Jordin Sparks - Battlefield Review

There are a lot of minutes between 5 and 50.... how much Jordin Sparks is too much? The answer surprised me.

The best thing about hardly ever listening to the radio is that no song, no matter how popular, gets so over-exposed that I can’t stand it. I can still enjoy even the most sugary pop confections because I haven’t heard them repeatedly for six months. A perfect example is “No Air,” Jordin Sparks’ hit duet with a pre-career suicide Chris Brown from her 2007 debut, which I appreciated throughout its reign of terror. Based in large part on “No Air,” I was looking forward to listening to Battlefield. As I quickly learned, however, there is a large difference between listening to a 5 minute Jordin Sparks single and a 50-plus minute Sparks’ album.


1. Walking on Snow
2. Battlefield
3. Don’t Let It Go To Your Head
4. S.O.S. (Let the Music Play)
5. It Takes More
6. Watch You Go
7. No Parade
8. Let It Rain
9. Emergency (911)
10. Was I The Only One
11. Faith
12. The Cure
13. Papercut (Bonus track)
14. Postcard (Bonus track)


Each time I listened to Battlefield, the experience was the same. I found myself thoroughly impressed with the first few songs which, although not without their faults, are amazingly catchy without being irritating. “Walking on Snow,” written and produced by Lucas Secon, who experienced pop semi-fame of his own with the 1994 song “Lucas with the Lid Off,” features driving percussion and guitars as Sparks lets some dude know her words can never hurt her.

The album’s first half is packed with infectious ear candy. The first single “Battlefield” written by OneRepublic’s Ryan Tedder is a standard tale of “love is war,” but features a rousing chorus vaguely reminiscent of T.I.’s “Live Your Life.” T-Pain and Dr. John provide stellar writing and production on “Watch You Go,” blending electronic flourishes and strings with Carribean-influenced percussion that harkens back to ‘80s gems like Michael Jackson’s “Liberian Girl” and Lionel Richie’s “All Night Long.” On “Don’t Let It Go to Your Head,” Sparks transforms a former pop-punk kiss-off which was the lead single to Fefe Dobson’s never-released sophomore album. The sneering original is recast as a ballad as Sparks adds vulnerability before eventually returning to the album’s triumphant “I will survive” theme.

At this point during each listen to Battlefield, Sparks had me hooked. I contemplated the flaming comments that would greet my 9.0 review. I wondered if this meant I was now obligated to spend my days listening to teen pop. Hey, didn’t Demi Lovato put out a new album recently? Is Jonas Brothers: The 3d Concert Experience still playing at the local IMAX? But then a funny thing happened, each and everytime… the second half of the album started.

Maybe its that the saccharine lyrics like “I wish I was the Tin Man so I didn’t have a heart to break” (“Papercut”) slipped me into a diabetic coma. Maybe the album is just frontloaded. Maybe its that Sparks receives co-writing credits on 5 of the last 7 songs. Whatever the reason, I found the latter parts of the album nearly intolerable.

The worst offender is “Emergency (911),” a song where Sparks whines about getting blown off by her boyfriend that is so intolerably annoying I never managed to get more than halfway through. The song underscores a strange aspect of Sparks’ career, considering that she is all of 20-years old. During her American Idol championship run, Sparks tended toward precocious ballads and earned sometimes scathing critiques when she tried her hand at younger material. She later received some press attention at the 2008 MTV Music Video Awards with her humorless response to Russell Brand’s jabs at the Jonas Brothers’ “promise rings”.


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