Music for Cougars
| Sugar Ray
Music for Cougars
Music for Cougars is Sugar Ray's sixth studio album. The album was not as successful commercially as previous Sugar Ray albums. It reached number eighty on the Billboard 200 chart, with none of the album's three singles charting. This was the last album to feature turntablist Craig "DJ Homicide" Bullock, bassist Murphy Karges and drummer Stan Frazier before their departures in August 2010 and early 2012, respectively. -Wikipedia
Critic Reviews
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Billboard
As expected, the band continues to write songs with sublime melodies and tropical grooves. Full of simplistic and cheery lyrics about vacations, girls, dreaming and summer love, "Music For Cougars" is an optimal musical choice for beach lovers this summer.
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LA Times
These days, of course, the documentary vibe of the band's earlier stuff has transformed into an air of escapism -- not for nothing is one track titled "When We Were Young." But that hardly detracts from the crafty throwaway pleasures at which Sugar Ray still excels.
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Pop Matters
The aberration of the first song craftily causes the listener to welcome (on some level) the more even-keeled Sugar Ray sound on subsequent tracks, which alternate between slight modernizations and loose throwbacks.
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Enter the Shell
Though the album has a couple of great gems, there are some very questionable moments in there as well. It is by no means up to the standards of 14:59 and unfortunately for Sugar Ray, their 15 minutes of fame seem to be up.
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All Music
Because their half-decade rest has given them time to recharge the batteries, letting them pile up some typically infectious sunny pop hooks, the kind that worm into the subconscious no matter how hard you resist.
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Slacker
Not that everything on Music for Cougars works -- like the titular aging sex kittens, Sugar Ray can sometimes try too hard to seem younger than their years, pushing the dance beats a little bit too hard, and Mark McGrath relies on some unseemly Auto-Tune, but even with this too-evident aural botox, the group remains a guilty pleasure that's a bit hard to resist.
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Uinterview
Fans will be glad that being on a recording break for six years has put Sugar Ray in such a good mood, and might appreciate the feeling of the tunes, but maybe next time around they could give everyone something more substantial than 40 minutes of the same smiley sentiment repeated 12 times.
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The Daily Californian
The general vapidity of the rest of the songs renders it uncomfortably ironic when McGrath sings "All it takes is a song with a hook and a line / And it's bound to blow up like the Fourth of July," in a lone moment of self-awareness during "When We Were Young." If any of the songs on Music for Cougars "blow up like the Fourth of July," there is no justice in the world.
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Napster
Despite past critical demonization due to their status as heartthrobs in the mid '90s, Sugar Ray have always thumbed their noses at naysayers with a charming self-deprecation -- the title of the album here for starters, but also 1998's 14:59, a comment on their so-called "15 minutes of fame," being prime examples. "Boardwalk" is the single but "Rainbow" and opener "Girls Were Made to Love" will grab you right out of the gate.
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Consequence of Sound
Maybe this is the band trying to simply rekindle the days of “Fly”. Personally, that is about as useful as Eminem trying for more celebrity satire – “We Made You” ring any bells? We suppose the next thing to hit us could be a Lou Bega comeback or another pop star saturated Santana CD, but all those against please cross fingers, toes and any other appendages available.
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Creative Disc
Although there are not many developments in the music, but with a variety of musical variations from reggae to rock and a mix of mix DJs, this album has remained solid in terms of music and will not be bored listening to situations at any time.
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People
The SoCal party dudes have picked the perfect season to return. After all, their music has always been made for summer slacking, and breezy, beach-ready ditties like the first single “Boardwalk” go down as smoothly as a frozen daiquiri. While they sometimes sound like overgrown frat boys, they get a break—at least until Labor Day.
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World Cat
So good-natured it practically gives you a big smile and a fist-bump.
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FYE
Never let it be said that Sugar Ray doesn't know its audience. They make no bones about making Music for Cougars, those cougars being the very girls that shook their hips to "Fly" back in 1997 and are looking for a little bit of the same breezy vibe 12 years later, a little bit of sexy nostalgia to get them through their summer, a soundtrack to a few girls' nights out.
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Telegram
Pop music isn’t rocket science. It’s more like lighting off bottle rockets. If you over-think it, you miss the point. And Sugar Ray isn’t going to over-think anything, especially when it comes to making a good pop song. On the piping-hot piece of nostalgic “When We Were Young,” McGrath enlightens, “All it takes is a song with a hook and a line/And it’s bound to blow up like the Fourth of July.” That explains it.
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iCelebZ
After a low key, rather unproductive decade, the 5 member band is reunited and eager to reclaim the airways once more. For fans of Sugar Ray, the band's comeback campaign is a sweet development indeed.
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