Mark Wills - Back at One
** (of four)
God, this was the big trend for awhile, wasn't it? Country artists doing covers of R+B songs. That was all music needed - a twangy version of Tony Rich Project's "Nobody Knows," or, worse, John Michael Montgomery's nod to All-4-One with "I Swear." Add to the list this late-1999 version of Bryan McKnight's "Back at One," released to country radio while the original was still #2 on the charts.
I like McKnight and all - I think "Anytime" is one of the best slow jams of the '90s - but "Back at One" does not represent his finest work. The chorus reads like a bad episode of "Sesame Street," with its one-two-three nursery rhyme chorus structure and horrible, horrible lyric, "Four: Repeat steps one through three." But somehow the whiny histrionics of McKnight's original, the bridge in particular, translates unexpectedly well to the country medium. I'm sober and wide awake, and I think this version is better than the original.
The video's an exercise in stodgy mediocrity, though. Wills spends the duration of the video in a series of snazzy suits while lip synching from a big, empty house. The director even duplicates the Mariah Carey "Vision of Love" video by placing Wills in front of a big square window with a fake sunset passing by in the background. Oh, and he rides a doorless elevator which lists off the numbers of the floors as Wills is singing "One... two... three... four..."
God, this was the big trend for awhile, wasn't it? Country artists doing covers of R+B songs. That was all music needed - a twangy version of Tony Rich Project's "Nobody Knows," or, worse, John Michael Montgomery's nod to All-4-One with "I Swear." Add to the list this late-1999 version of Bryan McKnight's "Back at One," released to country radio while the original was still #2 on the charts.
I like McKnight and all - I think "Anytime" is one of the best slow jams of the '90s - but "Back at One" does not represent his finest work. The chorus reads like a bad episode of "Sesame Street," with its one-two-three nursery rhyme chorus structure and horrible, horrible lyric, "Four: Repeat steps one through three." But somehow the whiny histrionics of McKnight's original, the bridge in particular, translates unexpectedly well to the country medium. I'm sober and wide awake, and I think this version is better than the original.
The video's an exercise in stodgy mediocrity, though. Wills spends the duration of the video in a series of snazzy suits while lip synching from a big, empty house. The director even duplicates the Mariah Carey "Vision of Love" video by placing Wills in front of a big square window with a fake sunset passing by in the background. Oh, and he rides a doorless elevator which lists off the numbers of the floors as Wills is singing "One... two... three... four..."
posted by daytime at 3:33 AM
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