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On How Life Is

Credits

Release Date

Record Label

Performance

Reviewer

Bob Waliszewski

Album Review

Pro-Social Content

“A Moment to Myself” plugs introspection and spreading love. Addressing God, Gray apologizes for doubt, admits to messing up her life (“I tried to live without you/What a misery it turned out to be”) and vows not to go astray (“I Can’t Wait to Meetchu”), but . . .

Objectionable Content

It doesn’t get much more wayward than “I’ve Committed Murder,” which finds the singer boasting about killing and robbing her lover’s ex-boss and heading to a Jamaican paradise (“And I don’t feel bad about it . . . As far as regrets I don’t have any”). Despite urging someone to quit using drugs on “Do Something,” Gray hypocritically confesses, “All I want to do is get high/I’ll get it together some other day.” Similarly dysfunctional, “Still” is sung from the perspective of a battered woman who keeps returning to the man who abuses her, convinced that their relationship actually improves when they’re doing drugs. Kinky descriptions of sex appear on “Caligula” (which uses the f-word and other slang for intercourse) and “Sex-O-Matic Venus Freak” (with references to oral sex, pornography and bondage). A suicidal woman says her last goodbyes in “The Letter.”

Summary Advisory

“I Can’t Wait to Meetchu” is so good it could’ve come from a CCM artist. So what’s with the rest of this nasty disc? Drugs. Suicide. Murder. Racy sex. Pray that teens don’t adopt Macy Gray’s warped views On How Life Is.

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Bob Waliszewski