Single Review: Nick Jonas – Chains
2 min read
It’s hard to believe that the Jonas Brothers were once kid-friendly Disney stars, donning Purity Rings as a promise to not have sex until marriage. Their music also reflected their innocence, bouncy pop-rock songs that anyone above the age of 13 would be embarrassed to listen to. So, you can imagine the shock to the system fans got when Nick Jonas announced the single, Chains, which contains images and themes that very much counteract his previous image as a celibate child-friendly rock star. It seems that this kid has grown up.
The problem however, is that Chains is a lazily-devised R&B/pop song that fails to stand out from its contemporaries. The lyrics themselves seem to have been taken from the Big Book of Pop-Song Clichés; “You got me in chains, you got me in chains for your love/But, I wouldn’t change, no I wouldn’t change this love” sings Jonas in a very Jason Derulo-style vocal. The melody and overall song composition is obviously meant to be catchy and likeable n the same vein as the myriad of other pop songs in the charts, but it just proves to be an annoyingly bad one. The song tries to build to its chorus, but to no effect. It leaves the listener with a shrug and a ‘meh, nothing special here’.
Admittedly, yes, it’s good to see Jonas cover more adult territory with his songs and leave behind his tweeny-bopper image. It’s just sad that it sounds like an average and overproduced clone of everything that’s been before it recently. This is by no means a single that you will enthusiastically play again and again. In fact, I recommend you avoid it and listen to the better pop stars of this generation like Rihanna and Taylor Swift. You’ll be sure to get tons of better satisfaction than this.
