Subscribe | Español 中文

Serving the University Community Since 1890

She's bare naked, and we can't take it

Remember how we laughed when Jennifer Love Hewitt released "How Do I Deal?" We clutched our stomachs with glee when she tried on some alt-rocker-chick clothes for the video, and we could barely contain our mirth when the single tanked.

Then there was the time Jennifer Love Hewitt played Audrey Hepburn in a made-for-TV movie. We grudgingly admitted she had the requisite coquettish big eyes, but the accent? The grace? The class? Jennifer Love Hewitt didn't quite get the extra blast into movie superstardom that maybe, perhaps, she had been aiming for.

We know you remember how she told the press she and MTV pansy Carson Daly had broken up before he knew about it. Tee hee, we snickered. How many nails are there left, we asked in only half jest, before the Jennifer Love Hewitt Coffin O' Fame is sealed?

Ah, those were the days. Now we are faced with three distressing facts: 1. Jennifer Love Hewitt has released another album (her fourth); 2. The album and the single are both called "Barenaked;" and most alarming of all, 3. The single is getting played on the radio.

You've heard it. You know you have, even if you can't remember it. Think breathy vocals rhyming "bare naked" with "can't take it." We winced, too -- and then prepared for yet another round of self-congratulatory sniggering when even Top 40 radio passed on the track. Oh, how wrong we were.

How did it happen? Have Jennifer Love Hewitt's many years of music industry whoring finally paid off? Come now, list them with us: Joey Lawrence, Carson Daly, John Mayer. Maybe Joey Lawrence doesn't really count, but he did have a record contract at some point, even if no one can remember exactly when it was. It looks like Jennifer Love Hewitt is moving up the music industry chain. Can Sony head and former Mariah Carey chum Tommy Mottola be far behind?

Or might it have been her shady dealings in the movie industry? She certainly has her bases covered, that Jennifer Love Hewitt. The girl has proved she's not above the sequel trick, what with "I Still Know What You Did Last Summer" doubling its crime by featuring the aforementioned "How Do I Deal" on its soundtrack.

It's no accident that the release of her latest movie, "The Tuxedo," was timed perfectly to coincide with "Barenaked." So if one tanked, maybe the other could justify her sultry "I'm a music/movie industry vixen" appearance on the cover of Rolling Stone (Issue 906). (No doubt it's better than Keith Richards' latest "I'm scary" cover op.)

"The Tuxedo," Jackie Chan's worst attempt at comedy yet, is losing momentum at theaters. But watch those charts, folks, and take note when Jennifer Love Hewitt gets in the Billboard Top 10, perhaps usurping Elvis and the Rolling Stones from the top positions.

Whatever it was that did the deed, we are now faced with the brutal truth -- Jennifer Love Hewitt has a song that's being played on the radio. It's a worrisome prospect in an already hangdog industry. We can promise that eager young fans who rush to download Jennifer Love Hewitt's latest musical shindig off the Internet also will be faced with a number of less wholesome options, such as "Jennifer love hewitt begins to strip.mpeg" and "Banned Levis commercial Jennifer Love Hewitt -- Nice Tits.mpg." But that's not her fault.

We can only hope that this will get the industry in trouble for exposing (natch) impressionable young kids to soft core smut, because we can't get them in trouble for exposing impressionable young kids to really, really crappy music.

Too bad Christina Aguilera's "Stripped" hasn't been released yet. It would've been fun to compare the two pop stars' attempts at lyrical nudity. One's naked, one's stripped; one Billboard chart is laid to waste and a couple of snooty music critics are made to realize the uselessness of their ways.

Local Savings

Comments