Once Upon a Time

by Stewart MasonAt the age of 12, South Texas-based singer Victoria Acosta had a hit on Radio Disney and similar outlets with "The World's Gone Crazy," a song dissing Ashlee Simpson's lip-sync fiasco on Saturday Night Live, among other easy pop culture potshots. The irony is rich and multi-layered, considering that Acosta's debut album, Once Upon a Time, features exactly the same kind of antiseptic, pitch-corrected, completely fake vocals as Simpson's album, but with even worse songwriting and a near-total lack of personality. If the idea of a preteen singing a song called "Move Your Thang" isn't tacky enough, try the fact that the album follows it up later with the schmaltzy "When I Lay Me Down to Sleep," a semi-religious song that Acosta attempts to sing as a sultry love jam. As if to admit that the producers don't even have enough ideas to scrape together some extra filler tracks, Once Upon a Time is over and done at eight tracks in about 26 minutes. So at least it's short. Sweet...not by a long shot.