Date: May 15, 1993
Weeks: 8
I've said before that I prefer high-intensity songs, and that I have no use for relaxing and low-key songs. Sometimes low-key songs can work for me, but they have to include some kind of emotional intensity, a meaning that impresses me. And in order to attain that emotional intensity, such a song would need to avoid the following:
- Pitch-shifting the lead singer's voice in an obnoxiously artificial way to repetitively state the song's title over and over again. If you want to achieve this sound, hire some other singers of various ranges. And in particular, avoid making this silly choice even more intense toward the end of the song.
- An overly trite hook repeated a thousand times. "Like a moth to a flame, burned by desire." Heard it! Before I even came here. Sing something else, please.
- A musical track badly in conflict between its deep, bass-y, earthy verse and a major-chord, piano-sounding transition that never resolves into anything actually different. This entire song is like the verse build-up to a song that's actually interesting.
- Unclear pronouns in the chorus that don't even hold up on inspection of the lyrics. What's the way love goes? I suppose there's possibly an over-literal interpretation that the song just tells the story of an entire relationship, from the phase of nervous affection, to the phase of asking the other person out, to the first sexual encounter. That's the way love goes, from common point A to common point B. But then at the end the lyrics about "a moth to a flame, burned by desire" repeat, and it's not like we'd been told the relationship ended, so I don't think that interpretation actually works.
- A semi-ironic self-aware music video that spends half the time taking the song seriously, and half the time laughing about how silly it is. You can't express emotional vulnerability if you're just going to protect yourself from that vulnerability.
My verdict: Don't like it. It's not badly made overall, and Jackson sings it well, but there are a lot of weird choices that completely undermine this song.
Showing posts with label 1993. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1993. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Monday, July 25, 2011
Song #779: "Weak" by SWV
Date: July 10, 1993
Weeks: 2
I was filled with a sense of dread when I saw this song coming up. I remember hating this song when it was popular. Listening to it now, my opinion has softened a bit.
There are two different songs happening here. The first song is the one playing during the verses, and it's terrible. The lead singer handles all the singing during the verses, and there's something about the whiny quality of her voice that just drives me up the wall. Her voice is thin and lacks any power. The music during the verses is equally thin. Light percussion, occasional keyboard chords, and a tiny bit of bass punctuation. The music is trying to stay out of the way of the voice, but the voice isn't interesting enough to carry the song.
And the lyrics in the verses aren't even that clever, which makes the singer's voice that much more grating. When I'm listening to a voice I don't like and that voice says things as mundane as "I can't figure out just what to do when the cause and cure is you," and "Your love is strong it keeps on holding oo-ooo-on," it just makes my skin crawl. These verses are awful.
The chorus, on the other hand, is a breath of fresh air. The group is called SWV, which stands for "Sisters With Voices," and that plural is the key to their talent. Their vocal harmony during the chorus is charming and appealing. The music also ramps up, with more actual drums in the percussion line and a decent bass line. If the entire song was like the chorus, I might like it.
I think someone spent more time writing the lyrics in the chorus, too. They're simple and effective. The singer is overcome with the emotion of new love and feels "weak in the knees." "Your love is so sweet it knocks me right off of my feet." It's a classic and universal sentiment. There's a fine line between simple and mundane, but this song manages to find its way onto both sides of that line.
The last part of the song is the bridge, which falls somewhere between the verses and the chorus. And the bridge really highlights what I pointed out above: that the song works when all the members of the group are harmonizing and doesn't work when their lead singer goes it alone. She's just not that talented.
My verdict: Don't like it. When some parts of the song are catchy and stick in my head, and other parts are annoying and bad, it almost makes me dislike the song more than when a song is just all bad. And I think that's what made me dread this song so much. I'm glad I could work out why this song bothered me so much. Thanks for reading my therapy session.
Weeks: 2
I was filled with a sense of dread when I saw this song coming up. I remember hating this song when it was popular. Listening to it now, my opinion has softened a bit.
There are two different songs happening here. The first song is the one playing during the verses, and it's terrible. The lead singer handles all the singing during the verses, and there's something about the whiny quality of her voice that just drives me up the wall. Her voice is thin and lacks any power. The music during the verses is equally thin. Light percussion, occasional keyboard chords, and a tiny bit of bass punctuation. The music is trying to stay out of the way of the voice, but the voice isn't interesting enough to carry the song.
And the lyrics in the verses aren't even that clever, which makes the singer's voice that much more grating. When I'm listening to a voice I don't like and that voice says things as mundane as "I can't figure out just what to do when the cause and cure is you," and "Your love is strong it keeps on holding oo-ooo-on," it just makes my skin crawl. These verses are awful.
The chorus, on the other hand, is a breath of fresh air. The group is called SWV, which stands for "Sisters With Voices," and that plural is the key to their talent. Their vocal harmony during the chorus is charming and appealing. The music also ramps up, with more actual drums in the percussion line and a decent bass line. If the entire song was like the chorus, I might like it.
I think someone spent more time writing the lyrics in the chorus, too. They're simple and effective. The singer is overcome with the emotion of new love and feels "weak in the knees." "Your love is so sweet it knocks me right off of my feet." It's a classic and universal sentiment. There's a fine line between simple and mundane, but this song manages to find its way onto both sides of that line.
The last part of the song is the bridge, which falls somewhere between the verses and the chorus. And the bridge really highlights what I pointed out above: that the song works when all the members of the group are harmonizing and doesn't work when their lead singer goes it alone. She's just not that talented.
My verdict: Don't like it. When some parts of the song are catchy and stick in my head, and other parts are annoying and bad, it almost makes me dislike the song more than when a song is just all bad. And I think that's what made me dread this song so much. I'm glad I could work out why this song bothered me so much. Thanks for reading my therapy session.
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Song #775: "A Whole New World" by Peabo Bryson & Regina Belle
Date: Mar 6, 1993
Weeks: 1
One thing I decided early on for this blog was that I had to review the performance that was recorded on the single that went on the charts. I could drive myself trying to compare every live performance, re-recording, cover, and remix. Sometimes I like to go to those alternate versions just to illustrate how the song could be made better, or why the performance that charted is bad, but ultimately I'm judging the version of the song that was popular.
And so with that all said, I can now safely state that I hate this song.
I loved Disney's Aladdin when it was new. I still like it now. And I think "A Whole New World," as performed by the characters in the movie, is a fine song (although the movie has better songs). But I hate this recording. It's overproduceed, oversung, overdone, and underinteresting.
The music is the first problem. It's just so gentle and slow. This is a problem in the alternating wood block/tambourine percussion line and the gentle steel drum music line, which makes up the base of the song. Eventually they switch over to the power ballad tropes of the poundy 80s drums, and the most gentle "rocking guitar solo" I think I've ever heard. There aren't very many layers of sound, and they are all extremely slow without being very sincere.
The other sincerity problem comes in the vocals. Peabo Bryson oversings it a little, but he isn't too bad. Actually, now that I'm focusing specifically on his performance, I think he may be the best part of this recording. He does a fine job and if he does oversing a little, his performance at least matches the music. The real problem here is Regina Belle. She is in full self-showcase, oversinging mode. She adds all kinds of trills where they don't belong, and even sings some of the notes wrong ("endless diamond sky" being a particularly egregious example). I think she's trying to add her unique style to the song, but this is a carefully calculated production designed to promote a Disney movie. The whole track is overproduced, and Belle's free vocal style here doesn't match it at all.
Belle further irritates me by being bad at pronunciation. "Soaring, tumbling, freewheeling through and en-less diamond sky." She misplaces the "d" sound from "endless" and turns "an" into "and." This isn't a live performance, or a raw recording where small mistakes add personal flavor. This is a Disney promotional song. Why didn't they do another take of that? Heck, this is the early 90s. Major entertainment companies could edit that sort of thing out of an audio track. In a track that is otherwise so irritatingly polished, why is that mistake allowed to stand out like that?
It's hard to criticize the lyrics from a musical. They make sense in their original context, so it's only a problem if the lyrics are weird and you manage to get far enough away from the context to emphasize their weirdness. That doesn't really happen here, so I guess the lyrics are fine.
My verdict: Don't like it. But I'm glad I reviewed it, because I now realize that Peabo Bryson isn't as bad as I though. He's the only good thing happening in this song.
Weeks: 1
One thing I decided early on for this blog was that I had to review the performance that was recorded on the single that went on the charts. I could drive myself trying to compare every live performance, re-recording, cover, and remix. Sometimes I like to go to those alternate versions just to illustrate how the song could be made better, or why the performance that charted is bad, but ultimately I'm judging the version of the song that was popular.
And so with that all said, I can now safely state that I hate this song.
I loved Disney's Aladdin when it was new. I still like it now. And I think "A Whole New World," as performed by the characters in the movie, is a fine song (although the movie has better songs). But I hate this recording. It's overproduceed, oversung, overdone, and underinteresting.
The music is the first problem. It's just so gentle and slow. This is a problem in the alternating wood block/tambourine percussion line and the gentle steel drum music line, which makes up the base of the song. Eventually they switch over to the power ballad tropes of the poundy 80s drums, and the most gentle "rocking guitar solo" I think I've ever heard. There aren't very many layers of sound, and they are all extremely slow without being very sincere.
The other sincerity problem comes in the vocals. Peabo Bryson oversings it a little, but he isn't too bad. Actually, now that I'm focusing specifically on his performance, I think he may be the best part of this recording. He does a fine job and if he does oversing a little, his performance at least matches the music. The real problem here is Regina Belle. She is in full self-showcase, oversinging mode. She adds all kinds of trills where they don't belong, and even sings some of the notes wrong ("endless diamond sky" being a particularly egregious example). I think she's trying to add her unique style to the song, but this is a carefully calculated production designed to promote a Disney movie. The whole track is overproduced, and Belle's free vocal style here doesn't match it at all.
Belle further irritates me by being bad at pronunciation. "Soaring, tumbling, freewheeling through and en-less diamond sky." She misplaces the "d" sound from "endless" and turns "an" into "and." This isn't a live performance, or a raw recording where small mistakes add personal flavor. This is a Disney promotional song. Why didn't they do another take of that? Heck, this is the early 90s. Major entertainment companies could edit that sort of thing out of an audio track. In a track that is otherwise so irritatingly polished, why is that mistake allowed to stand out like that?
It's hard to criticize the lyrics from a musical. They make sense in their original context, so it's only a problem if the lyrics are weird and you manage to get far enough away from the context to emphasize their weirdness. That doesn't really happen here, so I guess the lyrics are fine.
My verdict: Don't like it. But I'm glad I reviewed it, because I now realize that Peabo Bryson isn't as bad as I though. He's the only good thing happening in this song.
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