New Music: Nick Jonas - "Chains" [Premiere / Review]
Nick Jonas has signed a deal with Island Records and together they’ll be releasing the ‘first’ solo album of the former Jonas Brothers band star 'soon'. The first single "Chains", produced by Jason Evigan and co-written by Ammar Malik, Danny Parker, and Evigan, premiered online via a SoundCloud stream on Thursday night, July 24th. And if you were surprised by the out-of-nowhere single premiere, expect the music video for "Chains" to be released any day now! Sean Penn's daughter Dylan stars in it.
Is this really Nick Jonas’s first single from his first solo album? What about Nick Jonas and the Administration then? Was it a ‘band’? Come on…Nick wrote all of the songs on the "Who I Am" album. Who do they want to fool? Just because that album unperformed you don't have to erase it from your past. And that album WAS Nick’s first solo album whether he like it or not. It’s the same scenario as Selena Gomez when she was Selena Gomez & The Scene. “The Scene” really didn’t matter. It was a Selena Gomez solo project.
Review of “Chains”
On first listen, “Chains” screamed Justin Timberlake and Kanye West to me. The song is good, but commercially good? That’s a whole different thing. The track is well produced (I see you Jason Evigan!), well-written, Nick’s voice sounds more mature, but I just don't see the word "hit" written on this. I know Nick really wants to stay away from pop music nowadays, but I truly don't imagine Nick being successful in a genre that isn't pop music, or with music that doesn't have at least an element of pop. “Chains” is good song, many people will praise it because it’s evidently a 'step forward' in Nick’s career as an artist but sometimes I think you have to be more intelligent when it comes to managing your career. If you’ve garnered success all around the world for doing pop music, don't leave pop music in the past just like that. Look what happened to Joe Jonas!
"Chains", as Nick Jonas very well described, is a song that "anyone can relate to". It's about "feeling trapped", he said to MTV News, and later added: "For me specifically in this song, I connected to love and trust and for some people they have said it’s broader for them, it’s more than love, it can be about anything that entangles you in your life and doesn’t let you do what you need to do to feel free. I think this is a good fit and I fell in love with the song and I really feel like it has become a staple for this album."