First Posted: 2/10/2014
This Friday is Valentine’s Day, and it would only be fitting to review an album that is suited for the holiday. Toni Braxton and Babyface’s collaboration, “Love, Marriage & Divorce,” should have befitted that theme nicely. After all, the duo has been working together for years in the R&B genre. However, while there are a few solid R&B tracks on this album, there is more comedic gold than anything else.
The main issue is that this album is not a mix of songs about love and subsequent heartache. One would figure there would be equal parts of emotional responses, in song, pertaining to the three themes in the title, but that is just not the case. It mostly covers just the heartache, and does so in grand detail. In doing so, it feels overly serious, which leads to a sense of humor that was probably not an intended consequence.
Case in point: there is a song about hate sex that takes itself far too seriously to be anything more than hilarious. The aforementioned song is entitled “Sweat” and contains two of the most unintentionally hysterical lines in any song ever. But wait, there’s more! The Braxton solo track “I Wish” is a song from the perspective of a woman who was cheated on and scorned, but one would expect a laugh track backing her vocals. It’s hard to take a song, or artist, sincerely when Miss Braxton is wishing VD upon an ex.
What’s worse is there are actually a few good songs on here. “Where Did We Go Wrong?” and “Take It Back” are both very sweet and sentimental titles; however, those types of tracks are few and far between and are overshadowed by the forced seriousness and inadvertent hilarity everywhere else.
Toni Braxton & Babyface ‘Love, Marriage & Divorce’ Rating: W W
