{"id":42036,"date":"2010-07-06T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-07-06T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/mary\/"},"modified":"2010-07-06T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-07-06T00:00:00","slug":"mary","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/mary\/","title":{"rendered":"Mary"},"content":{"rendered":"

By the time Mary J. Blige released her fourth studio album, Mary<\/i>, in 1999, she was already a bona fide star thanks to her multiplatinum third album, 1994\u2019s Share My World. <\/i>The success of that record and all that followed ensured that Mary J. had indeed arrived and wasn\u2019t just a flash-in-the-pan artist like so many of the last two decades. Mary <\/i>greeted the world with a more polished production and more A-list guests than all of its predecessors.\u00a0 <\/o:p><\/p>\n

Blige was still only dabbling in the writing process, so she was again reliant on quality material written for her to make up the bulk of this glossy but somewhat uninspiring album. \u201cAll That I Can Say\u201d (by Lauren Hill) gets things off to a good start, and Blige\u2019s voice has never sounded as softly sweet as it is here and on the next track, \u201cSexy.\u201d \u201cDeep Inside\u201d is a bizarre mash-up of Elton John\u2019s (who guests here) \u201cBennie And The Jets\u201d and a Blige original that really sounds ridiculous. None of it works well at all, and it\u2019s a shame, because Mary\u2019s lyrics are some of her best and most personal to date.\u00a0 <\/o:p><\/p>\n

George Michael arranged and produced his duet with Mary on Stevie Wonder\u2019s \u201cAs,\u201d which sounds fantastic and it\u2019s here that Blige cuts loose for the first time and shows some true grit, which I love. The song is easily the most memorable single released from the album. One of Blige\u2019s idols, Aretha Franklin, shares the spotlight with her on \u201cDon\u2019t Waste Your Time,\u201d and although the two sound great singing together, I\u2019ve never thought much of the song and playing it now hasn\u2019t changed my mind one bit. Another missed opportunity.\u00a0 <\/o:p><\/p>\n

\u201cNot Lookin\u2019,\u201d which features Mary J.\u2019s pal and trusted collaborator K-Ci Hailey, fares much better; these two have delivered the goods together several times by this point, and this cut is no exception. It\u2019s more reminiscent of the great sound from Mary J.\u2019s awesome debut, What\u2019s The 411? <\/i>\u201cGive Me You\u201d is a run-of-the-mill R&B love song, but with Mary\u2019s voice, a slick arrangement, and guitars by Eric Clapton, its status is elevated to one of the strongest tracks on this release, and a welcome sweet spot it is.\u00a0 <\/o:p><\/p>\n

\u201cLet No Man Put Asunder\u201d is very \u201870\u2019s, very \u201870s indeed, and could have been a huge hit in the distant and dark disco era of the latter part of that decade. It still works quite well here, but I\u2019ve never been a big fan of disco and it seems Mary lost the taste for it after this one as well. But my personal favorite track on Mary<\/i> is \u201cTime,\u201d which Blige co-wrote with Wonder; more importantly, it marks the sound that Mary would pursue on her next project. It\u2019s slick but edgy enough to match Blige\u2019s voice beautifully, and her layered background vocals give it some needed warmth.\u00a0 <\/o:p><\/p>\n

Ultimately, though, Mary<\/i> has always been my least favorite of Blige\u2019s efforts because its potential is drowned out by too may lackluster tracks that are too similar to stand alone as some of them should have. Mainly I\u2019m talking about songs like \u201cI\u2019m In Love,\u201d \u201cMemories,\u201d \u201cNo Happy Holidays,\u201d and \u201cBeautiful Ones,\u201d which are all pleasant songs but hardly memorable. Still, a couple of final positives appear with \u201cYour Child\u201d and the crisp R&B groove of \u201cThe Love I Never Had.\u201d The latter is very Prince-like \u2013 actually, that\u2019s putting it mildly as it\u2019s a direct rip-off of the Purple One\u2019s \u201cI Hate U\u201d (off of The Gold Experience<\/i>.) In both tempo, structure, and duration, it\u2019s basically the same song, and that\u2019s just the half of it. I\u2019m astounded that there has been no lawsuit as of yet \u2013 I mean, litigation is this dude\u2019s favorite hobby, so to me it\u2019s just staggering to think he let this one slip by. Anyway, that\u2019s a story for another day, but to me, it\u2019s more interesting than 70% of this album \u2013 and that\u2019s saying something.<\/o:p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":67,"featured_media":30376,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[7598],"rating":[11204],"class_list":["post-42036","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-mary-j-blige","rating-rating-c-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/67"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42036\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42036"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=42036"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=42036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}