LEANN RIMES – "Can't Fight The Moonlight"

I’m not sure Trevor Horn was having a good day – the clumping, plodding strut of the backing track couldn’t be more Cheiron-by-numbers if it tried, and the chorus is very ‘Oops’ (I was going to say something clever about the chord progression here, but the chords are weird). The idea seems to be that if you take a sweet, vaguely country-ish song & put it through the Cheironator you’ll get a song sung by an attractively feisty sexual predator like, er, Britney – whose USP was something a lot more edgy & dangerous, even in her heyday. For me it’s a misfire – I’ll give it 4, and one of those is for some hearteningly full-on vocal noodling.

Wow, I’m finding this (on first 4 or 5 listens) busily horrible. Like ‘Same Old Brand New You’, CFTM is a franken-record but this time the individual parts that have been stitched together are charmless at best, revolting at worst (e.g., that key change in the middle 8 after a bunch of odd changes earlier is painful). As Tom basically notes, a bombastathon about moonlight, like the image of moonlight as an assailant is just a very bad idea. And none of this does anything positive for Rimes’s voice (great on ‘How Do I live’ and recent stuff like ‘What Have I Done’); she sounds utterly lost here, like she doesn’t believe a word of what she’s singing, and even her usual good diction (that first line!) deserts her:
3

In 2000’s second long run of one week wonders LeAnn Rimes was the only act scoring her only UK chart topper and indeed it stands out as a bit of an oddity in the year as a whole. It was the 12th biggest seller of the year and surprisingly outsold every other chart topper between September and November inclusive (although Who Let The Dogs Out was the biggest selling single overall).

It is a bit of a throwback to the early nineties; had this come out in 1991/92 I think it would have been a number one single and sat a lot better in context. It did well to break through in 2000 and block Daft Punk from the top with One More Time. Speaking of Daft Punk the album Discovery, hailed at the time as a groundbreaking dance masterpiece, came out early in 2001 – we will of course eventually meet them in 2013.

LeAnn Rimes herself feels a little bit like a prototype Taylor Swift. It’s a bit mean to dismiss her as a `faith and flag` artist when a look at her Wikipedia article suggests that she has aligned herself with liberal causes.

My first long term girlfriend loved Coyote Ugly, thusly I was forced into watching it about once every 2 months for entirety of our relationship, though this was 2004, so its initial flush of success had obviously had some impact on her, Lord knows why. Neither of the leads went on to movie stardom did they? Adam Garcia cropped up in a Marple I caught on ITV 3 recently…
It’s a terrible film, without being offensive and my feelings about this are about the same.
I like the key change for the chorus, there’s a real lift of energy the first time it happens, but the backing is definitely below par and Rimes’ vocals are a bit beige for me. The film was a sizeable hit, wasn’t it? I bought the video for a girl I was wooing at the time, my pocket money just about stretched. She’d asked for Cruel Intentions but I got ID’d…
Oh, and the Swift comparisons are fair up to a point. I could never Rimes coming up with something as interesting as Blank Space. But that’s just me.

I can only think of this record as a mistake, a lost opportunity, a case of a record company trying too hard to “break” a singer by giving her material that really didn’t suit her style or show her at her best. I loved “How Do I Live” (although perhaps not quite as much as the Trisha Yearwood version – now that a singer who deserves to be better known by a mainstream audience…. – although Rimes’ slightly poppier version suggests that she has both a sweeter and perhaps more versatile voice than Yearwood) , and had a certain amount of affection for the other pop-country crossover stuff she had put out since, so the prospect of her having a number one single filled me with excitement….until I heard it.

Why Oh Why Oh Why? This is both overblown and stultifying: it doesn’t really flow, the exceedingly evident Diane Warren contribution makes this sound more like a mediocre Belinda Carlisle album track than the voice of new pop-country (and I have no particular objection to the flags-and-faith side of things….) , and the changes of pace and of key are almost stomach-churning. The comparison with the recent Corrs no 1 is obvious (turn up the production values, drain out or tone down the individual pecularities of the artist), but, unlike that, the song here is not quite strong enough to survive this surfeit of production tricks. Anyway, far worse than being Leanne Rimes least fine moment, it is possibly Trevor Horn’s (although, hmm, FGTH were always immensely overrated as well as overhyped)- that is a worse artistic crime.

Sorry, I would love to like this, but I can’t. Too much perspiration, not enough inspiration. 3

I’m very fond of this one. It’s got some enjoyable gear changes along the way and the only thing letting it down for me is a surprisingly slovenly drum track from Trevor Horn. And like most Diane Warren songs it’s perfect karaoke fodder.
There were quite a few dance mixes and the Graham Stack Latino version certainly helped prolong it’s life on radio in the U.S., so much so that many people only know it by that dance version.
7.

Count me in with the Populistas here. LeAnn Rimes does have a compelling voice and she gives a creditable performance, but the production lets this one down badly. The top-heaviness means gravity will force it to collapse in on itself…and in the end it does. Poor LeAnn can’t fight the mixing desk as further legions of sonic frippery are sent in to do battle with her besieged vocals. Guys, how much is too much?

Having said that, it’s still quite a well constructed lyric. She’s in control. She’s making all the moves here, and while I’m admiring her resolve to win the object of her affection over with increasing persistence, I’m wondering why Trevor Horn needed to signify this need with massive chunks of guitar, crunching percussion and stabs of strings. Does she not have all the weapons she needs already?

This falls into the trap of being cinematic, because it’s soundtracking a movie. We’re not really in power ballad territory, but it’s building like one. A second listen uncovers the “Barbie Girl” comparison. A third frames it within the Max Martin formula. It’s a proper Frankenstein’s Monster of a record, but relatively enjoyable nevertheless. Judging by the comments, I’m kinda glad I never saw the film. (6)

Hadn’t realised there was a Warren bunny coming soon, so this feels like a great opportunity to point out the existence of this amazing interview (website is NSFW and that currently includes something on the sidebar) in which she points out she’s never really been in love. Frankly, as an autistic and asexual man who found love almost completely by accident and spent years assuming disinterest in that too, there’s an awful lot in there that resonates with me.

It dates back to October 2006 – that’s a few months after “Numb” came out, quite possibly my favourite Pet Shop Boys record, and a song that – like this – was written by Warren and produced by Horn. Of course, “Numb” is not a romantic ballad, but something quite different in its source of despair. I think (but can’t source) Warren saying it was written in the aftermath of a death in the family, the album’s appearance on Fundamental clearly invites an Iraq War-themed reading, and the song was used over the top of the closing credits of the BBC’s coverage of England’s World Cup defeat to Portugal – but sometimes the right reading of a song is the immediate and obvious one, and for me “Numb” has always stood alone as the best illustration of sensory overload, the single greatest difficulty I face as an autistic person, I’ve ever encountered in any medium. It is possibly my favourite song of all time, one I listen to time and time again on the occasions I get it out, and if it were bunnied it’d be the single most nailed-on 10 I’d ever give in this project.

But it didn’t make the top, and this Warren/Horn combination did. And I can’t understand why I like it, because both writer and producer are a long way below their best, and yet… I’ve just listened to it several times in a row without complaining.

Part of it is that it’s weirdly difficult to get a handle on – all the individual components work well (it’s a solid song with a great singalong hook, Cheiron-with-an-orchestra is a winning formula on the production side even if it'[s really not helped by going too big too soon, LeAnn sings strongly and only has one real dissolution into melismatic nonsense) but for a song with such big names behind it in a movie musical about songwriting, it feels oddly throwaway.

Then again, the alternative could have so easily ended up as a dreadfully drippy ballad only a couple of levels up from “Forever Love,” and this is at least high-impact and enjoyable. I’d also add that the Cheiron (or at least Martin-for-Britney) trick of massed backing vocals taking the post-bridge choruses gets semi-used here in the form of multi-tracked LeAnn, and that works very well for me by allowing Warren to have her cake (create a stonking singalong chorus) and eat it (create opportunities for LeAnn to show off, and even those are relatively constrained by the standards of, say, Aguilera).

Solidly enjoyable and at least a 6 for me.

Actually, Rimes went on to co-write a lot of her stuff. But despite some of it obviously having personal meaning for her — I think the title song on Twisted Angel was meant to be a self-portrait, when she does “Family” live she asks audience members to raise their hands if they too are from a dysfunctional family, and “What I Cannot Change” is her own take on the Serenity Prayer — and despite her most recent album having brief appearances in the credits by both Nathan Chapman (original Swift producer) and Liz Rose (original Swift co-writer), none of it has the feel of Swift’s autobiographical singer-songwriter stream. In fact, Rimes is interestingly all over the place, the only psychological constant being her deep, thick immediately recognizable voice. Her good but hopelessly anachronistic and commercially doomed full-on pop move, Twisted Angel, sounded as if her true musical love was the heaving “Flashdance” stomps of ten years earlier, and four years later she put out a Europe-only dance-rock album. Anyway, quality could be as erratic as her style, but there’s a lot of good stuff, if you want to explore. My favorite five are “No Way Out,” “And It Feels Like,” “Family,” “Upper Hand,” and “The Bottle Let Me Down.”

Unique Selling Point is the version I’ve always been given by business-y wonks at work training. If they’re feeling really tragic they’ll call it a Wow! Factor.

Possibly Trevor Horn’s worst production to do OK. I cringe at the cheap snapping drum sounds. It’s such a shame – he looked like he was on the way to defining the 90s as well with ‘Crazy’ but this is following not leading, even if I’m sure he got a good payday from it. I feel a bit more guitar (especially weirder guitar sound) would have made it stand out a bit more, and possibly retain the appeal to country fans. The traces of chromaticism (I think?) stand out well on the chorus, but when he tries to fold in countermelodies around 2:25 on the video it really doesn’t work. The key changes have a blunt force that carries but they sound so obvious. Rimes’ voice is pretty good – the way she bites onto every word adds a lot of commitment and masks a lot of the cynicism of the song. (That wistful “You can’t fight it…” is brilliant at adding momentum and poise to a song lacking it elsewhere.)

Completely agreed on ‘Numb’. One of my favourite songs ever. Jaw-dropping video, too, though only being available in SD is a real shame. Wish they’d performed it when I saw them live in ’09.

Here I am, back from a break. No new #1’s posted here since FEBRUARY!

I just want to say now that I’ve seen the film. About five or six times.

It’s not that bad after all! I bought the extended cut on DVD (rated 15, as opposed to the 12-rated original). I saw it a few times. I quite liked it.

EVERYTHING is garbage to some extent, but there are way worse films than that.

Anyway, 7 for the film. 9 for the song, as before.

And I’m back for the first time in a year or two(?)

The movie was bad after all, looking back. Nostalgia goggles are very powerful. There were some jokes that made me chuckle, though. “Millions survive night in New York” was one I recall.

I still like the song, though.