Song #909: "My Boo" by Usher and Alicia Keys

Date: Oct 30, 2004
Weeks: 6

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As a note, it's not totally wrong to start your music video with a clip from a different song, but they're not usually so long. I'm just saying if this if your first time hearing this song like it was for me, make sure you ignore the first 40 seconds or so of the video, because that's not the song.

I think it's fitting that Usher and Alicia Keys made a song together. They are both ridiculously talented singers whose songs are hampered by bizzare production choices of the moment, the kind of choices that already seem a bit dated, less than a decade later. Their voices are individually great, and they blend together really well. I like all the layers of overlapping voice that are arranged together. They're complex in a way that suggests the complex feelings the singers have for each other. Whatever energy this song manages to have is entirely because they sound so appealing together, and because they have been edited together well.

Where the song goes wrong is in the synthesized voice chord... chipmunk noises that punctuate the verses. They're just so cheap and fake that they draw attention away from the singing. The rest of the music is fine. The bass and drums are appealingly simple, drawing focus to the singing. I even kind of like the more rapid synthesized beats that mark transitions in this song. They successfully increase tension that gets released by the transitions to a new part of the song. Overall, the music is pretty good, especially appropriate for a song that is trying to feature two excellent singers, but a general lack of variety combined with the obnoxious synthesized voice chord noises really hamper the song's overall quality.

Lyrically, well, the elephant in the room is the title. "My Boo" seems like a piece of slang that is unlikely to last another 50 years when someone sits down to review the first 2000 No. 1 hits, and has to derive the meaning from context. I've always wondered where the word came from, so I looked it up. According to Urban Dictionary, the word "boo" as slang for boyfriend or girlfriend derives from the French word "beau," through various Caribbean communities, and finally into American English slang as "boo." So I learned something today.

The rest of the lyrics are about these two people who were each others' first loves, and even though their relationship is over and they don't specifically say they want to rekindle it, they still hold strong affection for each other. I think it's a sweet sentiment.

My verdict: Like it. I still wish the sound had been mixed differently, and that the video hadn't included that fake-out for another song that took me a while to figure out was actually another song. But overall the positives outweigh the negatives.

Song #877: "Fallin'" by Alicia Keys

Date: Aug 18, 2001
Weeks: 6

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I really like Alicia Keys's voice, and her songwriting is generally pretty strong. But I think a lot her songs after this one are better, because they don't include all the extraneous elements that don't quite work for me here. Let's break it down by component.

Piano: This song has a pleasant little piano backing. It's a bit simple, but it's nice. It's about right as it is.

Voice: Alicia Keys sings well. She's no all-time great vocalist, but she has a nice voice and she's emotionally expressive in a great way. This may not be her best performance ever but she acquits herself well I have no complaints about her singing here.

Drums and bass: Excellent. I enjoy the beat that carries this song along. A lot of Keys's music stands out because of her ability to combine piano with a traditional R&B bass sound in an appealing way.

Background vocals: Here's where we start getting into the parts of the song I think were intrusive. The gospel chorus backing this song just makes it seem overdone. Madonna made a gospel choir work in "Like A Prayer" (#688) by adding it to a big, loud, epic production. This is a quiet little love tune and the gospel chorus is too big for it.

Strings: This is the element I like the least. It's kind of a subtle effect, but the sounds the strings create in this song are just entirely unwelcome. I especially dislike the plucking sound around the second chorus. It feels like Bugs Bunny is sneaking up on the song.

I don't disagree that this song needed a bit more to it than the piano, voice, and drums, but I don't think the right solution to the problem was found. The song feels like it's cheating a bit, trying to be bigger than it really is supposed to be. I'm not sure what the right solution was, I just know I don't like what they came up with.

My verdict: Don't like it. I just don't think the gospel chorus is earned by this song.