Mary J Blige - Growing Pains Album Review
Growing Pains by Mary J Blige, Album Review
Growing Pains is the eighth studio album by American R&B/soul singer Mary J. Blige released on December 18, 2007 (see 2007 in music) on Geffen Records. This album was #29 on Rolling Stone’s list of the Top 50 Albums of 2007.
Mary J Blige - Growing Pains Track Listing
| # | Title | Length | Songwriters | Guest(s) | Producer(s) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | “Work That” | 3:31 | Theron Otis Feemster, Mary J. Blige, Sean Garrett | Theron Otis Feemster | |
| 2 | “Grown Woman” | 4:05 | Christopher Bridges, Dejion Madison, Mary J. Blige, Terius Nash | Ludacris | Dejion |
| 3 | “Just Fine“ | 4:02 | Terius Nash, Mary J. Blige, Jazze Pha, Chris “Tricky” Stewart | Tricky Stewart, Jazze Pha | |
| 4 | “Feel Like A Woman” | 4:02 | Theron Otis Feemster, Mary J. Blige, Terius Nash | Theron Otis Feemster | |
| 5 | “Stay Down” | 4:23 | Mary J. Blige, Johnta Austin, Bryan-Michael Cox | Bryan-Michael Cox | |
| 6 | “Hurt Again” | 4:08 | Mary J. Blige, Andre Harris, Vidal Davis, Brian Sledge | Dre & Vidal | |
| 7 | “Shake Down” | 3:36 | Terius Nash, Mary J. Blige, Jazze Pha, Tricky Stewart | Usher | Tricky Stewart, Jazze Pha |
| 8 | “Till The Morning” | 4:18 | Pharrell Williams | The Neptunes | |
| 9 | “Roses” | 4:36 | Terius Nash, Mary J. Blige, Tricky Stewart | Tricky Stewart | |
| 10 | “Fade Away” | 4:16 | Mikkel S. Eriksen, Tor Erik Hermansen, Mary J. Blige, Ne-Yo | Stargate | |
| 11 | “What Love Is” | 4:03 | Mikkel S. Eriksen, Tor Erik Hermansen, Mary J. Blige, Ne-Yo | Stargate | |
| 12 | “Work In Progress (Growing Pains)” | 4:01 | Charles Harmony, Ne-Yo | Charles Harmony, Ne-Yo | |
| 13 | “Talk To Me” | 4:10 | Robert Wright, Mary J. Blige, Eric Hudson, Verdine White, Johnta Austin | Eric Hudson | |
| 14 | “If You Love Me?” | 3:40 | Mary J. Blige, Johnta Austin, Bryan-Michael Cox | Bryan-Michael Cox | |
| 15 | “Smoke” | 3:10 | Reggie Perry, Ne-Yo | Syience | |
| 16 | “Come To Me (Peace)“ | 5:02 | Terius Nash, Mary J. Blige, Kuk Harrell, Tricky Stewart | Tricky Stewart |
“It’s not reliving where I been. [The album is] just based on where I am”, Blige told MTV News on October 22 on the set of the video for her new single, “Just Fine”.
So many people are like, ‘I’m perfect.’ I’m so imperfect, that’s why I’m able to let everything out and let people see everything. ‘Cause I’m just a mess like every other person that’s a mess out there. And it’s going to take probably a lifetime to get to a point in my life where I’m like, ‘Oh, I’m perfect.’ I don’t think that will ever happen. So as long as I’m a human being and I’m not perfect, I’m able to say I’m having some growing pains. Because in order to sustain where you are once you made such a breakthrough that everyone is looking at you, now everyone is like, ‘Ooh, is she gonna make a mistake?’ Yes, I’m going to make a mistake. Yes, I’m still gonna do things. And that’s what Growing Pains is about, it’s about finally not whining about the pain, Mary J. Blige, and accepting the pain that comes with growing.
Mary J Blige - Growing Pains Editorial Review from amazon.com
“I’m talkin’ ’bout things I know,” Mary J. Blige wails on “Work That,” the second single and opening track of Growing Pains. The album squeaked into 2007 too late to make best-of lists but otherwise would have stormed its way up several, for sure. She needn’t have hit us with such a pronouncement: In 16 songs that ring as remarkably, unflinchingly true as those on 2005’s landmark The Breakthrough, the queen of hip-hop soul keeps “keeping it real” a specialty. There’s no sense in trying to assign credit for the skin-tight grooves and funked-up retro vibe here; with nine producers padding Blige’s emotion-rich voice and the lyrics she so obviously lives by, what we’re left with is a melange of sounds. But it’s a measure of an artist who has mastered her own identity and left nothing to chance that this, her eighth studio album, comes off so free of wild cards and loose edges. “You ask what love feels like,” she sings on “What Love Is,” one of the disc’s less fierce tracks. “It feels like joy, and it feels like pain, and it feels like sunshine, and it feels like rain,” she continues, answering the question. The album feels the same way, a passel of complex feelings all wrapped up in love. No one knows struggle, heartache, and triumph over mediocrity like Blige.
–Tammy La Gorce
Mary J Blige - Growing Pains Review from rollingstone.com
There’s no denying the commercial legs or fan appeal of Mary J. Blige’s late-2005 The Breakthrough. In the wake of 2003’s Diddy dud Love & Life and the teeth of an industrywide slump, its triple-platinum domestic sales - not to mention the sixteen-month stay of “Be Without You” on the R&B chart - are very nearly miraculous. So it’s a little glossy, a little soft, a little emotional. A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do, especially a happily married girl who wants to share the emotional wealth.
A mere two years later, with a best-of in between, Blige is back. Growing Pains is the eighth studio album of her fifteen-year career, and it doesn’t stand pat. Where The Breakthrough harnessed an astonishing thirteen producers or teams over its sixteen tracks, as of press time these require, give or take a few collaborators, only nine. Moreover, Blige has rehired just two of the last record’s music providers: Andre Harris and Vidal Davis, responsible for the over-the-top “Father in You” then and the softly revealing “Hurt Again” now, and “Be Without You”’s Bryan-Michael Cox, who we can blame for the anodyne self-help number “Stay Down.” Newly enlisted producers include “Umbrella”-wielding Tricky Stewart, Pharrell Williams bearing a “Good Times” bass line, the Norwegian StarGate combine that gave us Ne-Yo’s “So Sick,” Ne-Yo associate Neff-U and Ne-Yo himself.
Released December 18, 2007 (U.S.), December 24, 2007 (NL), February 4, 2008 (UK)
Recorded 2007
Genre R&B, soul, hip hop soul
Label Geffen
Producer Theron Otis Feemster, Dejion, Tricky Stewart, Jazze Pha, Bryan-Michael Cox, Dre & Vidal, The Neptunes, Stargate, Charles Harmony, Ne-Yo, Syience
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(+5 rating, 1 votes)
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October 21st, 2009 at 9:14 am
Growing Pains is easily one of the best albums by Mary J Blige, clearly marking her evolution into a superstar of R&B and hip-hop. Songs are both vocally and lyrically crispier than her previous album ‘The Breakthrough’. Songs are basically ‘cool’and ‘urban’.
Her work with Bryan Michael-Cox is impressive on this album, both of them pretty well on ‘Stay Down’, as they had been in songs like ‘Be Without You’, a hit, ‘We Ride’ a good song. ‘Stay Down’ is easily the best song on the disc, plays like ‘Be Without You-Part II’.
‘Grown Woman’ is another song which shows she is too versatile. The song is real Mary,with Ludracis verse lyrically my favourite rap. ‘Just Fine’ is also a real cool song. ‘Come To Me’, ‘Work In Progress’, ‘Shake Down’, ‘Work That’ are worth listening.
Overall, its a great disc and everyone’s gotta have one!