Customer Reviews

Exposed

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(18)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Fun & Talented Debut

I am a hardcore music fanatic and my Tuesday events have been relegated to buying new CDs. It's become a weekly habit of mine and a week with no new fun releases can be such a downer. Luckily for me, I was able to sample this album before purchasing it & to be honest - I wasn't even going to give this singer/album the time of day.

However, I decided to go ahead and sample the entire album. I was pretty impressed from the lead single "Goodbye" and thought the singer had a charming voice. I was pretty much sold after hearing the song. But the real selling point for me was when I looked at the back of the CD case & saw that the entire album was executive produced by BabyFace. Now, I know he hasn't done anything outstanding since the nineties came to an end, but he is still a master producer no matter what. The album also features two songs from one of my favorite new IT producer of the moment, Ryan Tedder. The song SPEAK UP is very reminiscent of HALO from Beyonce. It truly is one of the standout tracks on here.

If you're looking for a new artist that's bursting with talent and a voice that can catch anyone's attention, this is the CD to get. You get your usual bundle of ballads, mid up-tempo tracks, and some that can even be considered club bangers. Kristina starts off the album with the electric pop song, Somebody. This is truly one of the few albums i purchased in the past few years where the whole album just really works. Her voice is hypnotic. She can sing & she just reels you in from the beginning. Watch out for this artist because she truly is one of the most promising talents seen this year.

Stand out tracks are:
Speak Up (My personal Fave)
Goodbye
Future Love
Died in Your Eyes (Nice Ballad)
Powerless
Doesn't Everybody Want To Fall In Love
Its Gotta Be Love
Disconnect (Nice song to end this CD)

Kristina DeBarge has talent. I really enjoy listening to this album. Her voice is amazing. When I listen to Exposed her voice comes out, and pulls me in. I think Exposed will do well. This is a great debut album nothing is wrong on this album, and I think the reason for that is because she worked with Ryan Tedder from One Republic. This whole album is amazing. Kristina is an artist to watch out for. I think she'll have a great career.
My favorite songs on Exposed are:
1. Powerless
2. It's Gotta Be Love
3. Disconnect
4. Somebody
5. Future Love

My take on this CD is that it is another run of the mill teen pop CD. It wasn't totally horrible, but it just wasn't unique or compelling. It didn't have that certain something to be able to say "Now that's a good CD!"

It sounds too much like every other pop CD out there, even with the "topics" of the songs. This is not something that I could listen to over and over again because it just doesn't have enough substance. After listening to it twice, I was like "Ok, that's enough."

Ok, I preordered this back in the summer and I'm just now getting a chance to review it. Honestly, when I first played it, I'm like "this is horrible. the only good song is 'goodbye' ". Boy, was I wrong. The more I played it, the more I loved it. So if you aren't sure if you're going to like it, buy it and I promise it will grow on you. I wish the cd could get more "exposure" because it really is good!

Kristania DeBarge has a lot to live up to. Yes the last name is courtesy of her father James who was part of the eighties group that brought us the theme song to Short Circuits. Then her debut album Exposed was produced by nineties uber-producer Babyface who also wrote four songs for the album. With that lineage, Exposed is a little disappointing.

The album just sounds like every other album from other cookie cutter R&B pop acts of the past couple years like Jordin Sparks and the like getting the scraps that Rihanna pass on. Debarge even tries to do for Steam's Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye for her Goodbye what Rihanna did for Tainted Love on S.O.S. to lesser effect (it also doesn't help that Wale and Jay-Z also decided to co-opt the same song this year). And it doesn't help that Ryan Tedder contribute a track because Speak Up doesn't help his rap that he basically only has one song that he recycles to ever artist he works with to the point you can understand why Kelly Clarkson was so upset.

Even the Babyface songs like Cried Me a River come off a little too smaltzy and too overproduced making you wish of the days when `face could do no wrong but that was over a decade ago. He does manage to take us back to when Kristinia's father ruled the charts on the throwback It's Got to Be Love which borrows from I Need Love from LL Cool J.

But on the bright side, the album is good clean fun for the tween set who are looking for something edgier than the Magic Kingdom is exporting and not ready for the oversexualized music that plagues R&B radio these days. Anyone one in that age bracket will be more than happy to sing along to songs like Goodbye, Future Love and Doesn't Everybody Want to Fall in Love.

Kristinia has a very nice voice to listen to, in one song I heard a hit of "Rhiannaesque" tones and really enjoyed that.
The songs are nice and easy to listen to. Nothing offensise or annoying about the lyrics or music.
Good-bye already getting decent play time and was familar to my 7 and 9 year old who both enjoyed singing along.
The rest of the songs don't really have anything standing out to make me want to pick it up to play over and over, but I definatley wouldn't go turn it off either if it happened to be on.
My 7 year old daughter was VERY much enjoying the music and would definately give it more of a 4+ star rating.

Pop music seems to often be just a copycat version of what was on the Billboard top hits of the previous month. That's not necessarily a bad thing if you like that genre, but it's nice to occasionally pick up on a new and refreshing talent. That's the case here with Kristinia DeBarge's debut album Exposed.

What makes this album especially good is that it has so many good tracks, something that isn't common with many debut albums today. Kristinia DeBarge is all of 19, yet she already has a top song on the Billboard Hot 100, and that's quite an accomplishment in itself. Her father is James Debarge and she's been singing since she was three. If you remember The Debarges, the group from the `70s and `80s who brought a pop sound to R&B, then you'll understand her background. She does have that "Debarge sound" that's evocative of her family's offerings, but she's definitely in tune with the pop music appeal of today. It should be noted that this album was produced by Babyface, which gives it some of its smooth musical strength.

Favorites on this album(and not necessarily in order) are:

* Goodbye
* Disconnect
* Speak Up
* Powerless
* Somebody
* Cried Me A River

This album does have something that will appeal to most any listener who enjoys pop or today's R&B music.
It's a good pop and R&B album from a member of a great musical family. Kristinia's a fine and gifted new talent who is carrying on the DeBarge family tradition, and all of her songs on this album are well worth listening to, especially if you compare her with some of the other emerging Pop 40 talent. Highly recommended, a 5-star debut album!

I should probably come forward and admit this before I review this album. That being that I am not a huge fan of pop music as a genre. It's probably fourth or fifth on my list of favorite musical genres. However, I am a fan of the DeBarge family musically, so I'm intrigued by how Kristinia DeBarge would stack up to her legendary family.

How I ranked the songs on my iTunes:

5 Stars (Songs I can listen to anytime they come on)
No songs applied

4 Stars (Songs I can listen to maybe once or twice a week)
Somebody, Powerless, Goodbye, It's Gotta Be Love, and Died in your Eyes

3 Stars (Songs I can listen to maybe once or twice a month)
Future Love, Disconnect, Sabotage, Doesn't Everybody Want to Fall in Love, and Speak Up

2 Stars (Songs I can listen to maybe once or twice a year)
Cried Me a River

1 Stars (Songs I can't listen to and are deleted from my library)
No songs applied

What amazed me about this CD as a whole was the lack of disposable songs. Most of the songs are pretty well constructed. The problem with some pop CD's is that you can expect about 40 to 50 percent of the CD to be filled with songs you'll never want to listen to ever again. Exposed is an exception, granted that most of the songs are in my 3 Star folder on my iPod, I wasn't finding myself skipping them when they came on again. Breaking the scores down, this CD scores 3 stars. My advice is to try out the 4 star songs first, if you like them, move up to the 3 star songs.

There's no doubt that Kristina Has a great voice but when comes to the lyrics and songs she sings - I've heard it all before. The whole album is basically all about relationships, making it lyrically plain and boring to me. So Other than a great voice, Kristina DeBarge isn't really providing much here for me. Maybe I'll like her sophomore album better

BEST TRACKS

Speak Up
Goodbye
Future Love
Died in Your Eyes
Powerless
Disconnect

I hadn't heard of Kristina DeBarge before receiving this album, but looking at the picture, I assumed she was probably El DeBarge's daughter or close relative. And, I figured the apple wouldn't fall too far from the tree, given the genre. She may not be El's daughter, but the resemblance is uncanny.

So, I popped the disc in and committed myself to listening to it from beginning to end. It was... well... "unremarkable", I suppose is the best way of putting it. There's really nothing outstanding about this album. It's contemporary R&B by the numbers, and the vast majority of the tracks are interchangeable with any of the weaker tracks you'd hear on a Jordin Sparks album.

Admittedly, Died In Your Eyes is a standout track, sure to find its way on a teen movie soundtrack within the next year. Beyond that though, you can almost predict "Is the next song going to be 'boom-boom-tick' or 'boom-boom-boom-tick' with MIDI space noises?", all of it playing background to a girl trying to sound older and more soulful than she really is.

Where things really get puzzling though, is where she (apparently) goes for urban credibility half-heartedly delivering lyrics that, frankly, sound ridiculously contrived coming from her. She's either trying too hard, or got stuck with songs that are just wrong for her.

Hopefully, her next album will be better. It would be a shame to write Kristina DeBarge off, based solely on this album.