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.
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