In the tradition of Elton John’s “Your Song,” the singer regrets having a limited artistic palette on hand to express his love (“The Painter”). Other tracks pledge unselfish devotion (“All for Love,” “Baby I Would”), desire a girl who’s “real” and “smart” (“Girl”), and compliment a wallflower lacking self-confidence (“Shy Girl”).
Sexual fantasies dominate “Every Six Seconds” and “Liquid Dreams.” The former finds a guy imagining his girlfriend “14,000 times a day” in lingerie or skinny dipping (“Until you give me some . . . I cannot concentrate on anything but this urge I have inside”). The latter turns its erotic focus on magazine photos of “a dominatrix supermodel beauty queen” (“Every night she comes to me and gives me all the love I need”). A mild profanity pops up as these young men ogle the “Sexiest Woman Alive.”
Last spring, ABC television aired the talent search/reality series Making the Band. Viewers tuned in to watch 25 boy-band wannabes get whittled down to just a handful of winners. Well, here they are—the prefab five. But lack of originality isn’t the problem. It’s that O-Town’s processed pop sentiment can’t overcome its erotic obsessions and impure daydreams. God wants teens to take every thought captive (2 Cor. 10:5). They can start by skipping O-Town.
