Album: Monica

Album: Still Standing

Reviewer: Luke Winkie

Slant, 2010

Writing Disorders: Scorn Disease, Detachment Syndrome








Most Emo Phrase: “succumbing to the vanilla, paint-by-numbers soul”

They All Sound Alike: “it’s a usual heart-strong self-helper”

Read it Like ED: “keeps a pretty steady peak going throughout its four minutes”




Luke Winkie. Holy cow, that’s unfortunate. Well hey, if John Boehner can get people to call him BAYNER, I’m sure anything’s possible. Funny thing is that I’d already been working on ripping another of your reviews before this one came along. At least I’ll have something to fall back on when a slow day comes a knockin’.

Luke, the biggest beef I had with your review is that you’re clearly bullshitting most of it. It’s okay though, you’re not alone. I used to do the same thing when I really had no experience in the genre of an album I was nonetheless assigned to review. And like my former self, you’re not exactly humble about it:

“Unfortunately, the rest of Still Standing is immediately forgettable, inhabiting the colorless world that has doomed the majority of mainstream R&B over the last decade”

Oh, right, the decade you started in third grade. Look Luke, I’m not ragging on your age because I think teenagers have nothing to add to the world. It’s just a bit much to believe that someone who writes for Delusions of Adequacy as a high school senior was following mainstream R&B avidly during the decade leading up to it.

What else you got?

“Monica has never been a top-tier R&B diva. Her sixth album, Still Standing, seems to hint at an unflinching resolve in the face of irrelevance but ends up succumbing to the vanilla, paint-by-numbers soul we’ve come to expect from her.”

Luke, you’re 18 years old. Monica’s debut album hit triple platinum before you learned to pee in a toilet. So I imagine some folks who were listening to something other than Barney in the late ‘90s might “come to expect” something different than you do. To clarify, you might note that by “we,” you really meant boys who’d rather listen to Pavement. Or in the interest of not really knowing what the f you’re talking about, you might consider writing “according to the Wikipedia search I did on Monica, it doesn’t appear she was a top-tier R&B diva in the 2.2 section of Contents.”

Here’s something to ponder, Luke. Maybe an R&B artist falls on harder times not necessarily because of her music, but because ¼ of the rating aggregation of her new album comes from a dude in full Ziggy Stardust regalia whose tagline reads “just your average music journo with SERIOUS opinions about Television’s Marquee Moon.” Somehow I don’t envision you keeping heavy tabs on the negro music scene, but I could be dead wrong. I’ll take the risk.

All right, let’s move away from your early childhood PhD in R&B and just take a gander at your closing argument to wrap this up. What I’m doing here might be illegal in some states, so I don’t want to push too hard.

“Monica’s syrupy voice is still undeniably strong, and Still Standing is unquestionably heartfelt, but it’s almost impossible to recommend, particularly when an artist like Erykah Badu is putting out a new record at almost exactly the same time”

Dude, you just DID recommend it. Believe it or not, there are people out there who like their voices strong and their R&B albums heartfelt. And let me see if I have this right. It’s almost impossible for you to recommend this album because another artist’s album you haven’t yet heard is coincidentally being released around the same time? Call me nuts, but I don’t think that kind of logic’s just cause to be pissing on an artist’s heart and soul. In my mind, that’s a dick move, Luke Winkie.