Ashley Tisdale - Guilty Pleasure album review

2 comments | Published by Rach Read |

Sometimes in life, it’s the simple things that matter. A smile or the sun shining or Hallmark card-y stuff like that. The same is true for music – not all songs have to be life-changing or rule-breaking, edgy or avant-garde. Instead, they just have to be very good and Ashley Tisdale’s second album, Guilty Pleasure, is just that.

Including the various bonuses floating about, Guilty Pleasure is twenty tracks of pure pop-rock at its finest that you really shouldn’t feel guilty for enjoying. Songs like the wonderfully-named Hot Mess, Masquerade, Delete You and the eponymous Guilty Pleasure will lodge themselves in your brain within a couple of listens and need Herculean levels of persuasion to coax them out again. Tisdale channels a Britney-Blackout lite on Crank It Up and Blame It On The Beat to winning effect; Acting Out, Overrated and Tell Me Lies are in the vein of Avril or Ashlee before they got too annoying whilst Erase & Rewind manages to be reminiscent of Katy Perry yet better than the majority of her album, without a whiff of Sapphic scandal in sight. Hair and Switch are cheesier than a platter of mouldering Roquefort yet substantially more delicious. Meanwhile, the Disney schmaltz that smattered her debut album is thankfully kept to a minimum – quality control ensures that even this balladry (the lush Me Without You and What If) is actually quite nice.

Tisdale might not have the vocal strength of a Clarkson, or even a Perry, yet she does have a distinctive tone that brims with character and charisma, rather like Tisdale herself (her Sharpay remains the mischievous knowing glee that anchors HSM). Guilty Pleasure will not change the world yet is all the better for knowing its boundaries. As a result, it’s frivolous fun that has not left my music player since its release.

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