Last Year Was Complicated, Joe

Last Year Was Complicated

Nick Jonas

June 10, 2016

I’m 27 years old, and I’ve been listening to music seriously for long enough that not every record is made specifically for me. It would be stupid and childish to shit on an album just because I'm not in its intended audience. Unlike the neckbeards that complained about the new Ghostbusters, or grown fucking adults reviewing, say, the new Madagascar movie, I know that certain pieces of art are for certain people. I get it.

All this burying the lede to say: no, I did not like Last Year Was Complicated. But why would I? You honestly think Nick Jonas was sitting in the studio, crafting these shiny pop ditties for a snobby sarcastic 27-year-old male? Nah man, no way. Just listen to the lyrics a little bit, and it's pretty clear who the audience is—any girl who finds him attractive, and who can place herself in the song, imagining that she is that girl he is crooning about.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with that! I'm taking the high road here. I am not going to keep this album on my iPod forever, but there are some good things on here!

Let’s start with the bad though.

We can start with those aforementioned lyrics. Hoo-boy, are they corny. I feel like a lot of it is Nick Jonas trying to create a new meme or hashtag or something. The most egregious example is #champagneproblems. No, wait, I changed my mind. #bacon is the worst one. Check out this chorus:

"Late night, doing what I wanna do,
I got sleep eyes, I woke up like this,
Feelin' like, aw shit, put some bacon on it,
One thing I love more than being with you..."

I mean, this is bad right? Are they really bad lyrics, or am I wrong? Because again, this shit isn't meant for me.

Oh my god, I just googled "nick jonas bacon" and discovered that he performed this song at the VMAs on Sunday night. This is his hit single! I honestly didn’t know. But let’s reflect why this was the song he performed, and why people enjoy it. Because it is definitely not the lyrics.

I will give him credit, I listened to "Bacon" twice more, and I... kind of get it? The chorus, as cringeworthy as it is, is kind of lifted up a bit by the music. I like how the subsequent choruses escalate each time, and more instrumental music is added, so that by the end of the song, we're bumping along to a jam. Forget the lyrics, and it's not bad!

Yes, I praised the music, but unfortunately, as a whole, I just don’t find a whole lot to appreciate here on the album. I feel like every time I’m dragged out to a bar with loud Top 40 music, I hear music exactly like what is on Last Year Was Complicated. It follows the standard template of any Q102 shit you'll hear. It's unoriginal. It's cliché. But yet again—it's not for me!

Throwing a dart at random songs on the playlist, and I can find some good things, sure, like...

..."Close," which is a song I totally recognize (I think?!), and it is pretty catchy. I like the subtle steel drum flourishes, they tickle me in the right spot.

..."Comfortable," which features a totally bizarre interlude in which Nick Jonas, I’m pretty sure, is comparing himself to Allen Iverson and his disdain for practicing? It's silly and nonsensical and strangely works.

..."Chainsaw," which features Nick Jonas dropping the F-bomb, which I can totally appreciate; on another level, it feels edgy to have the pop star sing the F-bomb (if only because the bar for edginess with these people is so goddamn low, but I appreciated it all the same).

..."Good Girls," which totally overcomes "Bacon"-level shittiness in the lyrics by being pretty darn catchy as the chorus shuffles along. That Big Sean bridge sounds like it should be in a Rebecca Black song though, amiright?!?

Alright, that's enough. You get the point. I can sit here all day and examine each song on a subatomic level and somehow convince myself that this album is a worthwhile endeavor for me. But I'm not going to do that, and you know why?

Because this is a cookie-cutter collection of songs created by a Jonas Brother and an army of paid collaborators. This isn't what I do!

I’m glad I listened to this album, I really am. If someone tries to claim that Last Year Was Complicated is a shit-heap of garbage, I will now have the power to rebuke them. It is not all garbage. There are some individual moments worth listening to. I would know. I listened to it.

I wouldn't recommend this to anyone, mainly because the people that ask me for recommendations usually share some part of the Music Tastes Venn Diagram with me. People who listen to Nick Jonas don’t care enough about music that they would ever ask anyone for recommendations. Why would you need to know if you should listen to Nick Jonas when you're happy to have MTV spoon it down your throat?

I’m going in circles now. I'll stop. Is this album terrible? No. Is it good? No. Goodnight folks!

GRADE: 1.5 pukes out of 5

BEST SONG: “Close”