Lex don’t come around much anymore, but never mind…

[Video][Myspace]
[6.71]

Michaelangelo Matos: “Sister Mary (‘Real Love’!)/She used to tell us in the ’90s”: K Michelle is nothing if not up-front about the anxiety of influence. For her, it seems that Blige-style self-dramatization is a natural starting point rather than the culmination of a successful rebranding of yourself as lifestyle guru. As, it seems, is the leather-lunged post-Whitney-then-Mariah vocal belt. Maybe it’s because those tics are so ingrained that Michelle is so utterly believable: “Taking out my anger on any and everybody that comes around,” ouch. My own fault that I didn’t trust Lex on this one earlier.
[8]

Martin Skidmore: I totally love her. She’s a genuinely powerful soul singer, her voice carrying a ton of emotion, and the production on this is sharp and demanding. It doesn’t have the almost unbearable emotional impact on me of “Just Can’t Do This”, but if that makes this less magnificent, it also means it is easier to listen to.
[9]

Anthony Easton: The quick punching percussion emphasizes the point in quite a literal fashion, but one does not expect subtlety in this kind of hand wringing and hair pulling. Fantastic.
[9]

Alfred Soto: A stutter and a demonstration of vocal prowess powerful enough to strip the paint off a skyscraper, and, damn, if Michelle doesn’t want you to know it. Many times.
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: K Michelle forever proves she can sing a damn good C. Then proves it again and again.
[4]

Chuck Eddy: Most of this song almost strikes me as a fugue or something, repeating the same motif over and over ad infinitum, without a discernible beginning or end. I mean, how many times does she say “how many times”? I lost count. Could go on forever, and when it’s playing it seems like it does, though it only lasts four minutes. Also, I’m not sure what “the moral of the story is,” because K never tells us. Matter of fact, she never tells us the story, either — just suggests she got cheated on, and skips any potentially compelling details.
[3]

Zach Lyon: Not going to fool myself into falling for the content here — this is 10% breakup whatever, 90% show-your-goddamn-peacock-feathers. Which isn’t to say the content isn’t worthy, and with a worse singer it might actually take the spotlight (I specifically love: when the beat drops out in the chorus and comes right back in, a clever little reflection of the lyric; the entire verse about sister Mary; “This song know how I feel”; the glorious interplay between the piano and strings) and that wouldn’t be a terrible song. But this is all about 2:11 – 2:23, wrestling with and dominating the spotlight in a stranglehold, instilling enough faith in your audience that your next eight singles, at least, will be worth trying out. That moment of diva indulgence sounds like it could only be encouraged by R. Kelly (this is the first song of hers I’ve heard, so I don’t know what is and isn’t her MO) but it makes me glad to know K. Michelle is around, because there isn’t nearly enough of it right now.
[8]