M-M-My Telephone

Don't You Know I Dumped Your Husband?

Androgyny has always been an appealing attribute in pop music vocals. Perhaps as much as the mass market consumer enjoys the vocal acrobatics of the Mariah Careys and Christina Aguileras and the American Idol contestants of the world, there's something to be said about being able to sing along to our favorite songs, and what easier songs to sing along to than those that fall in the middle range of the unisex register? It's no coincidence that the biggest names in pop music tend to fall in the tenor/counter-tenor range for males (Michael Jackson, Justin Timberlake, Chris Brown, Usher, Prince) and the alto or mezzo range for females (Britney Spears, Pink, Lady Gaga, Beyoncé, Fergie, Alicia Keys, Sade...the list goes on).

Of course, the best examples of androgyny are the ones that cause a lot of "That's a BOY/GIRL?!?! I thought it was a girl/boy!" types of reactions without diminished appeal. (While I am still attempting to account for and explain the immense appeal of Justin Bieber to the rabid young female audience prone to rioting at shopping malls and keeping the name trending on Twitter almost constantly- and believe me, I'm trying - clearly the voice has a lot to do with it, since let's face it, the kid's just not that attractive, even in a teen beat pinup sense.) One of the first examples of this sex mixup in my personal musical experience occurred in 2000 when I first heard "He Wasn't Man Enough" on the radio on the school bus home and momentarily mistook it for a curiously progressive bit of sexual role reversalism (keep in mind that my formative years in pop music were from about 1996-'99, wherein one of the big hits was White Town's "Your Woman," so I had learned early on that gender was more fluid in this brave new world). But when I found out later that the masculine lead vocals belonged to "Un-break My Heart" crooner Toni Braxton, it took nothing away from my enjoyment of the sassy single (and once I found the music video in college I knew I was in kitsch heaven).

Nowadays, Braxton is apparently in the early stages of a comeback. After years of legal problems with former labels, from her abrupt departure from Arista Records following the flop of her fourth album in 2002 (Braxton was pregnant around the time of the release and Arista refused to postpone, resulting in Braxton being able to do little promotion) to her recent release from Blackground Records after numerous disagreements with its manager and publicity nightmares including a public feud with Jay-Z and Kanye West (she claimed on a radio interview that the rappers had taken money from her childrens' college fund), the only good exposure Braxton has gotten in almost a decade came from her historic headlining gig at the Flamingo in Las Vegas from 2006-08 and an appearance on the seventh season of Dancing With the Stars and its subsequent tour. With her sixth album, Pulse, due to be released on May 4, 2010, it remains to be seen if Braxton's comeback more resembles Britney Spears' or Whitney Houston's. For now, here's an oldie but goodie from the one and only Ms. Braxton for a beautiful Saturday.

He Wasn't Man Enough (Album Ve...

"He Wasn't Man Enough"

Toni Braxton

The Heat

(LaFace Records, 2000)

Trivia: Braxton has won six Grammy Awards, including Best New Artist in 1994, four awards for Female R&B Vocal (including one for "He Wasn't Man Enough") and one for Female Pop Vocal ("Un-break My Heart"). In addition to becoming the first headlining black performer in Las Vegas to have her show chart in the top ten in sales data, Braxton was the first (and only) black woman to play the leading role in Disney's Beauty and the Beast on Broadway.

Sunglasses Cover Up My Green Eyes

Nice Hat

Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained

Most popular music fans my age or a bit older know of Brandy, even if they know of her for different reasons than others. Those who were tuned into the R&B scene in the mid '90s may know of her from her Grammy-nominated debut with her 1994 self-titled album, which scored nominations in 1996 for the album's first two singles and one for Best New Artist; they would be the first three of fourteen Grammy nods to date. Others may know her from the long-running UPN television series, Moesha, in which Brandy starred from 1996 to 2001, or perhaps for her more controversial subsequent television appearance in which she essentially gave birth to her daughter on camera in 2002 for an MTV reality series.

Still others (myself partially included) know her from her star turn in Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella with Whitney Houston and Bernadette Peters, one of the first (and still best) features to come out of the then-recently revived ABC Sunday night special The Wonderful World of Disney. And likely a much smaller number know of Brandy from her periodically brilliant studio albums Full Moon (2002) and/or Afrodisiac (2004), although neither of them could truly be considered blockbusters.

I remember my first introduction to Brandy with the eerie clarity that typically accompanies only my most influential or obsessed-upon memories of my childhood and early adolescent life: it was thanks to a neighbor and friend who happened to own the 1996 Grammy Nominees cd* (those were the days; I can still picture the back cover of the case), which featured such inescapable smash hits of the day like Seal's "Kiss From a Rose," Alanis Morissette's "You Oughta Know," TLC's "Waterfalls," and "One Sweet Day" from Mariah Carey and Boys II Men, among others. But near the end was Brandy's second single (and first big hit) "Baby," a mid-tempo hip hop/R&B groove-fest that totally latched onto my twelve-year-old white boy mind and has yet to let go nearly fifteen years later. And since I realized I have not yet brought up this fine artist on the blog to this date, I think nothing would be more suitable as the Song for the Day on this TGI Friday.

"Baby"

Brandy

Brandy

(Atlantic Records, 1994)

Baby - Brandy

Trivia: Of Brandy's fourteen career Grammy nominations, only one has resulted in victory: her smash hit duet with fellow R&B artist Monica, "The Boy Is Mine," which spent a record-breaking thirteen weeks atop the Hot 100, won the 1999 Grammy for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal.



*How sad is it that my spellcheck did not even recognize "cd?"

Um...Speechless

How Lough

Like a Circle in a Spiral

In 1968 Norman Jewison, the man behind In the Heat of the Night, the film that one year earlier had made a legend out of Sidney Poitier (who became the first black man to win the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in the film) and the line "They call me Mister Tibbs!" (which later became one of the more obscure references in the 1994 Disney masterpiece The Lion King and ranks #16 on the AFI list of "100 Years...100 Movie Quotes"), followed up that success with a moderately received caper starring Faye Dunaway and Steve McQueen and titled The Thomas Crown Affair. Though it received some positive remarks for its stylish visuals and direction, the promising plot turned out messily, and it became largely forgotten over the years. Then, in 1999, an even more stylish remake starring then-James Bond Piece Brosnan as the titular con artist and Rene Russo, who then in her mid-40s had (and has) never been sexier as his femme fatale insurance detective/love interest Kathryn Banning hit the screens...to an arguably similar reception, at least among the leading (read: loudest) critics and box office receipts (the film grossed nearly $125 million on a $48 million budget).*

Though much of the plot and setting was changed in the second film (which can hardly be called a "remake"), several things remained to tie the 1999 picture to its 1968 inspiration, as the latter was, after all, the height of postmodern exercise in filmmaking (see footnote). One not-so-subtle reference to the Jewison film is the inclusion of his leading lady Dunaway in an added role as Crown's psychiatrist, who pops in throughout the film to deliver an often-mocking psychoanalytic expose of the plot's goings-on. Another notable echo of the earlier film that significantly appears in the later one, though, is the tune that won the 1968 film its only Oscar, "Windmills of Your Mind," music by Michel Lagrand (who also wrote the Oscar-nominated score) and lyrics by husband-and-wife team Alan Bergman and Marilyn Bergman**. The song first appears as Crown and Banning dance tensely at a black and white ball - a crucial scene, and those who get the reference only have their anxiety heightened while those who don't lose nothing. Later, over the end credits, a coolly jazz-infused rendition of the song, sung by a cooly jazz-infused Sting, ends the film with the same slinky sensuality that has infused it from the moment Russo (or rather, her high-heel- and black hose-clad lower leg) first appears on screen. Sting's deliciously sexy track is one I have had in my library ever since, and always in or near the "most played" list. Hear for yourself why that might be.

Windmills Of Your Mind - Sting

* Dr. Drew Casper, film historian and renowned professor at the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts, has a passionate self-professed distaste for postmodern film, although he does teach a class devoted entirely to the period and style. In that class, when I took it in 2005, Dr. Casper presented the 1999 film of The Thomas Crown Affair as an extraordinarily rare example of great postmodern filmmaking.


** Alan and Marilyn Bergman have earned fifteen Oscar nominations together as lyricists between 1968 and 1995, their most recent nomination year, winning two ("Windmills of Your Mind" with Michel Lagrand in 1968, and "The Way We Were" with Martin Hamlisch in 1973). In 1982 they became the first songwriters to have three songs nominated in the same year, and unlike later composers and/or lyricists who equalled that honor such as Alan Menken and Howard Ashman, that still would have flown with the recent rule change allowing no more than two songs to be nominated from the same film, as all three 1982 nominees were from separate films (none of them, sadly, won). The duo is still alive and kicking, so one never knows if they might Streep it out to a 16th nomination!

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