Day 26 and Danity Kane: Will Making the Band 4’s Albums Find Success?
Making the Band alumni and Bad Boy labelmates Danity Kane’s “Welcome to the Dollhouse” and Day 26’s self-titled album will be on retail shelves over the course of the next two weeks. Both of these groups are creations of Diddy, the Bad Boy executive and producer of MTV’s Making the Band. While Danity Kane’s first album went platinum, newcomers Day 26 hope to make their mark on the industry with dreams of going “diamond” or at least outdoing the girls of DK, which might prove to be anything but an easy task by the sound of DK’s latest album.
Day 26 has the look and voices capable of an R&B super group, but I have to wonder if the world is ready for the throwback that is a large (> 2) soul group. Not since the days of 112, Boyz II Men, Blackstreet, and the return of New Edition, and MAYBE B2K (kidding) have we really seen a group like of this mold have a significant impact on the music industry.
After those legendary R&B groups, we saw the boy bands - Backstreet Boys, ‘NSYNC, 98 Degrees, and Making the Band’s first ever group, O-Town. While these groups would create the next generation of songs that you like because it lets you slow dance with girl at school dances, it’s hard to say that they’re really of the same mold as the R&B super groups of the 90’s.
Now, we’re in a new era, where R&B groups don’t really get a lot of airplay on stations like Los Angeles’ KIIS FM. R&B now lives on hip-hop stations, or strictly R&B stations, whereas Brian McKnight, Boyz II Men, and others used to have no problems finding their way to “hit music” (Top 40) stations. Considering the demographic of people watching MTV (which also houses The Hills, Rob & Big, and Newport Harbor) and the limited reach of R&B music compared to where it was over a decade ago, is this going to hurt Day 26?
Apart from Day 26, how will radio treat Danity Kane? In a curious move, Danity Kane’s first and identity defining first-ever single was “Show Stopper,” which was definitely their most hip-hop sounding track on what was a very dance- album. Confusing the image of the multi-ethnic, super vocally-talented group of girls even further was the fact that Yung Joc was on the song’s remix.
Were they hip-hop? Were they dance?
Who was Danity Kane apart from Aubrey’s good looks and Aundrea’s unbelievable voice?
Danity Kane’s “Show Stopper” didn’t show off the talented group’s vocals and it put them in a weird category of being a group that wasn’t really hip-hop, yet they kind of sounded like it, but they weren’t really by image. Diddy didn’t intend for the group to turn hip-hop, as he once reprimanded the outspoken Aubrey O’Day after she was “trying to sound Black” acting like she was at a hip-hop concert on stage, yet the first single’s content, beat, and sound was very much just that.
Danity’s newest album truly feels like an album of growth for a group that feels like it has found its identity as a group, that making songs that make you really want to dance in the club - not just sway back and forth or stand there while a girl grinds on you - but really dance. “Welcome to the Dollhouse” from top to bottom is a stronger album than the group’s self-titled debut, though I’m not completely sold on whether any track on the album is stronger that “Ride for You” off the first album.
While this album puts Danity Kane on track to be a dance group, I wonder if their identity has already been too established to make that transformation. With their first single “Damaged,” Danity Kane immediately switches gears with an upbeat song that could be the anti-”Show Stopper.” Powered by Aundrea’s always great vocals, the group shows they can harmonies, have great vocals, and avoids the melodic simplicity that plagues many a “dance group.” It’s a dance song, but it’s a Danity Kane dance song, if that makes sense.
With “Damaged,” the group immediately establishes its new identity that carries throughout the very danceable album, all the way down to “Is Anybody Listening?”, the album’s final and possibly best track (with “Poetry”) that slows it down a little bit for a track that is reminiscent of “Ride for You.”
In the first album, Danity Kane had an equal number of R&B styled tracks and dance tracks, while this sophomore album is filled with dance songs. Luckily for fans, the dance tracks are where Danity Kane managed to shine on the first album on songs like “One Shot.”
While I’m positive that it will be tough for Danity Kane to gather positive reviews together for “Welcome to the Dollhouse,” as I think it’s difficult for music reviewers to put a positive review in print for a group that was created on a reality television program, the group has achieved the rare feat of creating a different sounding pop album that is not a teeny-bopper album. It’s the kind of album that you listen to when driving long distances in the car with no traffic to be seen when you want to be kept awake and bounce around in your chair. And that’s when Danity Kane is at its best (other than its interludes, which are always awesome).
For Day 26, they have two more weeks to build the hype before their self-titled debut hits shelves and the jury is still out.
