Album review: Jordin Sparks - Battlefield (3/5)

After Jordin Sparks won American Idol, her first couple singles failed to ignite my interest in her. That was until her Chris Brown duet, “No Air,” came along. The song was one of last year’s best pop moments. Clearly producers are looking to recapture that magic with Battlefield, but unfortunately fall short, as if they weren’t quite sure what it was about that song that made it a hit.

They, and Sparks herself, also seem unclear what type of pop star she should be, and too frequently she chases the sound of her prominent contemporaries. Is she a slinky electro-pop goddess like Rihanna? A rock-leaning pop belter like Kelly Clarkson? A lovelorn adult-pop balladeer like Leona Lewis? Many of the songs here try to cast Sparks in all three roles, without developing a niche of her own.

Most of the best tracks come in the first half. Two songs in particular do a much better job than the others of creating something distinctive. First there’s “S.O.S (Let the Music Play),” which effectively recycles Shannon’s 1983 hit to make a fun, upbeat song. Second there’s “Watch You Go,” which pushes Sparks closer to R&B with a cool beat and is the album’s best track. The cliché “I hate to see you leave, but love to watch you go” gives the song a good hook, and it’s nice to hear Sparks sound a little flirty (albeit mildly), since everything else comes across as so sanitized.

Other songs are fine, but not very distinctive. They push the right buttons, but we’ve heard them before. The Kelly Clarkson-like “Walking on Snow” opens the album on an upbeat note, driving the melody with guitar and synths. “Battlefield” is the Ryan Tedder-penned hit we’ve all heard, and while it’s a fine song, it’s not a knockout. “Don’t Let It Go to Your Head” is an obvious attempt at recreating the grandeur of “No Air.” While it has a nice sound, the chorus lacks a solid hook, so “No Air” it is not. “It Takes More” is another synth-based pop song; fine, but not distinctive.

Of the album’s second half, “No Parade” is the strongest track. It’s a torchy strings-and-piano ballad that allows Sparks to demonstrate her vocal chops moreso that than the mid-tempo and upbeat tracks that mostly populate Battlefield. She even sings in a lower register than usual, and it’s nice to know she has the range. Elsewhere she evokes Leona Lewis on the organ-fueled power ballad “Let It Rain,” and Rihanna on the synth pop “Emergency (911),” which has a decent beat but suffers from disruptive telephone sound effects. The album closes with three ballads, none of which manage to generate much musical spark or interesting lyrics. “Show me where it hurts, and I know that I can be the medicine that you need,” she sings on the last track, “The Cure.” With imagery of war, emergency services and pharmaceuticals in tow, Sparks' lyricists should work on more appropriate metaphors.

While it’s not a bad album, it suffers from too much calculus, as if it’s trying to appeal a little bit to everybody, rather than be a really great album for one audience. Consequently, too much of Battlefield chases other great singers without allowing Sparks to develop her own pop persona. Apart from “Watch You Go” and “S.O.S.,” there’s little here to distinguish Sparks from the pack. The album is also overproduced—Sparks clearly can sing, so why is her voice frequently tweaked with auto-tune and other studio tricks? The singer has potential, but too much of Battlefield is holding her back.

Best: Watch You Go, S.O.S. (Let the Music Play), Battlefield, Walking on Snow