Another year, another X Factor charity single at number one. This is the fourth of its kind, and the third which I have written about here. The show's cultural capital is decidedly on the wane this series; with a mostly-new judging panel, viewing figures, voting numbers, and advertising revenue are apparently down. For the first time since the first series in 2004, the winner's single will not be released to coincide with the Christmas Number One battle; and, notably here, the producers have seen fit to rope former contestants JLS and One Direction in for this charity single, the current series' finalists presumably not representing enough of a draw on their own.
'Wishing On A Star' was originally recorded by LA soul band Rose Royce for their second album, 1977's Rose Royce II: In Full Bloom. The group was one of the first to sign to Whitfield Records, founded by legendary progressive-soul genius Norman Whitfield after his acrimonious break from Motown in 1973. 'Wishing On A Star' in its original incarnation was, of course, produced by Whitfield and naturally sounds beautiful; lead vocalist Gwen Dickey's delivery is flawless, pining with aching lost-love melancholy over Whitfield's sparse background of pianos, strings, minimal percussion, and occasional ripples of funk guitar. It's a formula that was repeated successfully on their next big single, 'Love Don't Live Here Anymore' (this time augmented with some odd, futuristic-sounding synth noises). Both songs were top 3 hits in the UK in 1978, but were nowhere near as successful in the US, where it took New York urban dance-pop outfit the Cover Girls to finally make 'Wishing On A Star' a hit in 1992.
Since then, the track has become a bit of a standard. Jay-Z got Gwen Dickey to reprise the song's hook on his 1998 single of the same name, based around an extensive sample of the Whitfield-produced original; Beyoncé has also covered it. In fact, the X Factor version isn't even the first version of 'Wishing On A Star' of its month, with British soul stalwart Seal having released a version as a single one week previously. (For what it's worth, Seal's version - produced by Trevor Horn - is fine enough, and sensibly cleaves pretty close to the ambience of the original.) All of which makes the song an unsurprising choice as material for an X Factor charity single, as does its central and titular image, vague and wishy-washy enough to suit the purposes of the charity ballad ('stars' have long since been a go-to image for emptily contemplative pop, from 'Yellow' to 'Written In The Stars' - although that isn't a brush I would tar the Rose Royce original with).
How much is there to say about this, then? The backing track actually sounds nice enough, and it probably says something about the healthy state of British pop at the moment that even a by-numbers charity ballad can be backed up by a vaguely trip-hop-indebted (if awkward) breakbeat and a relatively spacious and pretty arrangement. If I'm going to listen to musically conservative, soft-focus wallpaper - and if I'm listening to an X Factor charity single, that's presumably what I'm in for - I would rather it sound this clean and airy, and actually acknowledge the existence of black music, than the muddy, deracinated sonic slop that we are usually served on singles like this.
Having said that, this is obviously still a bit of a mess, as is usually the case with charity singles which try to shoehorn countless lead vocalists onto a single track. I'm not a big fan of 'Do They Know It's Christmas?', the originator of this trend; but one thing that Geldof and Ure got right, which virtually none of those following them ever have, was to craft a dynamic song with lots of different parts to it. Because the song shifts constantly, we can have different vocalists jumping in on every other line without it sounding awkward and forced, and everyone involved can inhabit their own part of the song without inviting direct comparison with anybody else (most notoriously, of course, Bono's wracked and earnest "thank God it's them instead of you"). From the crushing 7-minute endurance test of 'We Are The World' onward, a different standard has been set: give a revolving cast of vocalists a repetitive and circular melody to contend with, so that the listener is asked to listen to a litany of different singers delivering the same melodic phrases over and over again, while no singer is given room to do anything with the song, and everyone involved is trying their best to 'put their own stamp' onto it. Ballad singing, in particular, generally requires a skilled and subtle vocal performance, and a singer who knows when to cut loose and when to hold back (and is generally better served by less of the former and more of the latter). The whole concept of revolving-cast charity ballads like this seems almost custom-designed to prevent this from happening, and to more or less ensure a disrupted, messy, unsatisfying listen. Which is exactly, unsurprisingly, what happens here.
All of which, one might think, is more or less academic; the song is at number one, it has earned some money for charity and given a boost to the media profile of The X Factor as a brand, and of the performers on the track. This is, perhaps, all that it was ever intended to do. But it is, at the end of the day, still a pop record; it seems fair enough to judge it as one, and as a pop record it is weak - the most you can praise it for is that it isn't anywhere near as terrible as it could have been. The arrangement starts out subtle and quiet, and gradually builds over the course of the thing. Exiled contestant Frankie Cocozza, who has been swiftly excised from the video and radio versions of the track, shows up halfway through the second verse on the actual single version, sounding lost and confused, to sing "I didn't mean to hurt you, but I know/in the game of love you reap what you sow" in a hazy, Doherty-esque mumble, almost as though apologising for allowing himself to be spun as some sort of disgusting comedy-relief parody of a rock'n'roll misogynist. As the song progresses, the song gets bigger, and - predictably - the singers start to depart more and more from the melodic constraints of the song, using it as a platform to show off their vocals (for what it's worth, Craig Colton and Sophie Habibis are probably the worst offenders on this score). In general, throughout, absolutely no one manages to connect with the quiet but gut-wrenching heartbreak that the song actually demands; but it's hard to blame them when they've only been given isolated lines to deliver. Finally, we get the inevitable key change into a massive choir; but here, it's a choir comprised by two X Factor-generated boybands, JLS and One Direction. Any listener who was somehow managing to connect with the emotional content of the song is surely stopped in their tracks by Oritsé Williams from JLS yelling "JLS! 1D!" and ushering in the final, pointless thirty seconds or so of the song, on which JLS and One Direction do very little other than justify their inclusion in the video and on the single sleeve credits.
At its heart, 'Wishing On A Star' is a lonely song - the overwhelming mood of the original, from Gwen Dickey's gorgeously sad vocal to Norman Whitfield's spacious, delicate sonic backdrop, is one of isolation and of absence. (In that sense it's probably not a coincidence that the group and producer's attempt to replicate its feel ended up being called 'Love Don't Live Here Anymore', and making such prominent use of the word vacancy, the ideal word to capture 'Wishing On A Star''s mood of melancholy emptiness.) This rendition, ending up as an overcrowded and overblown mess, home to too much emotionally blank vocal showboating, ends up losing - despite its best efforts - most of what makes the song a good one.
0 comments:
Post a Comment