98 Degrees have taken a stab at a comeback with their new record, 2.0. The album, which has a plethora of dance anthems, electronica breakup songs, and few ballads had the opportunity to be a strong return to the boy band genre that had all bus become distinct in this age of pop music. But, as with all feeble attempts of boy bands in the past decade, it has fallen pretty flat.
The bulk of the record is a mixture of club music with cliché pop lyrics, as is seen in songs like “Microphone," “Hush, Hush” and “Ayo." These tracks are very electronica in nature, are good for the club scene, but for an album, they don’t work that well.
The good news is that Nick Lachey and company do break away from the club formula for a few solid tracks. One of these tracks, “Impossible Things," is an acoustic ballad and one of their strongest tracks lyrically. With lyrics like, “This love is like a dream that makes me do impossible things," this is the type of music one would hope to see from a mature band like 98 degrees.
Yet another strong ballad that they come out with is that of “Agree on Goodbye." This song features a lot with jazz instrumentals infused with solid lyrics work very well.
With all of this said, it was a decent album put together by the veterans of 98 degrees, but as we have seen with the direction of pop music this decade, there needs to be more variety of tastes in the songs. And, this could have been a much more solid record then it was.
2.5 Stars