Ashley Tisdale Is A Good Girl Gone Not-Quite-Bad

Our look at the closing lines of the week’s biggest new-music reviews continues with a roundup of reactions to Guilty Pleasure, the second solo effort from High School Musical alum Ashley Tisdale:


• ”That is, until the realization flashes that this, like so much in Tisdale’s career, is a careful pose from a showbiz kid who relishes performing so much she’ll try anything just along as she can stay on the stage. That attitude can be a little grating in High School Musical, because it was amplified in the character of Sharpay Evans, but here it largely works because her total commitment to the game can result in some truly fun disposable pop. Not everything works—Tisdale isn’t convincing when she tries to deal in either pain or carnality, but when she sticks to the surface, she makes sure that Guilty Pleasure lives up to its title. ” [Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide]


• ”But for a young woman eager to repudiate her pearly white past, songs like this no longer qualify as radical. Coming out as an adult is as unimaginative as remaining a child. ‘Wake up in your bra and your makeup,’ Ms. Tisdale, an average singer, gasps on ‘Hot Mess.’ ‘I’m leaving every piece of my conscience behind.’ But being bad, it turns out, is sort of boring.” [Jon Caramanica, New York Times]


• ”Unfortunately, Guilty Pleasure isn’t one, in part because it plays it so safe. The only glimmer of personality is glimpsed in ‘Hair,’ where Tisdale discourses for three minutes on the joys of having her tresses turned inside out by her boyfriend. Outside of that sure-fire slumber-party hit, she sounds like a perfectly shampooed showbiz product.” [Greg Kot, Chicago Tribune]


• ”At 24, though, she’s still treading an overly familiar pop-rock trail already better blazed by 16-year-old Miley Cyrus, and Guilty Pleasure isn’t so much pleasurable as simply vapid. Independent-girl anthems like ‘It’s Alright, It’s OK’ and ‘Delete You’ are glossy enough, but it would be better still to see Tisdale finally graduate.” [Leah Greenblatt, EW