EP Review: This Little Girl EP

Title:  This Little Girl EP (Official, Amazon, iTunes)

Artist:  Cady Groves (Official, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, Last.fm, PureVolume, SoundCloud, ArtistWiki, RCA Records, Yahoo Music, MP3.com, AllMusic)

Cady Groves major label debut EP is a solid collection of catchy, spunky, and sassy pop songs.  The EP includes two songs previously released as free downloads on Cady Groves’ website (“We’re the Sh!t” and “This Little Girl”), one new song (“Ugly”), and a cover of Adele’s “Someone Like You.” 

The EP opens with the title track, a pop song in the vein of Kelly Clarkson, Avril Lavigne and Demi Lovato, but with a lot more sass (plus there is a Blake Shelton cameo in the video).  “We’re the Sh!t” is a ridiculously fun little ditty while “Ugly” is the fastest and, for lack of a better term, punkiest song on the EP.  The EP closes with the Adele cover, which originally surfaced as a video on YouTube that Groves recorded early one morning with her guitar player.  She really nailed the song and got such a strong reaction that recorded a version of the song for this EP. 

There’s been a lot of negative comments online about this EP, things like “she was better when she was unsigned” and that people only like her for her looks, etc.  I went back and listened to her two previous EPs, The Life of a Pirate and A Month of Sundays, and honestly the only real difference between them and This Little Girl is the production.  The songs themselves are all in the same stylistic vein but now are back with slicker production.  That’s really it.  Cady Groves has always been a pop singer, and there is nothing wrong with that.  This girl has a killer voice and a ton of spunk so why shouldn’t she aspire to be a pop star?  I’m sure this sounds odd coming from a guy with a background in underground music but here’s the deal, as long as there is honesty in the music and the intentions of the artists, then what he/she/they are doing will ring true.  That’s the beauty of artists that unabashedly want to be stars.  For example, look at artists like Poison and Kelly Clarkson.  Both wanted to be huge performers and didn’t hide it.  That made/makes what they do honest.  On the other hand, bands like Stone Temple Pilots that pretended to be from the underground but were really just put together by their label rang completely false and hollow.  Groves wants to be a pop singer and thus there is no hidden agenda in her music.  She writes fun pop songs that express a lot of the feelings and emotions that young adults experience.  And on top of all that, she really does have a fantastic voice (she actually needs to be on that show The Voice).  Besides, I have a soft spot for catchy, unabashed pop songs so I can’t help but like Groves’ music…especially since she’s from Oklahoma.