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Not all that hard to resist.

Jessica Simpson's new album, "Irresistible", sounds like a how-to for aspiring teen-pop singers. It's got everything you'd associate with this particular genre of music - the dance beats, the stuttering vocals, the synthesized effects, the Spanish guitars and drum machines, the sugar-sweet lyrics - except for one extremely important ingredient: originality.

The songs on "Irresistible" (of which the title tracks is undoubtedly the best) sound almost identical to each other, with very little to distinguish them individually. The themes are the same - teenage angst is a wonderful thing, you can never have enough of it - and Simpson's vocals, though perfectly adequate to the task, fail to stamp them with any unique characteristics. Of the numerous tracks on this album, "There You Are", her duet with Marc Anthony, the ballad "Forever In Your Eyes" and the interesting "Imagination" are worth a listen; the rest are - sadly - not too hard to resist.

This article was first published on11 Aug 2001.