Lindsay Lohan’s Speak is barely 40 minutes of pink grease and plastic guitars. “I’m not above being under/I’m at the brink though I know that I’m empty” or “There’s a good kind of pain/An insane kind of sane” — its lyrics are soul-choking jumbles of self-empowerment and love-speak generica, attended by manically tweaked instrumentation and the smog of apathy. Honestly, there are McDonald’s jingles more resonant than anything here. At least McDonald’s gives you a tasty sandwich before the inevitable rotgut. In contrast, Speak is selfish and cruel, a cash-hungry vanity project without the tact to even offer memorable hooks behind its indifferent romance musings and paparazzi hateration. In a late-night TV Time-Life ad of the freedom-rock future, this record will be proffered alongside Ashlee Simpson’s Autobiography and Hilary Duff’s self-titled second effort. Bundled in shrink-wrap once worn by Paris Hilton, the three-album package will guide future listeners through the mid-’00s pop-music peep show, where the booths were spacious and shiny but offered nothing behind their glass but plastic mannequins accompanied by piles of spangled denim and interchangeable wigs. Speak isn’t even music — it’s a pitch-corrected Darvocet IV drip for people who Tivo E! News Live, and it hates you.
Johnny Loftus writes about music for Metro Times. E-mail [email protected].
