Jonas Brothers: Happiness Begins Review
It’s been a decade since the boy band that caught every teen girl’s heart released their last album. The Jonas Brothers have been through a lot of maturation in the time since their official break out in 2013, including work on solo music and long-term relationships. But following the new documentary of the boys’ journey so far, they decided to get back together and release a new album, and thus Happiness Begins came to be.
The Brothers have changed quite a bit in the past decade. They have been apart doing their own thing for so long that this latest release was bound to be different. Not to mention the maturity that the boys have undergone in their physical journey of growing up. However, listening to this album, you have to keep reminding yourself of these facts because the music here is so disappointing.
Love them, hate them; whatever opinion you have/have ever had of the band, the Jonas Brothers’ new album has lost the emotion and dynamics that previous albums possessed. Happiness Begins is unusually chill for a Jonas Brothers’ album, which can make for good music if you’re a fan of it, but the majority of the songs here such as the singles “Sucker” and “Cool” seem too much like cheap Shawn Mendes or Ed Sheeran ripoffs. The vocals are in bright spotlight while the guitars and other instruments are pushed to the background and don’t have enough charm to be enjoyable, with the exception of “I Believe” and “Only Human” with their somewhat pleasant synths and horns. But tracks like “Happy When I’m Sad” and “Trust” are so glaringly bad and annoying that they make you lose any hope of a getting better sequel to the boys’ comeback in the future.
So many of the tracks on this album seem to be trying too hard to mimic something else. “Used to Be” sounds like a modern hip-hop song turned pop, “Love Her” sounds so much like “Love Yourself” by Justin Bieber its scary, and “Cool” name-drops and throws in pop culture references like there’s no tomorrow. It comes off as arrogant and cocky and makes you want to slap them.
This album is just lacking in anything interesting that most of the time, you only really like it because you’re trying to cut the boys some slack. It’s somewhat easy to pretend to enjoy it, but after the fifth or sixth track, it gets old and you can’t keep it up anymore. Happiness Begins is not all-around terrible and does possess some charm, but it’s so watered-down and safe and not good enough to be memorable. The Jonas Brothers have grown up, and with the lack of decent instrumentals, they might want to consider putting their effort into hip-hop instead of pop or rock.
Overall Score: 4.3/10
