🎵 2022-03-25 13:51:00 – Paris/France.
In The Number Ones, I review every #1 single in the history of Billboard Hot 100, starting at the top of the chart in 1958 and working all the way back to the present.
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Pop music is not a fundamentally educational medium. No one goes to pop stars to learn the hard truths about the world. When pop songs try to convey a real message, things can get dicey fast. We've had many message songs throughout pop history, but by the way, a pop song about Questions is likely to sound like an absolute dreck. This is the “We Are The World” problem: when pop musicians are too attached to their own seriousness, sometimes self-esteem is the only thing that stands out.
The miracle of "Waterfalls," the girl group's second all-time No. 1 hit from TLC, is that it's a song with a message that doesn't sound like a song with a message. On paper, "Waterfalls" is about the temptation to self-destruct, to get lost in fantasies about money or sex, and then pay the consequences. But “Waterfalls” never becomes heavy with its message. Instead, the song works as a frictionless glide. It's warm and funky and deeply comforting. The text may be depressing, but the song made me happy in 1995, and it makes me happy today.
Clive Davis couldn't hear it. TLC was signed to LaFace, a subsidiary of Davis' Arista imprint. When TLC first played "Waterfalls" for Davis, he didn't think the single would work. TLC's Tionne "T-Boz" Watkins told the story to The Guardian years later: "[Clive] didn't like it. He said it was too deep. He didn't think people would run into the street. So TLC went straight to LaFace co-founder LA Reid, asking for money for a "Waterfalls" video and a single release. Reid was convinced, and TLC landed the biggest hit of a career full of big hits.
When TLC made their second album crazysexycoolthey left behind the slamming and chaotic sound of their 1992 debut Ooooooohhh… on the TLC tip. TLC worked with many of the songwriters and producers from the first LP, but they changed their style, becoming slower and more spacious. Rap music has always been a big part of TLC's overall approach, but crazysexycool found the band moving ever closer to where rapping was in the mid-90s. The album featured guest appearances from rappers like Phife Dawg, Busta Rhymes and Outkast member then known only as Dre . crazysexycool also had ad-libs and production by Jermaine Dupri and Sean "Puffy" Combs, and there were two tracks that TLC recorded with Atlanta's Organized Noize, one of the biggest rap production teams of all. time. "Waterfalls" is one of those two Organized Noize tracks, and it's Organized Noize's biggest hit ever.
The Organized Noize crew - Sleepy Brown, Rico Wade and Ray Murray - started making music together in the early 90s, and the trio's history was entirely tied to that of TLC. T-Boz actually introduced Sleepy Brown to Rico Wade when Rico worked at a store called LaMonte's Beauty Supply. Early on, before TLC finalized its lineup, Rico Wade worked on demos with the band. Organized Noize later landed their first record credit when they remixed TLC's 1992 single "What About Your Friends." (That song peaked at No. 7. That's an 8.) The Organized Noize remix was also the first record appearance of Outkast, one of the young rap groups that Organized Noize was mentoring. (Outkast will eventually appear in this column.) Working together in the studio they called the Dungeon, Organized Noize found their own version of slow-paced Southern funk, and Outkast was a big part of that.
Organized Noize also produced TLC's version of the Christmas song "Sleigh Ride", which appeared on the 1992 soundtrack Home Alone 2: Lost in New York then on the 1993 compilation A Family Christmas LaFace. Another of the songs on this compilation was "Player's Ball", a Christmas song by Outkast, who had just signed with LaFace after intense lobbying by Organized Noize. "Player's Ball," which had a soft falsetto hook from Sleepy Brown, didn't sound much like a Christmas song. The track took off, to the point where LaFace commissioned a remix without sleigh bells and released the song as a non-Christmas single. It peaked at number 37 and Outkast then released the classic 1994 debut album. Sudludiqueadillacmuzik. Organized Noize produced the entire LP.
Outkast was the first and greatest rapper to come out of the Dungeon Family, the team of artists that surrounded Organized Noize. These artists would lay the groundwork for Southern rap to take over and Atlanta to become the new center of the rap world. The three Organized Noize members wrote "Waterfalls" with TLC's Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes and Marqueze Ethridge, a friend and collaborator who worked at the restaurant of a local Marriott hotel. Ethridge kept that job even after "Waterfalls" reached No. XNUMX.
“Waterfalls” has a lot of that early organized noise sound. The beat would fit perfectly on Outkast's debut album. Organized Noizes were big on live instruments, and “Waterfalls” has the sweaty interplay of musicians working together in a studio. Bassist LaMarquis Jefferson plays a whispering, ever-changing bassline while guitarist Edward Stroud noodles through a wah-wah pedal. The horns do not stab; they float languidly. The stoned, blissful vibe matches T-Boz's cool, confident alto perfectly. It blends directly into the track.
There are no samples on "Waterfalls", but the central phrase of the chorus might have sounded familiar. In 1980, Paul McCartney, a guy who's been in this column many times, started a song called "Waterfalls" by singing this line: "Don't go jumping waterfalls/Please keep to the lake/The people who jumping falls make mistakes. McCartney's "Waterfalls" was a top 10 hit in the UK, but it missed the Hot 100. Years later, McCartney told the AV Club he noticed the similarities between his "Waterfalls" and the song that came later: "Somebody had a hit a few years ago using the first line, 'Don't go jumping waterfalls/Please stick to the lake...' And then they go into another song . It's like, 'Excuse me?'” As far as I know, however, McCartney has never threatened legal action, nor does he have writing credit on the TLC track.
If TLC took this line from McCartney, they may have done it accidentally. At Fred Bronson's Billboard Book Of Number 1 Hits, Marqueze Ethridge tells how he came up with the chorus: “What is one of the most beautiful things in the world but at the same time one of the deadliest? And I just thought of a waterfall, because it's wonderful to see but it's a dangerous force of nature. Just because everything looks good doesn't mean it's good for you. This is more or less the message of “Waterfalls”: the things that seduce you can also destroy you.
On the first two verses of "Waterfalls", T-Boz sings two of these situations. In the first, a mother watches helplessly as her son gets into more and more trouble on the street, and her prayers go unanswered: "He goes out and makes his money the best way he knows how / A another body lying in the gutter.” In the second, a "Little Precious" is blinded by sex until the day he looks in the mirror and realizes that he has fallen ill: "His health is deteriorating, and he does not know why / Three letters led him to his final resting place. »
Left Eye wrote their own “Waterfalls” verse. At the time, she couldn't spend as much time in the studio as the other two members of TLC. Instead, she was undergoing court-ordered rehab after pleading guilty to burning down the house of her boyfriend, Falcons star receiver Andre Rison. Left Eye never directly addresses her own situation in her verse, but she reflects, “As her promise is true, only my faith can undo the many chances I blew to breathe new life into my life / A blue sky clear and unconditional dried the tears from my eyes, no more lonely cries / My bloody only hope is for the people who can't cope / With a pain so enduring it keeps them in the pouring rain.
In the above guardian piece, T-Boz says that she and Left Eye were in a car together the night before the taping of "Waterfalls" and they both saw a rainbow. At the start of its verse, Left Eye says, “I saw a rainbow yesterday. T-Boz: "What she said was real." It was for herself and anyone who had taken the wrong path, chased the wrong things. And she really saw that rainbow – and it made her feel good about life and reminded how precious it is. (T-Boz also says she heard "Waterfalls" as "our version of alternative music," which I think is cool as hell.)
Left Eye's verse deals with heavy subject matter, but she delivers it with loaded playfulness. She crams tons of syllables into certain lines. On others, she lets her voice fade. This verse is crucial in keeping “Waterfalls” from getting too tearful with its message. The monster chorus also helps. On the hook, Rozonda "Chilli" Thomas sings lead, but you can hear the voices of all three TLC members. Vocalist and bassist Debra Killings also adds backing vocals, as does Cee-Lo, one of the Dungeon Family crew members known as the Goodie Mob.
Later in 1995, Goodie Mob would release their own classic debut album. soul food, which was also produced entirely by Organized Noize and coined the term "Dirty South". Goodie Mob never reached the size of Outkast, but they were also an extremely important creative force. (The band's highest-charting single, 1995's "Cell Therapy," peaked at No. 39.) Later, Cee-Lo's raspy voice would turn him into a star. Cee-Lo has never landed a No. 1 hit, but he's come close twice. In 2006, Cee-Lo was one half of duo Gnarls Barkley, which reached No. 2 with "Crazy." Four years later, Cee-Lo returned to No. 7 with the solo single "Fuck You." (“Crazy” is a 6, and “Fuck You” is a XNUMX.) Four years later ce, Cee-Lo was on trial for drugging an unsuspecting woman, and he claimed on Twitter that the rape couldn't be rape if the woman was unconscious. Fuck this guy.
Organized Noize never really became big pop producers after "Waterfalls," even though "Waterfalls" was a huge hit and "Sumthin' Wicked This Way Comes," the other ON-produced track on crazysexycool, is an absolute bang. But Organized Noize worked with another girl group on another big hit. In 1996, the team co-wrote and co-produced En Vogue's No. 2 hit "Don't Let Go (Love)". (It's a 9.) Today, Organized Noize is mostly revered as the production brains behind Outkast, Goodie Mob and the rest of the Dungeon Family, which had a truly incredible run in the late '90s. Thanks to this Outkast connection, Sleepy Brown will eventually appear in this column.
When TLC convinced LA Reid that "Waterfalls" should be a single, they had just landed some huge hits. “Creep”, the first single from crazysexycool, had been TLC's first No. 1 hit. TLC's next single was "Red Light Special", a…
SOURCE: Reviews News
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