 "Photo: Courtesy Google Images")
Somebody hurt Ashley Tisdale and she is going to make them pay.
Obviously someone broke her heart because, of the 14 songs on her new album, Guilty Pleasure, nine of them are her yelling at someone who has wronged her in some way.
The album is basically a break-up anthology, complete with all the rage and resentment you would expect from a 40-year-old divorcée, not a Disney child star.
Once the album ended, it left me wondering which cast member of "High School Musical" slept with her and didn't call her the next day, because she is bitter.
Most of the songs, including "Delete You" (which I'm sure is some form of cell phone or Facebook reference), have upbeat music, but far less positive messages - "Slashing up, all your tires/Smashing up, all your flowers/Grabbing back, all my power/Cause this is one more reason/I don't need you, delete you."
But it's not all break-ups and sadness. There are also songs about her wanting to break free (from her Disney image, I assume) and let her freak flag fly.
On the first song, appropriately titled "Acting Out," she proclaims "It's time to get dirty/I'm a show you what I'm talking about/It's another side of me/I'm acting out."
I'm sad to say, I see Playboy in her future.
This album is a reflection of a repressed, broken-hearted child star who is about one year away from shaving her head and beating a car with an umbrella (á la Britney). But for now, anyone going through a break-up or just wanting to listen to soft-core, angry girl music, Ashley Tisdale is a surprising and reasonable choice.
That is, if you don't mind that the music in "Masquerade" sounds suspiciously like Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall."
And hopefully it doesn't bother you that she has an entire song about - well, to put it gently - "just been F'ed" hair. The song is called "Hair." Listen to it and you can feel uncomfortable, too.
I made the mistake of letting her PG acting resumé fool me. As it turns out, she is a bad little girl, and she wants you to know it.
Luckily, most of the messages on the album, as blatantly sexual and rage-filled as they might seem to an adult, would not mean a thing to a younger fan listening to it on the bus on her way to elementary school. Whether this is a blessing or a curse is beyond me.
It was actually a pretty entertaining album, and the next time I feel an overwhelming need to set fire to photos of an ex-boyfriend, at least I'll have a good soundtrack.
B+
moribhabor@unews.com
