The youngest Jonas Brother has traded in his purity ring for a chance to live the life of a modern-day sex symbol with his new self-titled album. Clearly, he is struggling to find a stable relationship. It should come as no surprise with the lyric, “You got the key to my heart yeah / I got the key to your apartment/ Well you’ll let me in or we’re breaking in/ ‘cuz I ain’t gonna let you go.” The message: If you threaten to leave Nick Jonas, he will break into your home and force you to love him.
Maybe I’m crazy and over-analyzing the lyric, but that sounds like the threat of a blossoming serial rapist. If the song were called “I Love You,” it may seem less forceful, but the blunt title of “I Want You” casts a shady light of lust. Sure, Bob Dylan also has a lust-fueled song called “I Want You,” but Dylan’s most menacing threat is that he hopes to open the gate for a woman and possibly have a romantic encounter. Never once does he threaten to break into an apartment and have his way.
The ignorant path that Jonas aimlessly bounds down on this song is constant throughout the whole album. Not only are certain lyrics misogynistic, but the lack of creativity and originality is the major detractor.
Jonas wastes no time displaying his incapabilities of originality. Right from the start, he sings about a set of chains that love has him locked in. This would be an interesting metaphor, had it been original. The Beatles made a song of the same title, “Chains,” famous back in 1963 that deals with precisely the same problem. Maybe it is just a coincidence, but then the background vocals come in and they are eerily similar to the latter part of the chant in Kanye West’s “Power.”
The rest of the album seems to transition between lifting ideas from Kanye West or Prince. Almost every hip-hop beat can be traced directly to a Kanye song, while Jonas sings in a Prince-like falsetto for large portions of the album.
Perhaps it’s because of the swirling background vocals that fade in, combined with the fact that Jonas awkwardly and uncomfortably rides a motorcycle in the video for “Jealous,” but it screams to me that Jonas has a deep fascination with Yeezus and was “Bound 2″ borrow his fair share of ideas.
“Take Over” begins with a nearly identical riff to Kanye’s “I Am a God.” Also similar to Kanye, he shows little humility when he describes loving himself as a “crazy drug.” If loving Nick Jonas is a drug, users should begin searching for a treatment center before addiction ever sets in.
The loss of innocence has left Jonas struggling at the crossroads of former boy-band icon and future brooding badass where he is attempting to find his true self. After years of forced purity by Disney, he is now free to do whatever (or whoever, apparently) he wants. Much like Miley Cyrus, another Disney star has fallen into a life of overt sexuality, yet for Jonas, there are few critics speaking out against him.
Follow Craig Wright on Twitter @wgwcraig