“I’m Your Angel” by R. Kelly & Celine Dion (1998)

One critic’s view:  “It’s an endless somnambulant trudge that’s at least two minutes too long.” – Tom Breihan @ Stereogum

The public’s view:  1.63 / 5.00, the worst #1 hit of 1998 & 1999

I try to focus on music here and not on any unrelated negative traits of the individuals who create it.  Even if someone makes a #1 hit that I truly hate, it doesn’t mean that he or she is a horrible person.  In this case, however, the scandal involving one of this song’s performers is the rhinoceros in the room.  It must be addressed before we can discuss anything else.

I am, of course, talking about the CELINUNUNU debacle of 2018.  Celine Dion launched this line of baby and toddler clothes out of frustration with the stereotypical color choices that were available.  She didn’t want blue or pink bleeding all over everything else in the washing machine like a poorly executed gender reveal stunt, so she came up with something better.  Her unpretentious black and white clothing designs were decorated with stars or crosses, or adorned with the name of the synth-pop band New Order.  Maybe she thought that New Order would return the favor by selling shirts that said “Celine Dion”, but they didn’t.

Predictably, this attempt to simplify laundry day was interpreted as the indoctrination of children into a Satanic cult.  The colors and designs were publicly condemned by Monsignor John Esseff (a prominent exorcist) and mocked by Fox News personality Laura Ingraham.  Making matters worse, Dion created a disturbing publicity video in which she barged into a maternity ward and outfitted other people’s infants with CELINUNUNU before being taken away by security guards.  Hundreds of brutal comments appeared under this clip on YouTube.  (The clip was suspiciously removed just before I finished this post.)  For example, BelieveInTheLordJesus777 wrote:  “What a miserable woman… Hell is waiting…”.  Another user, HankyDooDoo, described being “heartbroken” and vowed to “never listen to any of her songs again as she works for the demons”.  When it comes to Celine, HankyDooDoo is now HankyDontDont.

This was an epic brouhaha comparable to several others that have plagued the history of rock ‘n’ roll.  It was like Jerry Lee Lewis marrying his cousin, or the Rolling Stones peeing on the side of a gas station, or John Denver firing a BB gun at his neighbor’s dog.  To that list of career-limiting controversies we can now add Celine Dion’s outrageous promotion of black Goth-style clothing.  She has not had a hit song since.  Ironically, Celine’s nemesis Monsignor Esseff is wearing black Goth-style clothing in almost every photo I’ve seen, and yet no one accuses him of working for the demons.  I know that if I was secretly doing Satan’s bidding, calling myself an exorcist would be a much better cover story than pretending to be a pop singer from Quebec.

Now that this unpleasant matter is out of the way, let’s ponder whether “I’m Your Angel” deserves to be classified as a bad #1 single.  At first listen, it reminds me of R. Kelly’s “I Believe I Can Fly” or that song he wrote for Michael Jackson, “You Are Not Alone”.  Aside from being musically similar, it contains a lot of inspirational and pseudo-religious hooey like those other songs.  It is also more than five minutes in duration like those others, which is a long time to have hooey coming out of your stereo speakers.

But this is a duet, which means that longstanding pop music principles require it to be significantly worse than anything R. Kelly might write for himself or another solo performer.  Kelly accomplishes this by making the melody sound a bit like Dion’s dullest major hit, “Because You Loved Me”.  He also takes advantage of Celine’s vocal range by including a high-pitched hiccup-like note in the chorus:  “I hear your voices when you call me.”  There might be adjectives to describe the way this sounds, but “good” is not one of them.

Aside from the hiccup note, this hit is just a pastiche of several other well-known ballads.  Only one of the songs that it is based upon – “I Believe I Can Fly” – is well-regarded.  In fact, Celine herself seems to no longer care for this tune that was once one of her biggest successes.  She will be singing at a high profile event in Paris later today, and her R. Kelly duet will not be on the agenda.

While the omission of “I’m Your Angel” is certainly good news, Celine’s performance today is still expected to usher in a demonic period of torment and evil – just as Monsignor Esseff and HankyDooDoo warned us.  During this troubled time, it will be impossible to turn on your TV without seeing hideous images of freakish people contorted into painfully unnatural positions at the behest of a shadowy global cabal.  Even worse, there will be so-called “human interest” stories that cause intense agony to anyone who has the misfortune to hear them.  But in a couple of weeks the 2024 Summer Olympics will be over and Satan will go back to his usual job overseeing customer service for Spectrum Cable.

“Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman?” by Bryan Adams (1995)

One critic’s view:  “Listening to it, I mostly just feel great embarrassment for everyone involved.” – Tom Breihan @ Stereogum

The public’s view:  2.08 / 5.00, the worst #1 hit of 1995 through 1997

In my previous post, I described the doldrums that nearly destroyed pop music radio in the early 1990s.  Some broadcasters dug a hole so deep for themselves that it was almost impossible to climb out, even when the rest of the industry began to recover.  The most myopic stations had adopted a racially tinged anti-hip-hop posture with slogans like “Today’s best music, without the rap.”  Those FM outlets were forced to clumsily excise the increasingly popular rap interludes from hit songs such as TLC’s “Waterfalls”.  When Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise” became the best-selling single of 1995, these “no-rap” stations were left out of the party altogether.  It was hard to find eggs in the supermarket for a while, because all of them were on the faces of radio programmers.

So what do you do when you’ve stupidly blocked your station from playing the year’s hottest record?  You go back to your mellowed ex-rocker friend Bryan Adams to see what he’s cooked up lately.  His newest adult contemporary release, “Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman?”, featured a sweet melody and a pleasant Spanish guitar part played by celebrated flamenco musician Paco de Lucía.  Best of all, Rod Stewart and Sting were nowhere to be found.  It was time for yet another Bryan Adams soundtrack single to get some major airtime.

There are many reasons why “Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman?” is not as fondly remembered as Adams’s 1980s songs.  The cringeworthy lyrics are most of those reasons.  While the entire first and second verses are pretty bad, the reference to seeing “your unborn children in her eyes” is perhaps the most widely ridiculed line of any 1990s #1 hit.  There’s also a grating dissonance between Adams and the Spanish guitar.  Husky-voiced white guys from Vancouver don’t typically try to sound like they’re part of the mariachi ensemble at El Burrito Sucio Restaurante.  It’s like if Justin Bieber decided he wanted to front a traditional Mississippi blues band.  Even without all the hand-wringing about cultural appropriation, it just isn’t a musical combination that most people want to hear.

Maybe that’s why five weeks at #1 weren’t enough to secure a permanent spot in our communal heritage for “Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman?”.  The song is being swallowed by the sands of time, and those sands are going to need an antacid afterwards because they are chewing way too fast.  Your last remaining option for hearing the original hit version on YouTube is on a fan-made slideshow with just a few thousand views.  (The performance clip above uses audio from a sound-alike recording that Adams put together with a different guitarist in 2022, long after Paco de Lucía’s death.  It is misleadingly labeled as the “classic” version.  I don’t know why Adams chose to redo the song note-for-note like Taylor Swift did with her older albums.  We can blame Scooter Braun for a lot of things, but not this.)  The song’s official video from 1995 has vanished from YouTube altogether; only a lo-res copy survives on Facebook.  There aren’t any unborn children in anyone’s eyes in that clip.  Mostly, there are a bunch of people who are wearing Zorro masks for no reason.

When we consider the legacy of Bryan Adams, there is much to admire.  “Summer of ‘69”, “Cuts Like a Knife”, and “Run to You” are all classic songs, or at least near classic.  Adams has published acclaimed photography books of homeless people and wounded veterans, and has donated the proceeds to charity.  Most impressively, he’s turned back to his rock ‘n’ roll roots and is cranking out some respectable guitar anthems in his sixties.  It’s a shame that all four of his #1s were movie ballads that don’t reflect his best work.  It says more about us than it does about him.

“All for Love” by Bryan Adams, Rod Stewart, and Sting (1994)

One person’s view:  “This one is a great balance of being incredibly boring, yet also over-the-top in the ways it’s bad.  The singing here never meshes together and completely fails for whatever type of grand emotion it tries to suggest.” – LampSoup @ Reddit

The public’s view:  2.00 / 5.00, the worst #1 hit of 1993 & 1994

In an earlier entry, I explained the Zapoleon Cycle of popular music.  A key feature of the cycle is a “doldrums” period that recurs at intervals of roughly once every ten years.  Many pop radio stations suffer very low ratings during these times as their music selections grow stale and dull.  In the doldrums of the early 1980s, the airwaves – and the Hot 100 chart – were taken over by soft rock.  There was great suffering across the land, but it was nothing compared to the calamity that would occur a decade later.  The doldrums of the early 1990s permanently damaged the radio industry and nearly destroyed the top 40 format forever.

This format – which was now known as “current hits radio” or “CHR” to industry insiders – had suffered a decline in popularity between 1988 and 1992 due to the overabundance of poor quality songs like the ones recently covered on this blog.  The obvious rebound strategy for CHR stations should have been to focus on their historic strength:  playing the best songs from across the most popular genres.  A Pearl Jam tune could be followed by Alan Jackson and then Salt-n-Pepa, with Liz Phair and Dr. Dre after the commercial break.  No more time for second-tier material like “How Do You Talk to an Angel”!  But a recession had hit the radio business hard, leaving even some of the highest-rated FM outlets saddled with debt and overly fearful of alienating advertisers and corporate overlords.  Many stations timidly did the opposite of what was needed, airing only the blandest lite pop while completely ignoring all of the trends that defined the era:  alternative rock, grunge rock, gangsta rap, and country line dancing.  There was now a massive disconnect between the music that people were buying at the record stores and the songs that top 40 stations were playing.  For radio, it was not a winning formula.

Within a couple of years, hundreds of CHR stations had been mismanaged to the brink of oblivion.  Some now seemed to be deliberately trying to shed listeners, presumably for tax reasons.  The words “mix” and “variety” took on a bizarrely negative connotation, as they began to be used in slogans by the stations that were playing the least diverse selection of music.  This was the most doldrumy doldrums ever, and “All for Love” was the #1 hit that exemplified it more than any other.

On paper, “All for Love” had a lot going for it:  the gruff charisma of Bryan Adams, the intellectual superiority of Sting, and the bold pre-geriatric sexuality of Rod Stewart.  As usual with these types of collaborations, however, it failed to live up to the reputations of the big names that were attached.  The result was more of a nostalgia event than a real song.  We were supposed to be excited that these men who had each made great music in the past were now combining their distinctive voices on the same record.  It was like a small-scale model of “We Are the World”, but with more yelling.  Despite sounding like a charity single, however, this endeavor had no philanthropic purpose.  Three people who were already richer than God chose to inflict this on the world just to add a few more pounds or loonies to their bank balances.

In normal times, this record was something that radio stations might have aired once or twice as a novelty before casting it aside with a groan and a laugh.  It wound up in heavy rotation only because CHR broadcasters in 1994 had ceased caring whether anyone was still tuning in.  Indeed, one commenter on Tom Breihan’s Stereogum column said that he remembered “All for Love” playing on the radio at his office.  He and his coworkers then unanimously agreed to permanently change the station so that they would never have to hear it again.

But at least “All for Love” was well-suited for its use in Disney’s film version of The Three Musketeers.  It incorporated a variation of the Musketeers’ slogan into its title and chorus.  It featured three singers who probably imagine themselves as musketeers, even though none of them has ever expressed any particular disdain for Cardinal Richelieu.  Most importantly, it played over the closing credits, ensuring that the audience left the theater quickly so that staff had more time to clean up spilled drinks, gum, and bodily fluids.  It’s too bad that “All for Love” also served as the closing theme for many formerly great radio stations.

“How Do You Talk to an Angel” by the Heights (1992)

One person’s view:  “Listening to it feels like sitting at a cubicle and staring out the window at nothing.” – Nic Renshaw @ Pop Goes the Year

The public’s view:  1.77 / 5.00, the worst #1 hit of 1992

Some TV theme songs are intended to establish the show’s premise so that new viewers can dive right in without having to ask a friend a bunch of annoying questions about what is going on.  If you’ve ever watched a sitcom about a streetwise teen who moves in with his rich aunt and uncle and a talking horse, and who all got shipwrecked on an island during a three-hour tour, you can appreciate this type of theme song.  Other TV themes are more concerned with setting a mood that gets people excited for the action, comedy, or drama that they are about to see.  How could anyone change the channel after hearing Waylon Jennings sing the praises of those good ol’ boys from Hazzard County?  Then there is “How Do You Talk to an Angel”, which is in a category of its own.  Its goal was simply to get played a lot on the radio while its associated TV series, The Heights, languished in ratings hell.

I am not going to offer an opinion on The Heights because, like most people, I never saw an episode of it.  The promos on Fox warned that the series was “from the people who brought you 90210,” and this was enough to ensure that I kept the TV off during that time slot.  Sometimes I also unplugged it as a precaution.  “How Do You Talk to an Angel” did nothing to convince potential viewers that they were missing out on an important cultural experience.  The Heights was ultimately axed while the song was still in the top 10, with the network declining to even air a wrap-up episode that had already been filmed.  Fox had a prestigious reputation to protect, and the series was not living up to the high standards that had been set by shows such as Woops! and Herman’s Head.

The Heights chronicled the adventures of seven people who formed a band.  “How Do You Talk to an Angel” was the best song that these seven could come up with, which suggests that five or six of the band members weren’t pulling their weight and would have been killed off in a plane crash if the series had continued.  (“Tonight, a very special episode of The Heights…”)  The song isn’t even complete.  The second verse ends abruptly after only a couple of lines, then the remaining 60% of the track is just repetition and a long instrumental bridge.  I’m guessing that the writers showed someone else the lyrics that they had so far, and that person said, “Please, stop now.”

Other than being a mediocre, half-finished song from a failed TV show, there is really nothing wrong with “How Do You Talk to an Angel”.  However, its chart success raises questions about what exactly was going on with the Hot 100 in late 1992 and early 1993.  Boyz II Men’s “End of the Road” spent an astonishing 13 weeks at #1 immediately before the Heights had their 2-week turn at the top.  After that, Whitney Houston monopolized the top slot for 14 weeks with “I Will Always Love You”.  I doubt that these three morose ballads were the only decent music available for those seven months.  Unfortunately, the charts had still not yet hit rock bottom.  That’s coming up in the next couple of entries.

“When a Man Loves a Woman” by Michael Bolton (1991)

One person’s view:  “This makes his rendition of ‘Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay’ seem almost listenable.” – paddlesteamer @ Rate Your Music

The public’s view:  1.38 / 5.00, the worst #1 hit of 1991 and many years thereafter

No music personality could have made a better punching bag for an Office Space joke than Michael Bolton.  Not Phil Collins, not Richard Marx, not even Peter Cetera.  But despite all of the ridicule, Bolton possesses a huge army of vociferously loyal fans and has sold tens of millions of albums.  Let’s examine the mystery of Michael Bolton and the divergence of views that he provokes.

Bolton’s good qualities are self-evident.  He has a hell of a voice, and he sings every song like his next meal depends on it.  He put out some decent hard rock music before the record label gurus convinced him that adult contemporary and blue-eyed soul were more lucrative.  He once wrote a song with Bob Dylan.  His sense of humor is superb, as evidenced by his Lonely Island collaboration “Jack Sparrow”.  So why does he get so much disrespect from the critics?

It’s mainly his relationship with ‘60s soul music that has gotten him into trouble.  Most of us are capable of simply admiring a great work of art or music without seeking to improve upon it, but whenever Bolton hears a classic R&B tune he is motivated to record his own version.  He just can’t help himself.  It’s an eccentric and almost antisocial compulsion that he has, like how some people can’t resist doodling facial hair onto every photo in the copy of Vogue in their dentist’s waiting room.  “Georgia on My Mind” doesn’t need an interpretation by a white guy from Connecticut any more than Cindy Crawford needs a goatee, but we live in a world full of magazine vandals and Michael Bolton so we must all find ways to cope.

Bolton’s throatiness, which has been compared to Joe Cocker’s, also invites complaints.  Cocker came by his raw voice naturally, by smoking three packs of cigarettes, downing a bottle of Wild Turkey, and eating a bucket of gravel and broken glass prior to each performance.  There’s no evidence that Bolton follows a similar regime, or that he’s anything but a clean-living singer of songs for moms and grandmas.  He would probably be eligible for honorary membership in the Mormon Church.  Thus, his rasp has an inauthenticity to it that irks some listeners.

Then there was the unpleasantness with the Isley Brothers.  Bolton decried the copyright infringement verdict against him over “Love Is a Wonderful Thing”, prompting Entertainment Weekly to ask critics for their reaction to the case in 1994.  Even those who said Bolton was innocent of plagiarism used this as an opportunity to trash him.  This seemed to be the turning point at which, in the minds of the establishment, he went from being a Grammy-winning hero to an unoriginal bore.  His cover of “When a Man Loves a Woman” was certainly a huge factor in that change of sentiment.

“When a Man Loves a Woman” demands passion and energy, so Bolton would seem to be a good fit for it.  He simply does not have a “reduced power” mode when he’s singing.  The drawback to this is that it’s hard for him to bring the song to a dramatic conclusion after he’s already been pouring his heart out from the very first line.  There’s no place to go but down, or at least sideways.

It’s fair to say that Michael Bolton’s singing style isn’t for everybody, but I personally don’t hear a huge difference in quality between the beloved Percy Sledge version of “When a Man Loves a Woman” and Bolton’s widely despised version.  That is probably the most contrarian opinion I will ever express on this blog, and is further proof that I am not a real music critic.  However, let’s keep in mind that Otis Redding’s widow raved over Bolton’s treatment of “(Sittin’ on the) Dock of the Bay”, so I guess she’s a contrarian too.

Do I celebrate the guy’s entire catalog?  No, I wish he had done more rock tracks like “Fools Game” and not so many ballads.  But I also think that the extraordinarily bad reviews of some of Bolton’s songs, and particularly of “When a Man Loves a Woman”, are absurd.  You’re telling me that an all-time classic composition turns into a disaster worse than “Hangin’ Tough” the moment someone oversings it a bit?  Get real!