- 360
- Live My Life for You
- What If
- Pray
- When I Get to Heaven
- Thy Word
- This Madness
- Footloose
- One Word
- Someday
- Summertime
- It's Still Love
The timing is almost too good to be true: A week before tween-pop debutantes pureNRG were set to hit the scene, underage veterans Jump5 announced they're calling it quits. Coincidence? Maybe, but I doubt the correlation matters much to either group. Tween-pop has a limited shelf life, appealing to the pre-teen set for about three or four years— roughly the amount of time it takes youngsters to make a full transition into adolescence and more age-appropriate music.
For that reason, the tween market is a revolving door always ripe for new acts, and pureNRG—members Jordan Yates (14), Carolyne Myers (11) and Caroline Williams (12)—fills the void nicely. True to its teen-pop nature, the group was put together by artist manager Norman Miller, the same guy behind—surprise!—Jump5, but also a businessman in charge of Proper Management, guiding the careers of such heavyweights as Casting Crowns and Nichole Nordeman.
The Miller factoid is an interesting one, as it puts into perspective their national debut, PureNRG. On the one hand, there's the music, a hyperactive amalgam that does justice to the threesome's name—equal parts teen-pop, pop/rock, dance-pop, and everything in between. There's nothing out of this world about any of these elements, but they're aptly handled by producer Rob Hawkins, who makes sure to inject enough intensity and beats-per-minute to every song so as to keep up with the attention span of the audience.
It's virtually Jump5 all over again, except PureNRG dares to go places Jump5 rarely went—namely, unabashed songs about their faith. "When I Get to Heaven," "Pray," and a pint-sized version of Amy Grant's "Thy Word" all reference their beliefs without qualms. Admittedly, they're not terribly deep, and there's enough fun and silliness elsewhere (including the token '80s remake, Kenny Loggins' "Footloose" in this case) to secure airplay in Radio Disney and other outlets. It's all delivered with such childlike wonder, though, you'd be hard-pressed to find fault with it.