Tell Me You Love Me, Joe

Here's the baseline for an album like this: if I spend most of my week thinking about the artist whose album we're reviewing, then I'll consider it a successful week. I don't even care about the music. I mean, I do, but how much I care about (slash like, slash enjoy) the music is going to be more reflected in the grade at the bottom of the review. There have been plenty of outright awful, or pretty boring, or extremely frustrating albums that have nevertheless captured the spirit of Record Club. I want us to explore "music" and everything that entails, even the bad stuff.

 

Obviously, such an opening paragraph could only preface one of those album that I mostly didn't like but was nevertheless enthralled by, if that makes sense. Tell Me You Love Me, when you are considering the very specific parameters in which I generally enjoy music on some deeper level, is not a good album. But gosh darn it, I spent a ton of time this week considering Demi Lovato's art, and took great pleasure in doing so, and so I really can't say that this week of Record Club "sucked" in any sense of the word. It was a good week listening to a not-good album.

 

As begins some of my favorite weeks of Record Club: here we have an artist that I know by name, but sincerely know nothing about besides that name. Demi Lovato? Before Keelan picked this album, I would've told you that I think that they were a child star at one point, and then pivoted into purebred pop music that was informed by their substance abuse issues—question mark. So I did my due diligence (I guess). Here is the Joe K*** Sparknotes version of Demi Lovato's career so far:

They started out like every child star—very, very young, very, very talented, with parents who were very, very motivated to get them on stage. Their breakthrough was Barney and Friends, and that eventually lead to the Disney Channel circuit, primarily through their Camp Rock movies, and, at least at first, usually associated with the Jonas Brothers brand. Fame lead to celebrity, celebrity lead to album sales, albums sales lead to dating Fez when they met on the set of a PSA for the 2010 U.S. Census. Fame and celebrity and albums sales also led to a teenager getting deep into substance abuse, which exacerbated their mental health concerns, which led to detox and sobriety, which led to this album, which led to further fame, which led to more drugs, which led to a very public overdose, which led to health concerns (blindness? yikes!), which led to more documentaries about their sobriety which is hopefully gonna stick this time, which led to their most recent album, which leads us to today.

I would never pretend to "know" Demi Lovato, but I do know all this, and I know it because I buckled down and watched Demi Lovato: Simply Complicated, the YouTube documentary that acts as a sort of companion to Tell Me You Love Me. It was only 78 minutes, so it was basically a Tuesday morning in between calls at work. I learned a lot. As supplemental material to this week's album, it wasn't even anywhere close to being a chore. But I got two main things out of my viewing experiencing.

One. Demi Lovato seems like a good person. They seem like an artist I can get behind, and would wish success for, even if that success is not going to come in the form of winning me personally over with their craft. I find myself ending my week with an immense empathy for Lovato. I don't need to go over the specifics again, but suffice it to say that Lovato could probably sing a killer version of "Drunk II."

To put it another way: The PR machine works! The album and the documentary work in tandem to lay out the facts: Demi Lovato is troubled, there are historical reasons for their troubles (pressures of fame at a young age, genetic history of alcoholism, and so on), and yet they are extremely talented, and excel in their chosen field despite their setbacks. It's impossible to experience the album/doc combo and to have any ill-will toward this still-very-young star.

And so but, two. What the album implies and what the doc makes plain is that the act of creating pop music in the way that Demi Lovato does (along with 99% of artists of their ilk) makes me incredibly uncomfortable. This might take a few paragraphs.

I'm well aware that pop music is an it-takes-a-village endeavor. Lovato has a great voice and they need to command that voice in order to create this music, but there are a thousand other aspects to this music that they have nothing to do with. You think Lovato is sitting down and creating the horn part on "Ruin the Friendship"? Fuck no. There are a thousand different writers and producers on each of these songs. I'll stop way short in saying that Demi Lovato is just a "vessel" to be "used" by pop music magnates; again—they are talented, and their voice alone earns them partial credit in their music's creation.

But allowing all these shadow entities to have a large hand in creating this music but still billing it as "an album by Demi Lovato" seems just a little disingenuous to me. I'm not even advocating for these people to get more credit. I'm not saying that this should be billed as "Tell Me You Love Me by Demi Lovato and Warren 'Oak' Felder and Mitch Allan." I might even be saying the opposite. Watch the doc and tell me that those scenes with Lovato behind the screen singing and a bunch of sleazy bros on the other side of the glass with dollar signs in their eyes while nodding along doesn't make you at least a little bit uncomfortable.

I don't think we have to answer the question "Who's really in charge here?" I just think we have to acknowledge that the question exists, and that it's the question itself that makes me less likely to enjoy this album.

I was reading an interview with Jakob Dylan the other day, and this quote stood out: "I don't need somebody to make my record. I'm not a pop star." His point wasn't to degrade an artist like Lovato's art, but was instead more making a point that he wants to have complete agency over his own work. When I am listening to a Wallflowers album, I know that I'm listening to the vision of Jakob Dylan. Whose vision is Tell Me You Love Me?

I was also reading an article about the Bangles' "Eternal Flame," and saw that the songwriters for that one—Bangles member Susanna Hoffs and songwriter Billy Steinberg—got the idea when Hoffs was telling Steinberg about her trip to Graceland, where an "eternal flame" burns at an outdoor shrine, and Steinberg basically said "that would be a great song title." Sure, this Bangles song means many things to many people, but the fact that it started with "hey, those words would be nice in the title of the song" just doesn't feel right to me for some reason. It makes the whole structure feel rickety, now that the foundation is exposed as arbitrary. How do you think a song like "Sorry Not Sorry" comes into being? The same exact way. "Hey, I've been hearing the phrase 'sorry not sorry' online, that would make a pretty good song title, no?"

Also also, there is evidence that Demi Lovato doesn't even like the type of music that they create. In that NYTimes feature on Lovato from earlier this year, they said how one time a journalist asked them what type of music they listened to, and they said "metal." Then in that documentary, we see Lovato and their friends attend an "Emo Night," in which they all dress in all black and dance around to Paramore. Lovato also says at one point something to the effect of "I feel pressure to make music that I know my fans will like," implying that they feel restricted from branching out into other kinds of music. I wonder what would happen if Lovato surrounded herself with different writers and producers then the ones she had for this album. Would something like folklore pop out? Would we just get another SOUR? I don't know, and I am firm in my belief that we will never know, because Lovato doesn't feel safe in stepping out of what is imposed on her.

I know that this is how the pop world is built, and I'm not here to tear it all down, Jesus-in-the-marketplace-style. I'm simply trying to explain why I personally don't find connections to this particular brand of music. If Lovato's heart was completely in this, if it was their baby that they birthed on their own, if all of these songs actually had deeper meaning besides the right combination of syllables and rhymes, then maybe I'd find some reason to get invested. But none of this is true, and so, to me, it's just another pop album.

It's a pop album with hooks, for sure. Despite my hemming and hawing, I am not denying this. And I'll stand by what I said a couple weeks ago: Hooks are king. I cannot say that I "dislike" an album that gets under my skin like some of these songs do. I'm probably at the point that I can see the tracklist and start singing at least eleven of the twelve of the songs out loud without help (the albums sole truly awful track—"Lonely"—is less a song and more of a Lil Wayne-mumbled PSA about the dangers of consuming Lean). Tell Me You Love Me meets the lowest requirement of a good pop album: it is catchy.

And we've reviewed plenty of pop albums before, and I've never really had extremely unkind things to say about any of them, because most of them met that base requirement as well. They are catchy; I do not hate them. But I've never really been as harsh about their shared existence in the pop music machine as I am here. Why is that?

My theory is that it's because Demi Lovato has been incredibly upfront and open and honest about their career up to this point. They have shown that, like most normal humans, they need help. That humility is extremely endearing, and it makes me like them a lot as a person. But at the same time, it makes me appreciate their craft less than I normally would. Peeking behind the curtain has been detrimental to my appreciation of the music itself. Yes, Lovato needs help, and good for them for admitting that, but to need that help to create music, to gather a bunch of older dudes around you and have them push Record and say things that come within a half-step of "dance monkey dance," this whole idea seems incredibly fucking crass to me. It's pop music, and I can't shake the idea that it is worse because of that.

This will not be the last time we touch on these themes in a Record Club review. Pop music in this form will always be around, and I'll always be interested in it, at least on a superficial level. And who knows? Maybe I'll soften a little bit as I get even older. Maybe I'll come to regret this review, eventually feeling like I was too harsh.

For now, though, I am content with moving in both directions at once. Demi Lovato? I love them and I only want the best for them. Demi Lovato's music? Catchy, but vacuous and asinine.

GRADE: 2 pukes out of 5

 

P.S. Took me till Tuesday to realize this: I have heard Demi Lovato's voice at least 700 times in the last three years. I just found out that it is Lovato who sings the cover of "Let It Go" during the end credits of Frozen. I have included this observation in the postscript so as not to affect the grade, which would have either gone to a 5 or a 0 based on this information alone, and I can't decide which.