Joe Jonas, the middle of three Jonas brothers, officially launched his solo career today with the release of his first solo album Fast Life. Did he stray too far from his roots?
The songs show a different side of the 22-year-old singer, who is trying to shed his boy band image with more adult themed music.
His video for his hotly passionate up-tempo second single, “Just in Love,” from Fast Life characterizes what he hopes is viewed as a more mature sound.
It seems like it’s up or out for the Jonas boys. Joe told E! News that he and brothers Kevin and Nick Jonas are putting the band on hiatus indefinitely.
“We need our own time,” he said. “We need to able to take time for ourselves. That could be six months or it could be three years. It all depends.”
Joe definitely tries to shed his squeaky clean boy band image (he once pledged to remain a virgin until married).
So far, the reviews for Fast Life have been mixed.
“Fastlife” isn’t a terrible album, just a terribly producer-driven one, which leaves Jonas trying to fit into producer Danja’s all-electro arrangements as nimbly as he squeezes into the designer duds he now favors,” writes Chris William for thewrap.
“Jonas’s solo debut, “Fastlife,” is exactly what it should be, a fizzy, danceable, R&B-steeped club pop album that greases Jonas’s transition to pop adulthood,” opines Allison Stewart in The Washington Post.
Maybe looking for some edge, Jonas collaborates on two songs with rapper Chris Brown.
“We just got together to play music and listen to each other’s stuff, and quickly it became us songwriting. We wrote (first single) See No More together, and he wrote Lighthouse, too, that I love,” he told USAToday.
“Eighteen months ago the pairing would have been unthinkable, but these days Weezy is unbearably mild, and Jonas is (sort of) wild and somehow, it seems just right,” writes Stewart.
In the video for “Just in Love,” Joe meets a French girl in Paris. They tour the city together and end up in Joe’s bedroom. No purity rings are in sight as Joe climbs into the tub with her.
“We shot it in Paris so naturally it’s supposed to be passionate and romantic,” Jonas told E! News. “We found a beautiful girl lead. I feel it’s a video that might shock people a little bit.”
Joe assures that everyone kept their clothes on. “I’ll just say it’s a little bit older than anything I’ve done before.”
Jonas wrote the song with James Fauntleroy, Rob Knox handled production and Jaci Judelson directed the video.
It was written, he added, while he was in a relationship; he didn’t say with whom.
Jonas has famously dated Demi Lovato, Taylor Swift and most recently “Twilight’s” Ashley Greene. They split in May.
“She [was] arguing with me, and all I could do was say, ‘Listen, I love you, but we don’t need to go through this.’ So, this is called ‘Just in Love.'” he told MTV.