Word: songe
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Except in her music. Her first album, Toni Braxton, produced by R.-and-B. hitmakers Antonio ("L.A.") Reid and Kenny ("Babyface") Edmonds, swam against the tide. While other R.-and-B. singers were getting louder, brasher, naughtier, Braxton's songs were slower, heavier, laden with emotion. And they had an attitude. Her first hit, Love Shoulda Brought You Home, admonished a man who had been staying out too late; the song Best Friend (which Braxton co-wrote) is a barbed note to a boyfriend who had an affair with his lover's best friend...
Listeners were drawn to these songs because they were about things they had gone through; Braxton sang them because they were about things she had gone through. Says Braxton: "Most of the things that I write or sing about are based on true stories in my life." For example, when she was in college (she attended several schools, including Bowie State College in Bowie, Maryland, but never finished), her then best friend took up with her then boyfriend. Says Braxton, laughing: "After I released the song Best Friend, I heard through acquaintances that this ex-boyfriend wanted publishing rights...
...their little girls, but Jose Manuel's came true. Little Gloria grew up to become Gloria Estefan, the popular singing star, with 45 million albums sold worldwide. Her latest recording, Destiny, is climbing the Billboard charts, and its featured single, Reach, has been designated as the official theme song of the Atlanta Olympics (she will perform it during the closing ceremonies). But singing star or no, Estefan, a 38-year-old mother of two, still has the unused portion of her round-trip ticket from Havana to Miami. Even as she chats, relaxed, in the two-story mansion she shares...
Destiny is a product of her bicultural soul. The title song features the gentle sound of a classical guitar, accompanied by harp, viola and cello. Reach, the Olympic anthem on the album, contains moments of mature reflection between the big sing-along, go-for-the-gold choruses. (Estefan says she and writing partner Diane Warren composed the song in 15 minutes.) Destiny is not a perfect album, but it draws smartly from Estefan's sleek Latin-music heritage while mostly avoiding the excesses of her earlier American dance-pop. Says Estefan: "I feel Destiny is a synthesis of everything that...
...hellishness of Dawn's experiences through the use of killer details. When Dawn develops a crush on the town hunk and lead singer of her brother's band (Eric Mabius), her attempts to dance along to his crooning while sitting on a parked car epitomizes her utter awkwardness. The song written to celebrate the Wiener parents' anniversary is a tribute to suburban mediocrity, and the last shot of the film, which has Dawn singing her school anthem, bewilderedly, along with a busload of her classmates/tormentors, evokes the inevitability of Dawn's niche in the junior high universe: for every cheerleader...