Choreographer Robin Antin – the mastermind behind the super sassy, burlesque, er, music group the Pussycat Dolls – must be kicking her heels up somewhere right now. With the success of the PCD’s albums, the opening of the Pussycat Doll Lounge in Las Vegas in 2005 and the slew of spin-off reality shows surrounding the ladies of the PCD, Antin can sit back and rest assured that her contribution to America’s music scene and artistic landscape will bring her lots and lots of money.
That’s more or less what the PCDs were manufactured (or programmed?) to do. The new album, Doll Domination, is void of anything genuine and stuffed to the brim with big names, sexy lyrics, girl power and other vapid one-liners that will put dollars in the pockets of everyone involved (and the girls’ names in flashing lights).
OK, before I dive too deep into my rant, I admit, the PCD are not all as bad as they seem. I couldn’t resist adding the hit from Doll Domination, “When I Grow Up” to my workout mix when it was released on iTunes. It really does pump you up! Their last album was also relatively harmless. But the thing about the PCD is that they are so manufactured, so produced, so thrown together that the label “dolls” is unbelievably appropriate for these girls. Shiny, plastic and perfectly made up, the PCD don’t leave any room for mistakes. They fit so perfectly in the pop-music mold created by has-beens like Britney and Christina that they blow everyone else out of the water ... and make us wonder if they’re even human.
There are some songs on Doll Domination that are worth mentioning. “When I Grow Up” is an amazingly fun song to go out to, and the music video won the girls a moon-man at the VMAs this year. The lyrics are alarmingly shallow but forgetful, just like “Takin’ Over the World,” another fun song seeped in triviality and sex. What annoys me the most about the PCD is that they constantly promote girl togetherness, yet girl-power becomes a sexual weapon, a punishment for men in songs on Doll Domination. In “Takin’ Over the World,” the girls sing, “Now we don’t mess around / You see me with my crew / You love how we get down.” It’s a challenge to men, as in, “girls’ night out, so don’t even try it guys.”
I quickly became a sucker for “Love the Way You Love Me,” a quasi-love song with a light-hearted beat. It’s definitely a cute song that I got a kick out of against the racy backdrop of the rest of the album.
The PCDs and Interscope jam-packed Doll Domination with as many big names as possible to salvage the rest of the tracks. Snoop croons over “Bottle Pop,” which sounds exactly like “Buttons,” and Missy Elliot is featured on “Whatcha Think About That” for some reason. Polow da Don, who produced several tracks, teams up with R. Kelly on “Out of This Club,” a ridiculous pseudo-love song about leaving a club together. Romantic! Timbaland, J-Roc, and the geniuses of The Clutch production team produced a couple of songs, but their songs are so loaded with synthesizers that I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t use the PCD at all for recording. Oh, and go ahead and skip over “In Person” — you’re not missing anything.
The PCD have been compared to everything from the Spice Girls to Destiny’s Child (especially in relation to singer Nicole Scherzinger’s breakout, which looks a lot like Beyonce’s) to the Bratz line of dolls, and they have been called a “brand” rather than a “band.” The simple and genius fact that keeps the PCD so popular, so valuable and so annoying, is that there is always a market for them. Girl bands recycle much easier than boy bands, because girls can always be sexy or sensitive or a mix of both. The music may not be that great, but the machine won’t slow down because of stalls in creativity. When Scherzinger, who is already 30, starts slowing down, she can be easily replaced. Welcome to the doll house.
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