Jonas Brothers

A Little Bit Longer might be the term to apply to the duration of the career of the wildly popular Jonas Brothers. The curly-mopped, New Jersey trio, who are in fact siblings, descended from the Walt Disney Corporation/compound. Therefore, they travel in a wholesome circle, specializing in a clean-cut, inoffensive and completely G-rated brand of rock n' roll that gets the Mouse House's stamp of approval. A Little Bit Longer is a neat, career-extending little package of three-chords, melodic vocals and simple lyrical asides geared towards the girls who scream their lungs raw and bloody whenever the Jo Bros come to town. The album is this generation's bubblegum pop rock, and to its credit, the record is a bit more organic and less stylized than the sexualized boy bands who shake their asses and dance better than they play their instruments! So major props to the Jo Bros for rolling up their John Varvatos-designed sleeves and getting their hands calloused and dirty by guitar strings and drumsticks. We can't deny it. The Jo Bros, as a concept, may be contrived but the songs on the album clings to our brains and our ears like latex. It's also sweetly refreshing to listen to music unsullied by experience, cynicism and bitterness that comes with the sands of time and life lived!

"BB Good," "Burnin' Up" and "Shelf" reak of songwriter pop. That is, they sound like they were constructed by professional songwriters who don't perform their compositions, instead offering them up to more marketable acts to record and play in the live setting. Whether or not the Jo Bros sit down and scribble these tunes with their own hands is immaterial in this discussion. The Brothers Jonas fashion these tunes according to their own unique style, slathering them with upbeat, teenaged spriteliness. There are a few songs that pulsate with intense, thunderous energy, but the Jo Bros hover over the "bring these good boys home to meet mom" line throughout the entirety of A Little Bit Longer.

"Lovebug" carries a be-bop cadence while the relatively roaring-this is the Jonas Brothers we're talking about here and they may kick back on their tunes but they're never ever dangerous—"Tonight" speeds out of control with a torrent of riffs that will make all those XX-chromosome Jo Bro fans jump up and down while squealing with glee. Ultimately, the music here may not forge its way into pop music posterity, but it'll get a hard-earned imprimatur from parents of pre-teens, tweens and teens across the continental United States in the here and the now.

— Amy Sciarretto
08.21.08

It's always been a little bit too easy to compare the Jonas Brothers to their teen pop forefathers Hanson, as they're also an adolescent trio of brothers who play their own instruments and write much of their original material, all rooted in classic guitar pop. Initially, this comparison made sense, as their 2006 debut, It's About Time, bore an unmistakable similarity to Middle of Nowhere, but just two years later when the group delivered its third album, A Little Bit Longer, it was clear that the Jonas Brothers were a pop phenomenon in a way Hanson never were. Of course, the Jonas Brothers were helped immeasurably by the marketing might of Disney, who turned the group's 2006 stiff into the bona fide 2007 hit Jonas Brothers through saturation play on Radio Disney and countless TV appearances, including a guest-starring spot on Hannah Montana. By the time A Little Bit Longer appeared in late summer 2008, the trio's popularity rivaled that of Miley Cyrus, but they were better poised for a cross-generational crossover than the former Ms. Montana, as they had a stronger grounding in classic pop. A Little Bit Longer trades heavily on that foundation, so much so that it seems it was designed to be a teen pop album adults wouldn't be embarrassed to play. All the lingering goofiness of their first two albums has been stripped away -- there are no songs about taking rocket trips to the year 3000 -- along with any ounce of fat, which gives the album a mildly mature vibe, particularly when the power ballads surge toward overly dramatic choruses. Fortunately, this maturity doesn't dominate, as there is plenty of levity here -- most appealingly on the mellow shuffle of "Lovebug" and the good-natured dig at shallow groupies on "Video Girl" -- and as most of the record is devoted to punchy power pop like the addictive opener, "BB Good," A Little Bit Longer winds up with a nice, skillful blend of bubblegum and ballads, never tipping too far in one direction of another. It's a nifty trick that's much harder to pull off than it seems -- countless other teen pop bands have stumbled as they attempt this balancing act that the Jonas Brothers pull off so effortlessly here -- but the key to its success is that it is pitched perfectly between frivolous, disposable pop and meticulous mature craft, so as the Jonas Brothers continue to grow they might wind up losing that sense of fun that is integral to their music, but with this record they hit all the notes just right. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide