Tropic Thunder

Windswept

Eeny, Weeny, Teeny Weenie

Even if the early '90s were something of a dark age for pop music, I have to give the era props: from Madonna's fantastic double whammy of "Justify My Love" and "Erotica" on through the first half of the decade, there was some raunchy stuff being put out there by some of the more sexually liberated women in the music industry. What better way to celebrate this Hump Day than striking a blow for censorship-free media with something from the R-rated archives of '90s pop music? Since I'm also feeling a little catty at present, for the first in what will become a regular midweek morsel here on Vertigo Shtick here's a snarky little ditty from 1994, 20 Fingers' thumping first single "Short Dick Man" as today's Song for the Day.

"Short Dick Man"

20 Fingers

20 Fingers

(ZYX, 1994)

Trivia: "Short Dick Man" was written and produced by 20 Fingers, aka Charlie Babie and Manfred Mohr, with vocals by Gillette, who also included the track on her solo album On The Attack. The track was a big European hit and held the French number one spot for several weeks, although in the UK it was released in a censored version titled "Short Short Man."

I know, right?

D'oh

Straight Ahead

There's No One Here to Save

For such an outwardly positive and classically beautiful young woman, poor Sara Bareilles seems to have some bum luck when it comes to men. The antiheroes of Bareilles' best-known songs aren't physically abusive or compulsive cheaters; they're more just, well, losers: needy, passive-aggressive, bossy, childish, selfish, clingy, and so forth. They're a particularly bourgeois kind of soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend, dwelling most commonly in the hallways of college dorms, the coffee shops of upper middle class New York or Los Angeles neighborhoods, and television sitcom neighborhoods. So while they may not be all that dangerous or frightening, they're pesky and annoying and mostly harmless - in other words, excellent fodder for a light pop single by a young white solo female performer.

In her breakout single "Love Song," which earned a Grammy nomination last year for Best Song and topped the Billboard Pop Songs chart, the UCLA grad (and alumna of acapella group "Awaken," for which she composed and with whom she originally recorded her much darker single "Gravity") delivered a deliciously clever rebuff to what it seems would be just the first loser to cross Bareilles' path: "I'm not gonna write you a love song 'cause you asked for it, 'cause you need one," she sang, and the whole thing would have been brutal were it not for the breezy, bright melody and Bareilles' upbeat delivery (this tone versus topic disparity, a highly effective technique, is also heavily prevalent in Robyn's work over the past five or six years), even if she looked stiff and moderately uncomfortable in the Shining Time Station-esque music video, as many first timers do. It was a great debut single for an artist like Bareilles that placed her solidly atop the crop of new moderate-appeal softcore female singer-songwriters that has emerged in the past couple years, such as Ingrid Michaelson and Regina Spektor.

In "King Of Anything," the lead single for Bareilles' sophomore effort Kaleidoscope Heart (out September 7), the piano-playing chanteuse doesn't exactly break any new ground - but of course no one really asked her to nor would her core audience much care for too wild a stray from the comfortable path. As one might expect in a second go-around, the production is tighter and more inventive (alternating hand claps, repeated "uh-ohs" from right to left speaker and back, all perfectly mixed from the minimal opening to the fully layered final chorus). As for the subject matter, this time Sara's knight in rusty armor isn't so much needy as maddeningly self-important, the kind who spends much of the time finding (and pointing out) all the so-called "faults" of his partner so as to entirely ignore and not acknowledge his own.

Sure, ending a chorus with a harsh "who DIED" (a harshness that comes more from its rythmic placement than anything) is perhaps not the smoothest of lyrical choices, but the melody is impeccable, easily improving on "Love Song" and rivaling the coolly calculated creations of Katy Perry in catchiness and wonder. And since anyone can relate to the universal subject matter (not as deep a concept as that behind the cleverer "Love Song"), "King Of Anything" is an immensely likeable, enjoyable package that should launch Bareilles' second album to a comfortable start. If, this time around, she manages to pull out a second single from the bunch, she may become one of the few artists who not only avoids but thoroughly lambastes the traditional sophomore slump, which should in turn allow her to continue singing and writing for a good while longer - maybe even long enough to take her music somewhere off the comfortable, marketable path.

"King of Anything"

Sara Bareilles

Kaleidoscope Heart

(Epic, 2010)

Shine

Scowl

"Are You That Somebody?" - Aaliyah

The music industry has had more than its share of notable figures who have met unfortunate and premature ends, airplane crashes having a particularly eerie prevalence among their causes. Certainly one of the biggest losses came in 2001 when R&B singer Aaliyah died at 22 in a plane crash following a music video shoot in the Bahamas. The loss of such a uniquely promising artist was a devastating one, but as she had been signed to Jive Records at the green age of twelve, Aaliyah contributed a good eight or nine years' worth of music from her 1994 debut, appropriately titled Age Ain't Nothing But a Number, through her groundbreaking, self-titled 2001 studio album, and then some. Gifted with solid musical chops, Aaliyah also was the biggest early successes of the brilliant hip hop producers Missy Elliott and Timbaland, who worked as a producing team in the late '90s and were behind most of Aaliyah's second album One in a Million, the success of which made stars of all three.

While she would later get the bite of the acting bug, Aaliyah made her first marks in the film industry with her contributions in 1998 to the soundtracks of the animated film Anastasia and the Eddie Murphy comedy Dr. Doolittle. The latter, in fact, was the unlikely origin of one of Aaliyah's most popular and important singles, "Are You That Somebody." To say the single was groundbreaking would be a gross understatement, not so much on the part of the singer but that of its producer, Timbaland, who with that track both shattered pop conventions and laid the groundwork for one of the most successful producing careers in modern pop history. To today's ear the production does not come off too far outside the box, but this is only because minimalist production has been adopted and adapted widely by Timbaland and high profile followers like the Neptunes in the years since in hip hop, R&B, and mainstream pop music alike. As the New Yorker put it, "the beat refuses to fully engage, using more dead space than you would have thought possible in a hit," and in 1998, when the Max Martin style of dense, saturated production had began running the show (or at least doing it the loudest), this was even more of a departure. And that's not to mention the mouth clicks, finger snaps, and the baby giggle. A baby giggle. I would kill to have been in the label exec's office when they first got a load of this one.


And yet, the track, released as an airplay-only single at a time when Billboard had not yet allowed airplay-only singles to chart on the Billboard Hot 100 (although that policy was changed midway through "Are You That Somebody?"'s chart run), was a huge hit, reaching number four on the main airplay chart and number one on Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay. The record is included on "Best Of" lists by the likes of Blender (#387 on The 500 Greatest Songs Since You Were Born), Spin magazine, and even the Village Voice, and is easily my personal favorite of Aaliyah's strong if sadly too brief discography.

"Are You That Somebody?"

Aaliyah

Dr. Doolittle: The Album

(Atlantic Records, 1998)

\"Are You That Somebody?\" Aaliyah

If You Want to Destroy My Sweater