“Miracle” by Jonas Brothers, Sunday, May 21, 2023

I was talking with my Gen X coworker earlier this year about music, and somehow Jonas Brothers came up. He asked me, as a defender of pop, if the band of brothers had ever made a good album. I thought about the question. Of course, I can’t consider the teeny-bopper music from the band’s early days. But I could say that Nick Jonas’ latest record Spaceman was a masterfully produced album by Greg Kurstin blending ‘80s and ‘90s R&B with contemporary electronic pop. I thought that the DNCE record was fun. I thought that “Sucker” was a great Ryan Tedder production and showed potential for where the Jonas Brothers could go, although Happiness Begins was a bit of a disappointment. But no, I couldn’t say that I liked any Jonas Brothers album.

ROCK FOR ME TO STAND ON. But that all changed when Jonas Brothers released The Album last Friday. But being able to call this album great comes with years of breaking down some of my musical biases and hang-ups. The first is a discussion about when does a bubble gum act get the right to grow up? Nowadays many music critics will tell you that every song The Beatles ever put out is miles above any other act, but I wonder if that’s because we have Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band and what came after it? In the ‘00s “teeny boppers” had to do something drastically sexual to distance themselves from their innocent pasts and earn critical success. When teen heartthrob Justin Timberlake promised to “have you naked by the end of this song” or Britney Spears went full-blown “Toxic” critics started giving those acts more respect. It was a string of two singles that changed my opinion on Justin Bieber: “Sorry” and “Love Yourself”  before the singer’s Hillsong douchebaggary came to light. Miley Cyrus rode the wrecking ball and Harry Styles walked the Fine Line somewhat distancing themselves from their respective Disney and boy band careers. The redemptive arc of Jonas Brothers would be Nick and Joe’s solo efforts. But the second caveat has to deal with the musical trend of embracing what is—no—what was the opposite of cool: soft rock, more specifically the sounds of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s nicknamed in the early days of  “Yacht Rock.”

WINTER WITH THE A.C. The latest offering from Jonas Brothers opens with the smooth-to-bombastic “Miracle.” On a recent episode of the podcast Switched on Pop, Charlie Harding talks with Kevin, Joe, and Nick Jonas about the musical influences that made them decide to make music together once again. Nick told Charlie, “[The Album] was about putting something together that sounded like what coming to one of our shows is like. We’re a band, and it’s band music.” The implications of this question my ‘00s understanding of what a band is, though. If I turned on MTV and saw blink-182 running around naked, I knew that their live shows, each member of the three-piece were playing instruments. But most small bands hire back up musicians who aren’t permanent members. So are Jonas Brothers a band? One topic the brothers talked about in the Switched on Pop interview is other musicians diminishing Jonas Brothers’ musicianship. Rather than focusing on what is not music, the brothers refocused the conversation on their musical influences that went into The Album. They fondly recalled the records they listened to with their dad—Bee Gees, America, Paul McCartney, and Stevie Wonder—and hearing that makes a lot of sense in the context of The Album. And today’s song seriously takes some Stevie Wonder influence. The smooth sounds of the latest Jonas Brothers album arrived just in time for a scorching hot summer. And even if we’re going to feel awkward about this release in ten years, in the summer of ‘23 the once uncool is now seriously cool.

Read the lyrics on Genius.