Jesse McCartney - How Do You Sleep?

Artist: Jesse McCartney
Album: Departure
Year: 2008
Rating: 5/5

Oh yes, Jesse McCartney. I loved him ever since 'Beautiful Soul' although at the very very beginning, back when his video was only a minute long, I thought he looked too much like Aaron Carter(the same way I thought JoJo looked too much like Lindsay Lohan and that she had a 'boys' name, to which I was wrong.. forgive me, I was seven then..) which is why I didn't pay too much attention to him. When his videos started appearing on the countdowns of the music channel, which I was addicted to back then, I started taking notice of him.

His music back then was Disney pop, so much that you could imagine every single song on his debut album on a DCOM, seriously. Then his next album grew up a bit but the pop from his first album was still there, not a very exciting or drastic growth which was what I wanted to see.

Little did I know that I had to wait 2 years before the drastic change I was waiting for came. This year, Jesse has changed his style so much that people who don't look at who's singing or don't know his voice won't know who's singing the new songs. I must say, I commend Jesse for having the courage to change his music style. 

My dad told me a few weeks back that there are two things artists can and will usually do. One, it's not change their style for their whole careers and keep on giving their fans what they want until they get sick of them. The pro to this, most of the time, artists don't loose too many fans because they get what they liked with the artist in the first place. The con? Other people, haters or people who just listen to the music will get sick after the second or third album and critics will say really horrible things about the fact that he/she has no creativity to think of anything new, bla, bla, bla.

The second one is the opposite. Artists for example, come out with an R&B album one year and suddenly their Pop a year later. This can lead to loss of a lot of fans but glowing reviews from critics because of drastic changes.

Where does Jesse fall? Into both, which is why I like him. He took it slow, built up a huge fan base who by now will stick to him whatever he does while pleasing the critics. Genius.

This song is not like any song on his previous albums, it's so R&B infused that you could imagine Usher singing it, it's fantastic. Of course, he's going to join everyone else by going R&B but at least he has the guts to change and the creativity to pull it off, which is something most artists lack these days.