My Life – jj My Life – jj

You Know – jj You Know – jj

A short eight months after releasing a debut album, jj just dropped their second album, cleverly titled jj n˚ 3. While trying to ride the hype of their first album and get the second out in a speedy fashion, their music has failed to progress as a disappointing result. This Swedish duo, consisting of Joakim Benon and Elin Kastlander, became famous with the song Ecstasy, which uses Lil Wayne lyrics. In another attempt to capture the magic lyrics from Lil Wayne, they produced the song My Life.

One of the things that made Ecstasy so popular and appealing was its up tempo electro-pop beat contrasted with Elin Kastlander’s somber tone and mournful lyrics. They tried to recapture this mass appeal in My Life, but without the up-tempo beat and rather slow piano instead, the whole song is just melancholy and depressing. This seemed to set the tone of the album. Other songs, such as And Now, while more up-tempo in its entirety, end up dragging me back to the melancholy of the first track.

With only 9 tracks totaling 27 minutes, the album had one song right in You Know, which captured the duo’s great contrasting strength. The album creates a sense of calm and euphoria when that contrast is briefly visited, but ultimately struggles to keep up with its predecessor. The result is an album that, while pleasant to listen to, is rather forgettable.

They were on the right track, but I honestly believe that they would have been better off by waiting a little longer before releasing their second album. Plus, finding themselves musically, and learning what made them such good artists on their first album would have done them a lot of good. I would not say that the album was bad because it was far from it, but I do think that there was much more that they could have given us after listening to their last album. I give this album 3 bees out of 5.