Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hey Britney, THIS is talent!, September 19, 2001
Juliana Hatfield is a true talent in an age where all too many female singers are nothing but seemingly soulless, talentless beautiful shells. She has enough true emotion and grit in her songs to take on a hundred phony Christinas or Britneys - so it always makes me sad to go to a used CD store and see 5 or 6 copies of both `Become' and `Only Everything' on the shelf. What are these people missing? What's not to love?If you're looking for true female talent and emotion, this CD is a fantastic starting point. As a huge fan of Juliana's work, both on her own and as part of the magnificent Blake Babies, this remains my favourite of her albums. I'm sure it has a lot to do with where I was in my life when I first discovered this album - a bored, daydreaming, moderately small-town high school girl, feeling unsure of myself, my surroundings, my future, as so many high school students do. "Feelin' Massachusetts" was my ultimate theme song for a good long while - I identified with it more than I did with any other song at the time. It addressed my longing for something new and interesting, my desperately wanting something "more." Then came the other songs - each of which hit me with the force of a thousand lighting bolts. "My Sister" resonated each time I had another fight with my older brother (before we "grew out of it", of course.) "Spin the Bottle" was a reminder of every crush I endured, most of which now make me cringe. The entire album, from start to finish, seemed to emulate my life. Years later, as a happily involved, employed 24-year-old living in the "big city", I still pull this album out and find something to relate to. Even if it's not painful crushes, small town blues or fights with my brother, there's always a time where I need music I can relate to. This album is always one of the first I pull out of my collection. And even if I'm feeling good about everything, I can still vividly recall the days when these songs made me feel that Juliana was reading my mind. If you're looking for whiny love-gone-wrong songs, bad drum-machine beats or fancy choreography, go look up Britney Spears. But if you're looking for a strong, honest, vulnerable album - you've come to the right place.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"Play me some music that lifts me to my feet", April 24, 2004
Become What You Are came out during my first year of junior college and it was one of my favorite CDs at the time. I think my mom got sick of me playing it over and over. Listening to it 11 years later, I figured I had outgrown the music. No way! It still sounds great! From pop sensations like "My Sister" and "Spin the Bottle" to rockers like "A Dame with a Rod" and "I Got No Idols" to slower tracks like "For the Birds" and "Mabel" it is a fun album from beginning to end. The lyrics are sophomoric at times, but the music is so catchy, you don't notice them and end up singing along to silly lines like "I want his power inside of me. And I'm not talking about a piece of meat, I'm saying something really deep." Every song here is great but "Mabel" is my favorite. The lyrics are actually intriguing on this track ("Check out that lady she's talking to herself, check out that lady, she's gonna go to hell") and it starts out with a slow, almost haunting sound and then rocks out at the end. "President Garfield" is also an interesting track although the lyrics become very weird at the end. Fun sidenote: "My Sister" gives reference to the Violent Femmes and the Del Fuegos, "before they had a record out. before they went gold." Become What You Are is a very enjoyable album and I recommend it to anyone who likes "alternative" rock.
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9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Juliana Hatfield's breakthrough is uneven, but charming., May 28, 2000
As a recording artist Juliana Hatfield is a bundle of contradictions. Her guitar-playing gravitates towards the grungy garage-pop variety, but her singing is pure sweetness, all girlish and eager; she says women are naturally inferior guitarists to men, yet she writes some wonderful guitar parts and is underrated as an acoustic player; she's written some fantastic songs, yet often on the same album where these gems appear, there are also moments of bewildering weakness.Become What You Are is as filled with polarizations as Hatfield herself. On one hand it contains a slew of strong songs -- breakthrough hit "My Sister", its intro being hands-down Hatfield's best guitar performance and its vocal melodies twistily engaging; "Spin the Bottle", a successful evocation of the giddiness of an attraction, a party, a romantic game between a playful couple; and "For the Birds" has some gorgeously written lines ("...Tried to wake her up/She wants to sleep...") and a remarkable chorus that should stay in your head for days. And then some other moments are surprisingly clunky. When Hatfield tries too hard to rock out, she often falls into Nirvana-esque repetition and stops paying attention to the words she writes. "This Is the Sound" and "I Got No Idols" are absolutely hookless, dull repetitions of clumsily written lyrics and a boring melody, and "Dame with a Rod" and "Supermodel" don't really utilize her girlish, chirpy vocals well. Though Hatfield can come up with some great fuzztone-guitar riffs, without nuances to support them, her vocal technique sounds incongruous to the churning electric guitars. Still, this is a staple album in '90s alternative music. Hatfield's most consistent work is on her next one, the solo (bassist Dean Fisher contributes), Only Everything.
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