Coming along somewhat late into the boy band phenomenon of the late '90s and early 2000s, Dream Street took a while to get started, but they managed a gold album with their self-titled debut on Edel Records in 2001, and this quasi-soundtrack on Columbia reprises their best-known songs in remixes and new versions of "It Happens Every Time" and "I Say Yeah," which earned some chart recognition. The disc gives over seven of its 11 tracks to Dream Street, with three songs by Ruby Blue and one, the previously released cover of the 1968-1969 hit by Diana Ross & the Supremes and the Temptations, "I'm Gonna Make You Love Me," performed by Play with Dream Street member Chris Trousdale. The music was, for the most part, written, arranged, performed, programmed, engineered, produced, and mixed by the team of Berny Cosgrove and Kevin Clark, who were content to create generic dance-pop songs with clichéd romantic lyrics and have the teen singers warble anonymously (which is probably all they were capable of, anyway). It's cookie-cutter pop music of its time, but there has been so much of this stuff over the last few years that the movie would have to be a big hit for anyone to care. The only song with the slightest interest is Ruby Blue's "That's What Girls Do," a celebration of female idiosyncrasy that drives another nail in the coffin of feminism, but is at least amusing. (Significantly, neither Dream Street nor Cosgrove/Clark were involved.)
© William Ruhlmann /TiVo