Review: “O2” by O-Town (CD, 2002)

Today’s Pop Rescue from a fate uncertain is the 2002 second album cleverly titled O2 from boy band O-Town. Will this album be the oxygen to your day, or should you have Showed it to the bin? Read on…

O-Town - O2 (2002) album — O-Town – O2 (2002) album.

Last time we reviewed an O-Town album, we gave it a 1 star review, so we’re a bit apprehensive about listening this time – but we found the CD still shrinkwrapped with promo sticker and a competition card to win some movie tickets – mint – opening it for this review 22 years later! Here we go…

This 13 track (help!) CD album opens with From The Damage, which swaggers in with piano and guitars, evolving over one of the band’s vocals – giving us an unexpected raspy vocal pop-rock start. The band’s harmonies work well here as they belt out their lovestruck lyrics over a fairly gentle plodding middle of the road track. It’s a pretty strong start to the album.

This quickly leads into the album’s lead single These Are The Days and we get a harder bass drum and a vocal intro that reminds me of Rod Stewart with a cold, or maybe it’s a male version of Tina Turner – not sure. Either way, we’re still in the harder rock pop sound for another mid-tempo wander. It’s a bit too plodding though, in a knock-off Bon Jovi style, and lacking in energy. The track, perhaps understandably, peaked at #36 in the UK singles chart.

I Only Dance With You is next, and here we’re given a nice gentle R&B track with lots of soft vocals and harmonies. Instantly recognisable is the melody for the chorus where we find Andrew Ridgeley and George Michael in the writer’s credits due to the use of ‘elements’ of Careless Whisper. Thankfully it’s not a sample, but over all, the track kind of works well.

Then we’re on to Favorite Girl, and this gives us a quite a nice simple and stripped back layered track of drum machine, electric guitar and vocal harmonies. This is actually quite a catchy track and perhaps should have been the lead single instead of These Are The Days.

That’s followed by US promo single I Showed Her, which gives us a piano-led reflective ballad. Here, whichever O-Townian is singing, does a wonderful job of singing the sad lyrics. A dramatic drum fill arrives and we’re into the paint-by-numbers American ballad territory proper, and the song tiptoes along as you’d expect it to. The vocals are pretty good though until the key change, where it serves up plenty of ‘woah woah woah’ fromage harmonies.

The tempo lifts for next song Been Around The World, which sees a nice up-beat er… beat, and the vocals are somewhat playful alongside the growling guitars. I’m reminded somewhat here of Lisa Stansfield’s hit All Around The World, and somewhat surprised to not find her in the writer credits. The chorus is reasonably catchy.

Make Her Say is next, and this brings us more growling guitars along with shouty boy band testosterone-fueled ‘na na naaa’ vocals. The guitar solo is an unexpected treat here, although it’s over so fast with this quick-paced romp.

Then we’re on to The Joint, which drops in some samples and record scratching. It’s swiftly established that the song is about a place ‘a joint’ rather than something to smoke… which obviously plays to the boy band image. Anyway… this drops us back on to some R&B sounds and it’s fairly catchy as well as quirky with the sudden stops and starts.

Suddenly is next – fortunately it’s not the Angry Anderson epic soundtrack to Scott and Charlene’s Neighbours wedding song from the 1980s. Instead, it is a melodic guitar and vocal mixture in which the vocals get to show a more rock pop song again, and amusingly there’s a Beatles/Oasis echo here, and it kind of works alright. Lyrically, the song perhaps addresses the band’s ageing.. something that becomes more apparent by the time of their next album – 12yrs later.

Next is Craving although i misread the sleeve note as ‘Carving’. Here we get a wash of drums and electric guitars. The guys also get to show off some vocal range in their harmonies as well as when they’re performing solos. It’s a nice enough song when it gets going.

That’s followed by Over Easy, and we get another guitar-led melodic mid-tempo song. It reminds me of some later Take That tracks, meets a dash of Cast. It’s another nice song, but it lacks some of the stand out points needed to be memorable.

Then we’re on to Girl Like That, which throws us into another R&B track, with drum machine, rapid-fire vocals, and lyrics about girls, drinking, and partying. This feels like more of a boy band sound, and it’s only really the electric guitar solo that makes it feel less like something that Blue or Five might have passed on. The chorus is pretty catchy after a while though, but the track ends on a bit of a ‘what shall we do now’ soft ‘yeaaaahhh’.

The album closes with You Can’t Lose Me, and this takes a more downbeat song, and gives us a gentle song with nice gentle vocals that compliment the track as it evolves. It feels like it belongs to someone else, and O-Town deliver it perfectly. It’s a nice soft track to close the album on.

O-Town’s lead single ‘These Are The Days’ (2002).

Verdict

Over all, this album is surprisingly good, and shows a much more matured sound from this boy band.

Our dread at listening to this album was misplaced, and instead of the sound of their debut, this album showcases a harder more mature sound that befits their career progression. The highlights here are I Only Dance With You and Favorite Girl – both of which should have been singles, and also From The Damage and You Can’t Lose Me. These are all songs that feel fully fledged, with interesting sounds and moments in them or just damn catchy.

At the album’s lowest point we find Make Her Say, and I think this one is down to the delivery of the shoutiness that I don’t appreciate, but there are some other tracks that are just a bit dull – sadly lead single These Are The Days is amongst this too, and really should not have bothered to be a single when there’s clearly better songs that could have brought them hits and an evolved sound.

Ultimately, whilst we didn’t like their debut album, this one is much better, and is worth a play if you like your bad boy boy bands.