness that is better heard here than on "Bleeding Love" (his own version of which is added as a bonus track to some international pressings of the album). So, in sound and style Departure is a successful maturation for Jesse McCartney, yet there is a wrinkle in his master plan: his thin, boyish voice hasn't caught up to his sensibility. This causes some disconnect between the singer and the song -- the overtly randy "Into Ya" sounds declawed -- but it's not enough to spoil an otherwise solid transition into adulthood from McCartney. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide
'Right Where You Want Me'
Release Date 9/13/2006
Tracks 12
Label Avex Trax Japan
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
It may not have made huge waves, but Jesse McCartney's debut album, Beautiful Soul, was an undeniable hit, one of the biggest hits on the tween scene since Hilary Duff no longer belonged just to Radio Disney. McCartney filled the hole Duff left behind at Radio Disney, as his slick, sugary confections constantly played on that channel and on The Disney Channel, too. It set the stage perfectly for a mainstream crossover, just as Hilary Duff made serious inroads outside of the Disney community after her second album, and that's what his 2006 sophomore effort, Right Where You Want Me, was designed to be. Unfortunately, it doesn't quite deliver on its intentions. Right Where You Want Me goes just a little bit too far in making McCartney into a mainstream star -- rather, it goes a little bit too far in making McCartney mature, removing the snap from his bubblegum by giving him too many ballads to sing and too much production to sing through. He amiably gives it his all, yet the problem doesn't lie with McCartney: it's with the material and its presentation, which is too reserved for tweens, too kiddie for adult contemporary. So, it's the equivalent of musical puberty: McCartney may be closing in on 20, but this finds him in his awkward phase where he's not a boy yet not a man, and the record will only please those fans who are sticking by him through their own awkward phases. Fortunately, McCartney is enough of a showbiz pro that when he survives this transition, he'll be able to come through and deliver a good third album that builds on the better sections of this record. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide
'Live: The Beautiful Soul Tour'
Release Date 11/15/2005
Tracks 12
Label Hollywood
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
Released at the end of 2005, Live: The Beautiful Soul Tour is the second release following in the wake of Jesse McCartney's 2004 debut, Beautiful Soul, arriving just a few months after the DVD Up Close, which contained a mix of music videos and live-in-the-studio performances, but no live concert material. Live draws very heavily from his debut -- ten of Beautiful Soul's 12 songs are here, with the other two songs being versions of "Good Life," which originally appeared on the soundtrack to the Disney Channel movie Stuck in the Suburbs, and "Best Day of My Life," which appeared on the soundtrack to the 2004 Hilary Duff film A Cinderella Story. The results are professional and practiced, and will tide some tweeners over until the next proper album. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Jesse McCartney used to be a part of turn-of-the-century teen pop also-rans Dream Street, a group who made a few waves in 2001, just as the renaissance of 1999/2000 was starting to draw to a close. Like other teenage showbiz kids, McCartney covered his bases after the group's demise, signing with Hollywood Records just before he landed a role on the 2004 WB show Summerland, which just happened to be scheduled to hit the airwaves not long after his debut solo album, Beautiful Soul, hit the stores in September 2004. This kind of cross-platform positioning was commonplace midway through the 2000s -- Britney Spears may have started it, but Hilary Duff perfected it, rising up through Disney TV as the lead of the delightful sitcom Lizzie McGuire before having a number one album in 2003 with her first grand-scale pop album, Metamorphosis. That's the path that McCartney and his producers have chosen, and Beautiful Soul is a cross between Metamorphosis and Justin Timberlake's solo debut, Justified. It's targeted at the preteens who made Hilary a star, so it's light and cheerful, but it has the sleek, sultry grooves that made Justified a blockbuster, which means that McCartney has a chance not only to flaunt a little maturity, he's given a direction where he can grow. While some of the material here is a bit generic (the ballads are a particular weakness), the songs that work are shockingly good. The by-the-books teen pop songs, like the lead single, "She's No You," are engaging, but it's the tracks that draw deeply from Timberlake that really get the album moving -- the Robbie Nevil-written "Get Your Shine On" nearly trumps "Rock Your Body" as a successful update of Michael Jackson's Off the Wall. McCartney is still a teenager, still figuring out how to control his voice and use its sweet thinness as an advantage -- for anybody who watched Bravo's brilliant series Showbiz Moms & Dads, he can't help but recall a Shane Klingensmith with talent -- but these songs suggest that he will be able to figure that out, and it's the songs that make this album a welcome surprise. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide
