Chronologically, the 11 songs on the "music from the motion picture" soundtrack album for
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2
range from
Cyndi Lauper
's '80s evergreen
"Girls Just Want to Have Fun"
to
Michelle Branch
's newly written end title summing-up
"Together"
("We belong together...We'll be strong forever"). Musically, they include
James Otto
's country effort
"Sunset Man"
and
Craig David
's R&B tune
"Friday Night."
But for the most part, this is a miscellany of mediocre pop music of the early 21st century, presumably the kind of thing one or more of the four late-teen principals in the picture might be expected to have on her iPod. The selection and sequencing seem to owe something to the compilers of the
Now That's What I Call Music!
series, as the musical styles switch from pop to country to R&B to punk pop and back to pop/rock. But none of this is memorable, and some of it doesn't make sense. Why is
Eric Hutchinson
's leadoff song called
"Rock & Roll"
when it's set to a simplified ska beat? While the album isn't quite dismissible as a
Warner Bros. Records
label sampler designed more to do favors to friends than to assemble music of any quality, it's a close call. ~ William Ruhlmann