Spun: Paris Hilton

By Ryan Pike

Paris Hilton entered the public eye with a bang in 2004, when a videotape of her having sex circulated throughout the internet. Hilton deftly leveraged her fifteen minutes into, among other things, a music career. If her first effort, Paris, is any indication, it won’t add any more sand to the hourglass.

From the get-go, there’s a feeling that all is not well in Paris. The opening number, “Turn It Up,” is a perfectly fine piece of dancepop drivel, but leaves the gnawing feeling that you’ve heard it before. And if you’ve heard Nelly Furtado’s “Promiscuous,” you have. Throughout the entire thing, it’s impossible to tell where Hilton’s voice ends and the over-polished production values begin, with her sounding like somebody doing drunk Kylie Minogue karaoke with professional back-up singers. The music isn’t amateur despite Hilton’s inexperience, leading cynics to assume she used her money and connections to make the album sound decent. Which she probably did.

Unfortunately for anyone unlucky enough to be listening, the badness doesn’t end with the obviously engineered sound. Apparently you can’t even buy good lyrics anymore, because Paris’ are absolutely fucking god-awful. No less than 23 people receive writing credits on the 11 tracks and if the credits are to be believed, Hilton had no input into six of the songs. There’s no coherence to the thing and it results in a patchwork abomination of cliches, mixed messages, and horrid mediocrity.

There’s no doubt Hilton’s hype machine will squeeze some drachmas out of the plastic coaster, but when the quality of the album could be missinterpreted as a hate crime against music fans, maybe it’s about time Paris Hilton succumbed to her dwindling relevance and myriad STI’s.

..Ryan Pike