I don’t know what the depth of her involvement is but she was involved with writing some of the songs. The bulk of the album was still written by other people but at least she is involved with it to some extent. With 49 minutes and 35 seconds it’s actually “long” for the demographic, most CD’s tend to be shorter than that.

Best way to to describe the genre of the album is straight and simple pop, while on her first album she tried to throw a little R&B in there she kept (almost) away from that this time. What I am not sure of is what kind of demographic this album is meant for exactly? The strange thing is that in song she sings about rebelling against her parents and in the next song she talks about getting tattoos.

Music is also meant for people to express emotion, feelings, ideas, all sorts of things. You never really get the feeling that there was any real thought put into that on this album, the themes of the songs are just a bit too random. It’s just a collection of songs recording by the same artist. Now lets get to those songs though.

What’s good and bad? Lets start with the bad part, I can’t really say that there are horrible tracks on it. Two songs that don’t really fit however are Hair and Crank It Up. Some people will like them but to me they feel like they shouldn’t be on there. One thing that can be said about most of the songs is that it’s just a bit too overproduced. The voice of an artist is the main part of their music, when that part is pushed into the background there is just something lacking. That the music mostly comes from a computer doesn’t help it, a computer should be a tool to make better music. Not a replacement for instruments (unless it’s electronic music of course). I have to make one note about How To Love Someone though, far too dramatic music wise.

Now to the good stuff, lets just pick the songs that really stand out. I would name the best tracks It’s Alright, It’s OK (the first single), Erase and Rewind and Switch. Just uncomplicated pop songs with sometimes a tiny little bit of rock thrown in. That’s probably the best way to describe most of Ashley’s album, just uncomplicated. It is what it is and doesn’t pretend to be more than an average pop album.

So now to a verdict, as I said it’s just an average uncomplicated pop album. So it would be a quite alright album, for a sixteen year old. Thing is that Ashley is 24 and I don’t want a 24 year old to be singing about teen rebellion, just seems out of place. It really isn’t music that you would skip if you had it on your playlist but I just can’t give it a high rating for the earlier mentioned reasons. So I have to keep it at two out of five, even though it seems very low, compared to other things I just can’t rate it higher.

I have to make clear that I support the writers (I’m trying to be one myself so I have to really), though I also understand the AMPTP (Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers). The main point of argument is the compensation for online content, so when they’ve made a TV show or movie and it’s also streamed on the internet. Of course the writers want to be paid for this but no one knows how the internet market will develop.

It’s a time where developments go really quickly, you can’t actually know how much money the internet content will make over the years. So it’s understandable that the studios were very hesitant, though pretty much paying them nothing at all is a bad idea when going into talks. At some times the strike got a bit silly though, there were some AMPTP and WGA mud slinging matches.

The real victims right now aren’t the big actors though, they have plenty of money to live of, it’s the production crews that are suffering. Studios responded to the strike by firing the “common” man working in their studios. So in that regard it will take some time until the industry recovers, some people have left to get other job because they need to eat. That’s not really what this site is about though, so lets take a look at what consequence it has had on our featured actresses in particular.

The strike pretty much meant that production halted on movie projects and TV shows. The damage to movies is actually limited because it sometimes takes years before a movie gets from script to actually finished movie. Except for projects that have shorter production times, we’re talking popular projects that require a fast production time before it becomes unpopular again. In our case there’s only one clear victim: Disney.

Shooting for High School Musical 3 and the Hannah Montana Movie should almost have started already but they won’t. Simple reason is that their scripts aren’t done yet, they’re in the rough draft stage and they still need some work. It will probably mean that High School Musical 3 will be delayed until late 2008 while it’s very likely that the Hannah Montana Movie will be delayed until 2009. They don’t want both movies in theatres at the same time so even if they did rush them they’ll have a hard time fitting them into 2008 without them interfering with each other.

So in that regard it’s only a problem for people like Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Tisdale and other High School Musical Stars. For other movie projects our actresses are featured in it’s not really a big problem. They’re more long term projects and the ones that are planned for this year are already done or are already in the shooting stage so those should be released on time.

For TV it’s a bigger problem, the production time on TV shows is a lot shorter. Several TV shows have already run out of episodes, some even weeks after the strike started. Main victim of that was probably Kaley Cuoco when The Big Bang Theory stopped production just weeks into the strike (Not that it’s a show that would be missed on TV, I’m not too fond of it but that’s beside the point). Who knows when that will go back into production, it will be one very short season that much is certain.

Again Disney has to deal with it, production on a lot of their Disney Channel shows stopped. They seem to be trying to stretch their seasons until they have new episodes, new episodes of Hannah Montana have slowed to under one new episode per month. They’re done shooting season two but they probably want to stretch it until they can start production on season three (and the movie). Not that Miley Cyrus has had much trouble with it, she simply extended her concert tour by a month. Co-star Emily Osment has been keeping busy shooting a TV movie for Disney, so they’ve been doing fine. Though Hannah Montana fans are upset with the lack of new episodes.

For some shows I don’t actually know how many shows they have on reserve, for example Medium. It didn’t start its season until 2008, they probably produced most of the shows in advance but not all. Sofia Vassilieva has once stated that they get their scripts about two weeks before shooting so the time between writing ans production is very short. That also means that once the strike is over they can go back into production quite quickly again, depending on whether they can get all their support staff back.

One of the other most notable victims is Heroes, they’ve only put out eleven episodes this season. They planned to do the season in two halves which probably will save them, seeing they can go into a third season without real continuity problems. It does mean that people like Hayden Panettiere haven’t been really busy so far, even though she signed on to a new movie project, that just hasn’t started shooting yet.

That’s another thing with the strike, pilot season is coming up as they call it. It’s when production companies make pilot episodes of new shows, based on those episodes they decide whether to take a show into their programming or not. The main problem right now is; there are no pilot scripts so there’s nothing to shoot. It might very well mean that there will be no to very few new TV shows for the 2008-2009 season. It’s also good news for people that fear their favourite show might be cancelled though, the studios will be more likely to renew existing shows.

So that’s good news for people that enjoy shows like Medium (Sofia Vassilieva) and One Tree Hill (Sophia Bush and others); they’ve been renewed on a season to season bases in recent years. The strike might have improved their chances of renewal considerably. It also means that a lot of the crappy new shows (somehow all new sitcoms that came along this TV season were horrible to complete crap) might get renewed as well. So it might very well be a very boring 2008-2009 TV season, just a good thing that the movies coming out this and next year haven’t been influenced a lot.

I just hope that something like this doesn’t happen again, a lot of behind the scenes people have suffered from the strike and will probably need some time to recover from it. Three months without income is a disaster for any family with a normal income. Good thing the DGA (Directors Guild of America) has already agreed on a deal so they won’t be striking. However the SAG (Screen Actors Guild) is coming to an end and they have similar issues with the AMPTP as the WGA had, so lets just hope it doesn’t lead to another strike.

What I mean by that is that 90% of pop music just lacks an identity of its own; you wouldn’t even notice if someone else was singing the song. In the past you could tell what band or artist was doing a song by listening to a song for about thirty seconds, that’s something rare these days. The explanation for this is quite simple looking at the singing actresses; they don’t write their own music. The music is written for them and in some cases even by the same people. I’m not judging the singing ability in this editorial; all of the girls mentioned can sing (or can be enhanced electronically enough). I’m just looking at the music itself.

Just look at the discography of Kara DioGuardi there are dozens of artists she’s written for on it. For this site the two main examples are Hilary Duff and Lindsay Lohan for who she took care of the bulk of the writing for all their albums. Kara is an incredibly talented woman, I doubt anyone manages to write that many successful songs but her success is also the problem. All songs might be different but most of the songs have a similar style which is just noticeable at times.

Vanesssa Hudgens and Ashley Tisdale of course know each other from High School Musical but are signed to different record companies. I still think their case is the best example of how interchangeable music is; they both try their hand at a pop sound with a little R&B mixed in. The voices are different but the general sound of the album is the same. This all just means one thing; they’re lacking their own music identity.

It’s still not the most generic music out there; I would have to say that that’s the music by Mandy Moore. I’ve listened to her music and there are maybe one or two songs that I like the other songs are just boring. You can listen to Mandy Moore music all day and at the end of the day you wonder what you’ve been listening to. I also wouldn’t be able to tell you what a typical Mandy Moore song sounds like, it’s just too generic. The best analogy I can think of is elevator music (Mandy Moore fans are probably going to hate me for that comment); you can listen to it all day without really hearing anything. Mandy has five albums out now and she only co-wrote multiple songs on the last one so she’s quite late with trying to develop her own sound (though I can’t really hear a big difference to her earlier albums).

Of course it’s not easy to find your own musical identity, a while back Emmy Rossum released her first video clip and I thought this might be someone with their own identity. Now that I’ve listened to her entire album I can say that I was wrong, it might not be the most generic pop sound it’s still nothing special. The single featured in the video clip probably is the best song of the album which would explain why it’s the first single.

I actually had some hope when I heard that Emily Osment was starting to sing (even though only on the soundtrack of one of her movies). When talking about her favourite music she talks more about music like AC/DC so I figured she would have a different sound. Though it was not to be, the soundtrack to her movie is pretty much generic pop. That is a bit weird really; seeing she plays a gothic girl in the movie.

Miley Cyrus hasn’t really managed to find her own identity yet either, both the Hannah Montana soundtracks are songs that she didn’t really have a lot to do with. They were written to fit the show and are only performed by Miley. Her own album is different however, she has written the bulk of the songs on it (though with help from the Hannah Montana songwriters, Miley only plays the guitar and just guitar and song don’t make a complete composition). For the people that are going to say that she’s not being credited with the songs; the official credit is to Destiny Hope Cyrus, her actual name.

The difference with other people besides the writing of the songs is that she’s experimenting, not the entire album is one specific sound. Most of it is pop but there’s also a bit of dance, a bit of rock, even a very little bit of rap (what was she thinking) and an attempt of a song with a bit of a reggae sound. This means she’s experimenting; she’s looking for her own sound. I don’t think all of the songs turned out as she hoped, she even says herself that she can’t rap. Some of her songs might even be considered by some people.

Now I’m going to say something that will sounds strange; that’s a good thing. It’s not a good thing that some of her songs are bad but it’s a sign that she’s willing to experiment and willing to take risks, something most current artists aren’t really willing to do. Hilary Duff has completely changed her sound from one album to the next she’s now trying to profile herself with dance music; which isn’t a good idea either if you ask me. If she really wants to find a sound of her own she should experiment more with different genres like Miley does. The fact Miley is also one of the few that actually seem to know how to play an instrument is also a sad thing. I’ve never seen anyone else with an instrument anyway, let alone on stage (Miley Cyrus again is an exception, she plays her song I Miss You accousticly as an encore at her concerts).

Most of them really only sing songs that are written for them, to be a real musician you also have to be able to make music. Not that I blame them for signing record deals, it’s a good source of income. I just wish that some of them would make more of an effort of creating a sound of their own.