Date: Jul 24, 1999
Weeks: 1
I'm trying something a little different with the format, here. I wasn't having much luck keeping up the pace, so I'm going to try writing longer-form entries less often. Let's see how that goes.
After the 1997 success of Will Smith's theme song from "Men In Black," it seemed like a no-brainer to follow it up with a theme song to his next big summer movie. Sell records, promote the movie, everybody wins. Well, everybody except the movie-going public, perhaps, who got really excited for a movie that turned out to be pretty terrible. I'm a big sucker for sci-fi westerns myself, so I was willing to give the movie a lot of leeway. But it didn't fail to disappoint even me. I was just looking for cheesy, exciting fun, and it couldn't deliver.
The good news for our purposes is that all the fun that was missing from the movie seems to have ended up in the song. Or, more particularly, in the music video. That video tells a better story than the movie, and somehow everything that was ridiculous in the movie becomes cool in the music video. Maybe it's because the breaks to sing and dance provide just enough heightened reality to make the wacky steampunk setting cool.
This song is super-catchy. It samples from some healthy sources, and that works to its benefit. Stevie Wonder's "I Wish" provides an insanely catchy beat that provides an exciting energy that carries through the song. The chanting of the "Wild Wild West" title during the chorus comes from Kool Moe Dee's "Wild Wild West." That song is okay, but the chanting is definitely the best part. On top of those are added some catchy bass hooks and additional 70s synth tracks that come off charming, rather than dated. Stevie Wonder has a writing credit on this song, and I wonder if it's just because they used his sample or if he actually contributed some of the additional material. Either way, it really works.
I really enjoy the vocals in this song, too. Will Smith is my favorite rapper. He has an excellent sense of meter and rhyme. I won't say I always like his songs, but I always like his performance. On top of that we have singing vocals by the band Dru Hill, especially the lead singer, Sisqo. I've heard a lot about Sisqo, but I can't say I've heard any of his own songs before. He's really showing off here, but he's not really overperforming because the annoying vocal flourishes are kept to a minimum. I think if his was the only performance in the song, I would call it high-pitched and annoying. But it works here with Will Smith and the backup vocals balancing him.
I love these lyrics, too. Somebody realized that the boastfulness typical in a lot of rap songs mirrored the braggadocio of the wild west cowboy, or at least the romanticized movie image of the wild west cowboy. And that's a great idea for a song. In particular, I like the section that goes "Trying to bring down me, the champion? When y'all clowns going to see that it can't be done?" That's a lyric that could come from any rap song and would leave me scratching my head what it's about. But in a rap song from a cowboy movie? I immediately picture the bad guy's henchmen having a shootout with the hero. And I even like that the lyrics directly reference characters and plot from the movie. It helps make the song tell a story, even if the story is kind of vague.
My verdict: Like it. It's a great song on its own. Listening to it again actually got me kind of excited to watch the movie again. Fortunately I remembered it was pretty bad, so I think I can resist the temptation.
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