Kelly Osbourne - Sleeping in the Nothing

By Joshua O'Connell
Posted Friday, July 8, 2005

The last thing I thought I'd be doing last month was picking up a copy of Kelly Osbourne's new CD. Her first CD had a passable cover of "Papa Don't Preach," but then "Shut Up" came out, with its "blah blah" part of the chorus that made me wonder what she and her record label were thinking.

The album didn't do that well, and she shifted labels to Sanctuary, which re-released it for whatever reason, but without any further result.

Enter her sophomore effort, "Sleeping in the Nothing," which takes a decidedly different turn. The rock elements are still there, but the synth side of things were turned up hardcore, thanks to the production of Linda Perry, who collaborated with Pink a few years ago and has been a hot property ever since.

The new album sounds heavily 80s, which has been done a lot lately, and its result is mixed, but definitely a step forward from her previous effort.

Lead single "One Word" hit big on the dance charts, being the first track to be number one on all three surveyed charts at the same time. It's a worthy single, with a heavy synth beat, and the remixes take it to all the appropriate points on the dancefloor.

"Suburbia," with its laments about how things are so blah and never really get better, is a surprisingly catchy tune, with a harmony during the chorus that's really quite striking. For that matter, the harmony constructs throughout the album are well done, a tribute to Perry.

"Entropy" plucks a very 80s-sounding beat, even more so than the rest of the album, which has at least some modern feel to it, and actually uses a science term well in a song. It's catchy though, and gets in your head fairly quickly.

Perry's songwriting is all over it, and at times you see disconnects from the difference between singer and songwriter. that make it fly off into left field. "Don't Touch Me While I'm Sleeping" is a song about date rape, and it just seems weird to hear Kelly Osbourne singing about it, although it's an interesting topic to do a song about. It just seems like the right song for the wrong artist.

Another issue is that some of the songs sound a bit similar, making the album start to lose its traction after awhile. "Secret Lover" has a similar backbeat to "Don't Touch Me While I'm Sleeping," and that makes it for an awkward pairing: date rape vs. secret lovers. "Redlight" has a synth riff that keeps going throughout the track, which is used almost identically in "Secret Lover" as well.

That seems to be the biggest problem here. While the overall concept is somewhat sound, and works well with Osbourne's improved singing, it seems like the number of creative ideas are exhausted long before the album is, leaving only certain standout tracks that elevate above the album. Take a track individually and it's fun and amazingly effective with its harmonies, faithful reproductions of the 80s sound and fun at parties for people to guess who it is. But listening to the entire album front to back, you start to feel that it get repetitive.

Still, it's a better fit for Osbourne, and shows some growth that will hopefully continue with the next album.

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