“I’m Real (Murder Remix)” by Jennifer Lopez featuring Ja Rule (2001)

One person’s view:  “The contrast between the rough verses and gentle hook doesn’t work as there’s nothing that brings them together seamlessly and the relationship they’re talking about doesn’t sound like one I want.” – Nerd with an Afro

The public’s view:  2.66 / 5.00, in the bottom third of #1 hits of 2001

The entire concept of success got flipped on its head in the early 2000s.  The most lucrative investments were stocks in dot-com companies with no viable plan for profitability.  The guy who received the most votes lost the presidential election.  And a red hot singer and actress couldn’t get her latest single to #1 until it was replaced by an inferior version that offended many of the listeners she was trying to attract.

Jennifer Lopez’s “I’m Real” was like an updated edition of the music that Janet Jackson had made in the 1980s, effortlessly wafting across the boundaries of pop, dance, and R&B.  This pleasantly harmless trifle of a song was perfectly suited for radio, but J. Lo’s management couldn’t care less whether the bumpkins out in Fly Over Land enjoyed hearing the track on their AM top 40 outlets.  Her label expected to sell only three or four CDs in all of Iowa; the real money was in the big cities along the coasts.  For the J. Lo album to go octuple platinum, “I’m Real” needed a hip-hop remix by someone with a deep sense of musical craftsmanship.  No such person was available, so the job was given to Ja Rule.

Ja Rule decided to change the parameters of the assignment.  Instead of remixing J. Lo’s hit, he composed an entirely new song with the same title.  And instead of doing a guest rap on one verse, as was the custom, he wrote himself into the new version on equal footing with the woman who was supposed to be the star.  The resulting duet was dubbed the “Murder Remix” of “I’m Real”.  The “Remix” part was a misnomer, as this was a total rewrite, but “Murder” was accurate because Ja Rule had managed to kill anything that was interesting about the original song.  He eliminated the catchy melody and added a Rick James sample that wears thin after being repeated in the background for four minutes.  It is the lyrics, though, that earn “I’m Real (Murder Remix)” a spot in the museum of “Bad” #1 Hits.

Ja Rule comes across as a thug on this track, but not a motivated type of thug who hustles to sell drugs or who gets into violent feuds with other rappers.  He can’t even be bothered to brag about his wealth or his sexual abilities, because that would require energy.  Instead, he just sits around and smokes so much weed that he forgets his own name and has to ask what it is.  J. Lo says she can’t go on without him, but never explains what attracts her to such a useless boyfriend.  She uses most of her lines to complain about other men, which suggests that she is settling for this guy because everyone else she knows is worse.  We are supposed to accept that the beautiful Jennifer Lopez can do no better than a dull stoner who calls her a “bitch”, but it isn’t plausible.

As Lopez’s label promoted Ja Rule’s rewritten track to urban radio stations, some of them pushed back against the transparent attempt to curry their favor.  J. Lo had previously marketed her music to suburban soccer moms, and now she was trying to have it both ways – literally, in fact, by releasing two different songs under the same title.  Disc jockeys at New York’s Hot 97 saw this as an insult, and they led a protest against Lopez’s needless use of the n-word in the “Murder Remix”.  At every appearance that J. Lo made in support of her single, she was forced to wearily utter some variation of the line “I am not a racist.”  When you’re having to say things like that on a promotional tour, maybe it’s best to just stay home.

The “Murder Remix” could be considered a catastrophe by many measures.  On the Billboard Hot 100, however, it was a huge success.  Ja Rule had stumbled into a loophole in the chart’s methodology.  Because his song was titled as a remix of “I’m Real”, it was credited with the airplay points from J. Lo’s original version as well as its own airplay.  Neither track was probably strong enough to hit #1 by itself, but this glitch in the formula allowed the “Murder Remix” to spend five weeks on top.  It worked out so well that J. Lo and Ja Rule repeated the stunt with “Ain’t It Funny” and “Ain’t It Funny (Murder Remix)”, prompting Billboard to introduce a new rule – the Ja Rule Rule, you could call it – to prevent another recurrence.

By the topsy-turvy standards of the new millennium, “I’m Real” is the perfectly ironic title for J. Lo’s endeavor.  What else could you call a song about an unrealistic and unrelatable romance, written as a cynical marketing ploy and then used in an artificial scheme to manipulate the singles charts?  It’s the audacity of it all, rather than any artistic merit, that makes it intriguing.

“With Arms Wide Open” by Creed (2000)

One person’s view:  “Overwrought, overproduced, and ugly.” – TumbleweedExtreme629 @ Reddit

The public’s view:  1.99 / 5.00, the worst #1 hit of 2000 to 2002

Many music critics look back fondly upon the grunge craze of the early ‘90s.  They curse the day that grunge was replaced by the execrable post-grunge, which committed the unpardonable sin of sounding like grunge despite being slightly later chronologically.  It should have been clear from the beginning, however, that grunge would have only a brief time as the dominant force in rock ‘n’ roll.  The movement’s hero was an iconoclast who disdained wealth and fashion, and whose success led to hundreds of others imitating him in an attempt to become wealthy and fashionable.  The contradiction could not be sustained.  Within a couple of years, the price of flannel shirts was bid up so high that no one aside from Eddie Vedder could afford the extravagant lifestyle associated with the genre.  Plus, life insurance companies wised up and stopped selling policies to anyone who was in a grunge band.  Post-grunge may not evoke the same warm reminiscences as grunge, but at least it has better actuarial statistics.

Creed is despised even more than the average post-grunge act.  I don’t feel like writing a long essay about all the specific reasons why.  Instead, I fed a bunch of reviews and online discussions about the band and their #1 hit into a word cloud generator, and this is what I got:

To the professional and armchair critics who write these reviews, it doesn’t matter that Creed has sold over 50 million CDs.  It also doesn’t matter that Creed’s reunion tour – a quarter century after the band’s peak – is one of the hottest concert tickets this summer.  The band will never appease its haters, and its haters happen to control certain honors such as induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.  In that respect, Creed can be compared to Styx.  Like Styx, it even has a religious, overdramatic lead singer who often antagonizes people.  I guess Scott Stapp is the baritone version of Dennis DeYoung.

I’m going to be a contrarian again, as I was with Michael Bolton, and say that “With Arms Wide Open” doesn’t merit this torrent of contempt.  It’s an inspirational song about becoming a parent for the first time, and it can be appreciated for what it is.  Yes, the production is a bit overdone, and any newborn who enters the world to the sound of Scott Stapp’s angry deep-voiced barking is probably going to turn around and go back into the womb.  Plus, Stapp pronounces the word “open” as if it has a “u” in the second syllable.  But this was the start of a truly forgettable decade for popular music, and Creed’s #1 hit wins some points from me just by not being everything else on the charts at that time.

No other hard rock band has had a #1 song on the Hot 100 since the chart-topping feats of Creed and the similarly maligned Nickelback in 2000 and 2001.  I’m sure it will happen again someday, perhaps as part of a White Lion comeback, but for now we must contend with all of the hip hop, country, and Ed Sheeran that the gods of popular culture choose to bestow upon us.  We still have plenty of material for this blog.

“Thank God I Found You” by Mariah Carey featuring Joe & 98 Degrees (2000)

One person’s view:  “I’m a huge Mariah fan and I can say with complete confidence that this is her worst #1 by a wide, wide margin.” – musthavecupcakes_19 @ Reddit

The public’s view:  2.25 / 5.00, in the bottom third of #1 hits of 2000

Mariah Carey has had 19 #1 hits, more than anyone besides the Beatles.  When critics and listeners rank these 19 singles based on quality, “Thank God I Found You” is almost always at or near the bottom.  Does it deserve its bad reputation?  As Casey Kasem always said, there’s only one way to find out!  Actually, there are several ways to find out, but please keep reading anyway.

“Thank God I Found You” is a fairly standard sappy ballad, but it is not so bad that it can’t be saved by some great singing.  It is also the rare composition that can be improved by adding another vocalist and making it a duet.  Joe was an excellent choice for a duet partner, because he’s one of very few singers talented enough to share the stage with Mariah without having an egomaniacal persona that might risk upstaging her.  In fact, Joe doesn’t possess much of a persona whatsoever beyond having the most nonspecific moniker in all of music.  When I first heard that someone with the mononym Joe was featured on a Mariah Carey hit, I wrongly assumed that Fat Joe had gone on a diet and changed his name – much like how Snoop Doggy Dogg became Snoop, and P. Diddy left his P. in a urinal somewhere and became Diddy.  Joe could have been a much bigger star if he had spelled his name “Jeaux” or changed it to “Bald Joe”.

After Joe was added to the project, someone decided that this song needed a boy band too.  98 Degrees was the type of B-list group that a clueless rich dude might hire for his daughter’s birthday party, only for her to sulk in rage when she sees that it isn’t the Backstreet Boys or NSYNC.  Aside from this Mariah collaboration, the highest-charting hit by 98 Degrees was “Give Me Just One Night (Una Noche)”.  This latter song was a transparent attempt to cash in on the success of Latin-tinged pop music, with part of the title repeated in Spanish just to make the point obvious.  The endeavor might have made sense if 98 Degrees had even one member who was Latino, but the group was whiter than David Duke’s dandruff.  (Full disclosure:  My brother used to know one of the 98 Degrees guys when they both served on some kind of a committee together.  My brother doesn’t remember him ever lapsing into Spanish.)

Now we’re up to six credited singers on a song whose optimal number was more like 1.93.  This makes it a challenging listen because the vocalists are stepping on each other and you don’t know where to place your attention.  The video makes things worse by incorporating that irritating editing style in which one of the performers is shown for two or three seconds before abruptly cutting to someone else.  Roughly 80% of music videos use this technique, but I don’t know whether this trend started before or after 80% of Americans were diagnosed with ADHD.  Either way, I’m sure there is a causal relationship.

I’m no fan of ballads, as Savage Garden could tell you, but I think this song had the right ingredients to be a nice addition to Mariah’s catalog.  Unfortunately, there can be such a thing as too many ingredients.  Adding 98 Degrees to this track was like dumping a bag of Gummi Bears into the Crock Pot while the chili is cooking.  The four frat boys didn’t do a bad job, but Mariah and Joe could have handled the situation without their help.

“I Knew I Loved You” by Savage Garden (2000)

One person’s view:  “Its lethargic tempo would put me to sleep if the singing weren’t as bad as it were.” – dagwood525 @ Rate Your Music

The public’s view:  2.13 / 5.00, in the bottom 25% of #1 hits from 2000

Hearing Savage Garden’s “I Knew I Loved You” on the radio is like having your dog take a break from playing with you so that he can lick himself.  You could watch patiently while ol’ Woof Woof cleanses his private area for three and a half minutes, but it’s far better to turn your attention elsewhere.  Likewise, the first few notes of “I Knew I Loved You” should be your cue to change the station.

It isn’t just that the song is musically uninspiring, though it most definitely is.  It also has mawkish lyrics that idealize the man’s love interest more than any Lionel Richie ballad ever could.  Lead singer Darren Hayes describes his woman as having a thousand angels dancing around her.  She is the flawless female that he always envisioned and loved in his dreams, a bespoke soulmate who was created specifically to make his life complete.  (Yes, I know he was not actually singing about a female, but “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” applied to lite rock in that era just as it did to the military.  Let’s play along with the charade.)

This song can be contrasted unfavorably with Billy Joel’s classic “Just the Way You Are”, which reassures a woman that she doesn’t have to change any of her disgusting quirks and foibles to please her partner.  She probably eats spaghetti with her fingers and has a tattoo of a shirtless Michael Dukakis on an intimate area of her body, but Billy Joel loves her just the way she is.  “I Knew I Loved You”, on the other hand, suggests that Darren Hayes loves the woman only because she seems to meet the unattainable feminine standard that existed in his mind before they met.  This means that he simply hasn’t seen her defects yet, and now there will be pressure on her to maintain the illusion of perfection.  One poorly timed belch and this relationship is over.

Despite the cloying message, or perhaps because of it, this ballad spent 17 weeks at #1 on the adult contemporary chart.  Obviously, there must have been a major dearth of quality material for that format in early 2000.  Where’s Michael Bolton when you need him?

This was the Australian duo’s second and final Hot 100 #1, following “Truly Madly Deeply”.  I used to think that “Truly Madly Deeply” was a drag of a song, but it is positively peppy compared to “I Knew I Loved You”.  The only interesting musical feature of “I Knew I Loved You” is a key change near the end.  This type of modulation, moving all the notes up a half-step or even a full step, used to be common on hit records.  (“Livin’ on a Prayer” is perhaps the best known example.)  This shift can brighten the sound and give a song a burst of energy just as it might otherwise be wearing thin.  There still isn’t any energy in “I Knew I Loved You”, but the key change gives the listener hope that this bout with Savage Garden is about to conclude and that better times are ahead.

There are #1s that are more awful than this, just as there are things your dog might do that are more malevolent than giving himself an unseemly tongue bath.  The accusatory lyrics of “Separate Lives”, for example, are more repugnant than the ingratiating lyrics of “I Knew I Loved You”.  Ultimately, though, I have to agree with the critics and fans who classify this as the first truly, madly, deeply bad chart-topper of the 2000s.

“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.