Date: Mar 23, 1996
Weeks: 6
So remember when I complained about the overproduction in the single version of "My Heart Will Go On" (#825)? Well, if you ever wondered what it would sound like if you removed the classy orchestral undercurrent from that song and left nothing but the shallow overproduction, here's your answer. Unsurprisingly, we once again have Diane Warren to thank for this.
This has all those usual cheesy power ballad hallmarks. The "tick..boom" drum, the gospel-sounding background chorus attempting to inflate the song's importance. The unnecessary strings doing the same thing. The cheesy emotionlessly emotional synth bass line. This song contains a bonus sound that really grates my brain, too. During the second verse, some instrument or another just keeps droning these monotone quarter notes. Whatever that is, it doesn't return again, so I'm not sure what the point was. I guess they wanted the song to build from start to finish and this was the only way they could think to accomplish that. I will give credit that the song does successfully build and get bigger from start to finish, so while I don't enjoy listening to it, at least the variety keeps it from being boring.
Celine Dion gives a good performance here. She's well-matched to the song, and her level of performance and showing off near the end works quite well.
The lyrics are fine, I guess. They're about how the support of someone who loves you gives you strength, especially when you need it most. I always thought the song was a little asymmetrical, with one person able being supported by another but not offering support back. But Warren supposedly wrote this song about her father, and that kind of one-directional supportive love makes more sense when it's about a parent than a romantic partner. While I don't object to the sentiment, I do think the song makes its point early and then repeats itself for the rest of its running time, and it doesn't manage to be poetic or original about it.
My verdict: Don't like it. The lyrics are okay, if bland. The singing is actually pretty good. But nothing can overcome the cheesy music.
Okay, so the song was written about a father-daughter relationship, got it. I agree with you that the song describes a one-way relationship that makes sense when you're talking about parent-child. BUT then it's being used in a romantic movie. About two adults being in love. So in that sense, which the movie and video portray, I think it really fails.
ReplyDeleteThe song seems to have been pretty popular, though, with 6 weeks at number one. And I'm guessing its popularity is due to its application to adult romantic relationships, not parent-child relationships. That makes me think a lot of people are looking for romantic relationships that mimic parent-child instead of a meeting of adult equals. Or maybe I'm just reading too much into it.