Mary J. Blige - ”Good Morning Gorgeous” Album Review
R&B legend Mary J. Blige dropped another album just before her second Super Bowl performance.
Before the album’s release, Mary J. shared three singles “Good Morning Gorgeous,” “Rent Money (feat. Dave East)” and “Amazing (feat. DJ Khaled)” and out of these tracks, “Good Morning Gorgeous” proved to be a success.
A variety of features are on the album including Anderson .Paak, Fivio Foreign and Usher.
The album as a whole is a mixed experience with highs and lows. All of the songs align with Mary J’s older R&B sound and are occasionally spruced up with trap beats, but the songs aren’t anything new.
In the beginning, the album starts off pretty strong. Several of the leadoff tracks create a somewhat unique and very “Mary J. Blige” feeling. Nothing special can really be found in the background music, but her vocals and her feature verses are complemented well.
“No Idea,” “Here With Me” and “Rent Money (feat. Dave East)” are some of the better songs on the album, all produced by Bongo ByTheWay.
It is sad to say, however, that this album does have some outright terrible music, and most of the tracks happen to be her hip-hop/trap and R&B combinations.
Ironically, the fifth track titled “Amazing” may be the worst thing that happened to this album.
The instrumentation of this track is disastrous and the lyrics are lacking. The whole song is repetitive, the beat is messy and it doesn’t match Bilge’s voice at all.
A lot of the songs on the album felt inorganic, but this one was no doubt the worst track out of all of them. On top of not sounding good, its function in the album also isn’t clear and it sticks out in a bad way.
Fortunately, the interlude for “Good Morning Gorgeous” starts up afterward and some redemption for that abomination is able to be found.
Throughout the last of the tracks, Bilge presents some pretty mediocre music. Up until the very end of the album, nothing spectacular comes along to save the day, but luckily none of the songs get worse.
The problem that makes this album so unappealing probably has a lot to do with production and lyrics.
Bilge is a singer with a pretty good range and strong vocals and the features on this album are, for the most part, amazing artists as well.
If the songs were created to match the artists better, then there wouldn’t be so much of an issue, but sometimes it felt like the background music was trampling over Bilge’s singing making more of a noisy feeling than a musical one.
The lyrics also didn’t carry much meaning and often sounded really generic. Even the features didn’t add much to the musicality of some tracks.
Fivio Foreign’s feature on “On Top,” for instance, wasn’t bad standing alone, but mixing it with Bilge’s verses seemed off-putting and kind of random.
On the whole, the album was really disappointing. It wasn’t the worst album in the world, but it may have just become one of the worst albums in Mary J. Bilge’s discography.
In the future hopefully, Bilge changes her approach. It might be a good choice for her to leave hip-hop elements out of her music or get producers that understand what will sound good with her vocals.
Rating: 4/10
Reviewer’s Favorite Tracks: “Good Morning Gorgeous” and “Come See About Me”
Reviewer’s Least Favorite Tracks: “Amazing (ft. DJ Khaled)”
Erell Williams is a first-year majoring in broadcasting journalism. To contact her, email exw5303@psu.edu.
