Đức Huy – Tình Tính Tang Tiếng Đàn Ghi-Ta

For the record, uncle Đức Huy just released one of the lamest pop albums of the year. He tries too hard to be hip and the result shows just that: an old fart trying to be hip. In making Tình Tính Tang Tiếng Đàn Ghi-Ta, uncle Huy goes against every suggestion he gave to the contestants when he was one of the judges in Thuy Nga’s singing competition. Someone is not taking his own advice.

The title track opens the album with uncle Huy singing and strumming his guitar, which is fine and dandy until he applies some Auto-Tune to his vocals. Not only the track loses its rawness of storytelling, it also makes him sounds quite creepy. Speaking of rawness, no one has surpassed the original version of “Đừng Xa Em Đêm Nay.” Something about the boléro rhythm and the effortlessness of Thảo My’s delivery that made the song such guilty pleasure. Around the time the song released, I had a friend who taped it on both side of a cassette and just let it played again and again. Thảo My came across so damn convincing that it was impossible for any man to leave. I used to envy Đức Huy for that. They seemed to be such a perfect couple until the divorce.

On the new release, uncle Huy covers “Đừng Xa Em Đêm Nay” himself with the help of Auto-Tune. Not only his singing is bad, but also his rapping is terrible. The result is that he singlehandedly fucked up his own song. The first version of “Giống Như Tôi” was arranged in a decent cha-cha flavor and he sang the tune with his true voice. It was not spectacular, but it was fun. The new remix is a total disaster. No one wants to hear a grown-ass man whining about being jilted in a club.

“Lời Cuối Cho Em” gets doses of Auto-Tune as well and he turned this sad song into a happy, sunshine tune with fake Jamaican groove. Again the rapping/reading is corny as hell. Uncle Huy, please stop trying to imitate young pop album. Leave it to the kids.