Kelly Osbourne Albums (3)
'Sleeping in the Nothing'
Release Date 6/7/2005
Tracks 12
Label Sanctuary
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
Kelly Osbourne's debut, Shut Up -- later retitled Changes upon its 2003 reissue -- arrived in 2002 in the thick of punk-pop's popularity in the early 2000s and it reflected the sound of the times. Three years later, Osbourne returned with her follow-up, Sleeping in the Nothing, and it sounded nothing like Shut Up/Changes, but like that debut, it reflected its times: it spurned punk revival for new wave revival. So, as the pop culture of the new millennium lives a quarter century in the past, Osbourne rides the wave, drafting L.A.'s favorite collaborator of the last five years, Ms. Linda Perry -- who struck it big with Pink, Xtina Aguilera, and Gwen Stefani, not so big with Courtney Love, Lisa Marie Presley, and Fischerspooner -- as writer, producer, chief collaborator, and overall musical director. Kelly and Perry pull out all the stops on Sleeping in the Nothing, stopping at nothing to re-create the robotic pulse and computer gloss of the early '80s. Perry plays and programs nearly every note on the album herself, piling on layers of echoed guitars and cold synths over drum machine loops. Apart from the slick, seamless Pro Tools production, there's not much here that makes it sound modern, even if it does sound contemporary in its '80s fetishization, and while that's admirable, even fun, at first, as the record reaches its midway point it starts to bog down because it succeeds in its re-creation of Reagan-era pop just a little bit too well. It has a handful of glitzy, catchy singles in "One Word," "Redlight," and "Suburbia," but they're surrounded by songs that first skate by on their surface sheen, but start to seem awkward, clumsy, and repetitive. Worst of all, the album no longer sounds like a sexy new romantic tribute, it starts sounding like the lumbering mainstream pop that tried to adapt new wave production techniques -- in other words, the anti-date rape anthem "Don't Touch Me While I'm Sleeping" sounds disarmingly like Kenny Loggins' "Danger Zone," and it's not the only cut here to have the sterile, bombastic sound of the mid-'80s. While this kind of electronic overkill is a logical end result of a conscious aping of '80s records -- if you try so hard to re-create a sound, you're almost bound to fall into the same traps as your predecessors -- it's kind of shocking to hear the de-evolution of a retro craze within the course of one record. But that's what makes Sleeping in the Nothing a more interesting record than Kelly's first album and more interesting than a lot of the retro-'80s cluttering the pop culture landscape in 2005 -- it may be flawed, but it's a microcosm of the new wave revival, in all of its glories and absurdities. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Kelly Osbourne, the daughter of Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne, is under no delusions about why she received a recording contract. The only reason she has a contract is her celebrity, created by the fluke pop-culture phenomenon of 2002, The Osbournes. Once that publicity machine kicked in, it was virtually inevitable that Kelly would have her pop-culture artifact -- voilà, Shut Up. Fortunately, this is much better than its pedigree suggests. It's a spunky, lively little record that has no illusions about being anything other than a folly, a bit of a lark. Sure, there's artifice here. Sure, it's lightweight. Sure, Kelly isn't a particularly gifted vocalist. Yet this works because it keeps its goals small and doesn't try too hard. It simply has fun, and it's hard not to have fun while listening to it, even if it turns out to be a transient pleasure. Much like the Osbournes show, then. [Kelly Osbourne's time at Epic was short-lived. She was dropped not long after her album failed to live up to commercial expectations, but Sanctuary picked her up a few months later, leading to Shut Up being repackaged and retitled as Changes, released less than a year after Shut Up. Changes also included six bonus tracks, four of them live versions, but also the version of "Papa Don't Preach" from the Osbourne Family Album soundtrack and a duet with Ozzy on the title track. While the live tracks bog the album down a bit, "Papa Don't Preach" and "Changes" are nice inclusions.] ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Kelly Osbourne, the daughter of Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne, is under no delusions about why she received a recording contract. The only reason she has a contract is her celebrity, created by the fluke pop-culture phenomenon of 2002, The Osbournes. Once that publicity machine kicked in, it was virtually inevitable that Kelly would have her pop-culture artifact -- voilà, Shut Up. Fortunately, this is much better than its pedigree suggests. It's a spunky, lively little record that has no illusions about being anything other than a folly, a bit of a lark. Sure, there's artifice here. Sure, it's lightweight. Sure, Kelly isn't a particularly gifted vocalist. Yet this works because it keeps its goals small and doesn't try too hard. It simply has fun, and it's hard not to have fun while listening to it, even if it turns out to be a transient pleasure. Much like the Osbournes show, then. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide
