Columbia
Pop, 2013

Emblem3, freshly off the hype of The X-Factor USA where they were clearly one of the preferred acts of that season (quick: name of the winner of their season – if you can), waste little time in releasing their debut effort Nothing to Lose. In a market where Simon Cowell and his people are doing their best to saturate everything with One Direction clones, how will Emblem 3 stand out from Union J, Hairy K, Beiber 9, 12 Sexually Non-threatening Ugly White Boys, and the likes?

If Nothing to Lose is anything to go by, these guys want to present themselves as three white douchebags desperately wanting to convince everyone through their fake Jamaican accent that they are actually MTV-style black guys. See their baseball caps and Abercrombie-style clothes? Clearly, these guys know what it means to break down the establishment and party away all night as a sign of rebellion!

Hence, songs like Spaghetti and Do It All Again resemble generic pastiche of clichés that make it seem like it’s White Douchebags Channeling Bob Marley Festival all over again. Songs like their first single Chloe (You’re the One I Want) and XO make them sound like they are channeling LFO and it’s 1999 all over again.

Unlike One Direction and even LFO, though, this album lacks any memorable songs. I mean, we can all claim that One Direction is overexposed and the five idiots in that boyband are too annoying for words, but their people know how to buy them catchy ear candy tunes. Emblem3 don’t have that going for them, though, as this album is full of generic “I’ve heard all that before” pop songs with the added handicap of them being privileged white boys pretending to be streetwise black guys from Jamaica hoping to be mistaken for Bob Marley.

And they didn’t even have to foresight to cover their deficiencies by at least posing half-naked on the CD cover. Not that they are hot pin-up material worth a second look, but how about trying at least?