Oh, of course it’s terrible. It’s designed to be terrible because that’s what pisses off parents in 2010 -- not noise, not gender-bending, not sex, but pure bad taste, the kind of thing that provokes instantaneous instinctual recoil from anybody with good sense. Jedward laugh in the face of propriety, or they would if they had any idea what it was. Jedward live on a planet where proper decorum is an alien notion, a planet constructed from the debris of MTV, a planet where ancient history is "Pop Muzik." Jedward, a pair of twin brothers from Ireland who made a splash on X Factor by being the sand in Simon Cowell’s tight T-shirt, don’t care much for pop music; they’ll sing whatever comes their way as long as it makes them pop stars. So, the diabolical minds behind their debut -- named Planet Jedward because they do truly seem like aliens -- feed them a candy string of junk hits and classics, latching onto an inspired mash-up of “Under Pressure” and “Ice Ice Baby,” stealing Backstreet Boys tunes, and tweaking any old punker who happens upon this platter by singing the Undertones’ classic “Teenage Kicks.” There’s no way that Jedward know the tune or what it means to a certain generation but that’s the kick of this record: it’s by and for a generation that does not know and does not care about any of this. It’s junk in its purest form, so transient it seems past its sell-by date by the time it’s pressed on CD or even when it’s available as a digital download. It’s music for the moment…that moment being the very minute it’s aired on TV and as soon as it’s gone, Jedward seem like an artifact from another, crasser time. And with the benefit of hindsight, it’s hard not to look back and marvel at how deliriously, wonderfully terrible that one moment was.
© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo