sony Blog and Journals

Reviewer: Ming-Ming (mingmingly)
Artist: Ben Lee
Album: The Rebirth of Venus
Release date: April 28, 2009

As a woman, I agree that we always berate men about being more in touch with their feminine side. Ben Lee’s album The Rebirth of Venus is just that – an album about a man who thinks that we (man or woman) should get into touch with our feminine sides.

The result? A very interesting jumble of pop rock music that makes you feel good.

Though quite easily not the best album I’ve heard, it has many good points as well as some bad ones. It has a very nice upbeat pop quality with tunes and songs that make you want to get up and dance and sing along, like in songs such as Surrender (track 2).

So now that we have the pop down part, the lyrics are just a big jumble and the CD, as a whole, has no fluidity to it. There is one song about feeling good, another about Yoko Ono (historical value – song seems to be a dialogue from Lennon to Ono), but then there are songs like anthems (Rise Up) to stop war.

These ‘war anthems’ are admirable, but they are supposed to make me want to get up and do something… unfortunately Ben Lee does not achieve this, admirable attempt though.

With song names like ‘Boy with a Barbie’ and ‘I’m a Woman Too’ it makes me question is this is more a plea of homosexuality, rather than a man who thinks we all need to get in touch with our feminine side.

All in all, this album was good to listen to, not so great to lyrically listen to. It’s a feel good album that really makes you want to love (just listen to Song For The Divine Mother of the Universe, it makes you want to get up and hug everything.)

Tracks of Note:

Sing (track 3) makes you want to get up and quite literally sing… and dance.

I Love Pop Music (track 4) has a catchy sound, but this is the song that is all about ‘world issues’ that is just kind of thrown in there randomly, and it makes me laugh about how poorly it was executed.

Yoko Ono (track 6) is another fun pop song.