Date: Mar 29, 1975
Weeks: 1
vs.
Date: June 2, 2001
Weeks: 5
So once again we find the same song on the charts twice. But which version is better?
Patti Labelle is one of the true talents of popular music, to be sure, and this song is an excellent showcase for her talent as the lead singer of the group with her name. Her bold voice grabs your attention even as she sings a whole lot of nonsense. Her backing singers are also very good, keeping the song's base vocals going along while Labelle elaborates.
The music is very engaging, as well. The bass and drum lines in particular are excellent. I also like the synthesized organ all right. It's surreal sound creates a sort of heightened reality that seems appropriate for a song with this much fun lyrical nonsense. The brass section is all right, but it sounds small, and cheap. In fact, a lot of my impression of the music in this song is that it's not living up to the larger-than-life effort Patti Labelle is putting into it.
The lyrics in this version are pretty cleverly written. It's the story of a man who meets a woman, Lady Marmalade, in New Orleans. It's likely, but I guess not certain, that she's a prostitute. Anyway, she rocks his world, and he remembers their night together forever afterward. Then there's a lot of nonsense like "gitchi gitchi ya ya da da," which almost seems like it's only there to serve as cover for them to slip in the part that was the most controversial, and easily the most famous part of the song, "Voulez-vous coucher avec moi (ce soi)," which is French for "Do you want to go to bed with me (tonight)?" Such is the song's lasting cultural impact that I've heard many people claim this is the only French they know.
At any rate, the song comes off fairly feminist, at least for the 70s. A woman asserts control of her sexuality in a way that a man is totally unprepared for. Potential prostitution aside, it's practically a declaration of sexual independence.
Which is probably why it got picked up as the song to be remade to promote the 2001 movie Moulin Rouge. And it's hard for the original to compete with this remake, because it's impossible to avoid noticing that the remake has a much, much larger production budget, and it's put to good use.
For one thing, as great as Patti Labelle is, it's hard for her to compete with the sheer amount of talent present here. Christina Aguilera and Pink have several other No. 1 hits and are surely some the greatest vocal talents of the 2000s. Mya is also a very talented singer, although she may not have quite the same resume as those two. And I don't know a lot about Lil' Kim's other work, but I like how she was used here.
The remake's production is clearly guided by the philosophy that bigger is better, which is definitely true for this song. It's a bold song, and the bolder the better. What's bolder than getting three of the most talented singers of the time, adding a rap verse, updating the quality of the synthesized instrumentation, and extending the song just enough to make it bigger without wearing out its welcome?
And they managed to keep the feminist theme intact. They got a woman to do the rap verse, which includes lines like "we independent women, some mistake us for whores." That one line manages to updates the feminism by suggesting that Lady Marmalade isn't a prostitute, she's just a woman who knows what she wants and goes after it.
My verdict: Like it. I like both versions. But I have to give the edge to the 2001 remake. I just like the additional bigness, and the interesting variety of the different singers' voices.
Showing posts with label Christina Aguilera. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christina Aguilera. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Song #851: "What A Girl Wants" by Christina Aguilera
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)