Date: Jan 15, 2000
Weeks: 2
I've spent too much time with this list. When I saw the number come up, I literally said to myself, "Oh, that'll be on the cusp of the 2000s. I didn't know it would literally be the first new No. 1 in January of the year 2000.
Christina Aguilera can clearly sing. She doesn't have quite the abnormal talent of Mariah Carey, but she does have Carey's knack for showing off her voice without ruining the song by deviating too far. So it seems a shame that her early work matched her with such terrible music as this.
The part of the song I hate most is the title lyric. "What a girl wants, what a girl needs." There's something about the rhythm of that specific lyric that drives me up a wall. It's just so basic and quarter-note-y. It feels like it's from a a song that a 5-year-old would write. The song also falls apart in a lot of the interstitial moments that come between the chorus and the verses. The squeaky bass-synth going on in the background rises to the top of the mix and irritates.
Then you have the breakdown section in the bridge where they pull out the world's cheapest Casio keyboard and play its pre-programmed chords. What were they thinking with that? It's obviously fake, but they're not trying to exaggerate the fakeness to any particular artistic effect. It just seems cheap. They couldn't have hired an actual string section for that?
The verse and chorus are pretty decent, anyway. The verse has a fairly generic late-90s pop sound to it. The chorus is a little more distinctive. Neither is especially interesting or complex, but they're also not bad. The bulk of the song is not bad. It's just those little moments I already mentioned that bug me.
Oh, wait, the lyrics bug me too. With a title like "What a Girl Wants," you would think the song would tell you what she thinks a girl wants. But no. Instead "it's lucky for me you understand what a girl wants." The lyrics walk a fine line between making the guy seem patronizing and making him seem understanding and intuitive. I guess you can read it either way, although the latter interpretation is clearly what's intended. The song does eventually get around to answering the question implied by the title, in the bridge, with "A girl needs somebody sensitive and tough, somebody there when the going gets rough." It's generic, and doesn't even flow naturally from the rest of the lyrics. It's like someone midway through the songwriting process pointed out what I did earlier, so they tacked a little something onto the bridge.
My verdict: Don't like it. It's not awful, but it's not good, either.
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