This Skyscraper Seems Too Easily Torn Down

Welcome to my dizzying tribute to Skyscraper Day. Along for this ride is young starlet Demi Lovato who Disney Channel devotees likely remember from the series Sonny with a Chance. There's nothing particularly sunny about "Skyscraper", a featured track from her third album "Unbroken". Here we're greeted with the classic boy hurts girl real bad scenario with Demi, our heroine, vowing to rise up from the ashes. Production wise there isn't a whole lot of razzle and dazzle to cloud Demi's message of empowerment. That's in her favor. It takes no end of guts to find the strength to move on from an ill-fitting relationship so as to better position yourself to find that someone who will, warts and all, love you for you. In the best social circumstances, be it in a family, a friendship, or a marriage, that's not a simple task. Now for the comment that might make some of you ask yourselves, "Does he spend his spare time pulling the whiskers off kittens, too?" I get the agony Demi's conveying here. She begins from more of an understated whisper like posture. Nice strategy. You want to build up the tension, leave the audience wondering what smack between the eyes is potentially coming next. The piano at the start is gorgeous. The drumming stemming from the second verse is delicately blended in. If this was a gymnastics routine I'd say all Demi has to do is nail the dismount and she'd get at least an 8.5 out of 10. Oh but she makes this mistake of confusing empowerment with enough of a touch of victim mannerisms to make me think yes, she wants to rise again and love again, but is she really spending that energy trying to convince the loser she's leaving this or is she trying to convince herself she can actually do it. If I can hear the tears well up in her throat while she's singing, that's a red flag. If only she had dialed down that affectation just a little bit I'd have been more charitable. As they say breaking up is hard to do. A mourning period is certainly acceptable and within the bounds of social decorum. What Demi's done is wrap her pipes into some undermining cocktail mixing pity with a small seed of revenge, unhealthy revenge. Had her voice been allowed to ring through in less of a watered-down manner I'd have been convinced Demi's a woman scorned, but not for long. "Would it make you feel better to watch me bleed" has guilt trip scrawled all over it. I know youn love isn't shy on dramatics, and I suppose that's why it became the big hit it did but Demi playing the more than a little unhinged card has me wondering if I should lock up the sharp objects in case she stumbles to my door asking for sugar, you know, the kind Mary Poppins claimed helped the medicine go down. Anti-psychotic meds? Hmmm...again not the imagery you want to encourage in a song about female empowerment. There are non police blotter ways to tap into inner strength. This "Skyscraper" doesn't have the firm foundation to convince me it will, several years from now, still be standing, the tangible embodiment of that old saying, "The best revenge is to thrive. Demi needs to consult either a counselor or a building contractor. The fact of the matter is Demi isn't remotely standing on her own two feet yet. We'd be better served delving into the sleeping giant within the animal instead of the overwrought sting of the wounds.