What's so fantastic about Mary J. Blige?

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i agree with this, but i think what makes mary really special is that this central theme imbues everything else she sings about, but not in an overbearing way - all the other emotions are enhanced because of what it's taken to get her there. in anyone else's hands 'family affair' would have been a by-the-numbers club tune but when mary sings it it's this amazingly joyful, grateful, life-affirming classic.

OTM.

i *heart MJB.

is miles deep PEW?

― stevie (stevie2), Thursday, 15 February 2007 13:25 (seventeen years ago) link

i have loved mary forever, my fave r&b singer after mariah, but i really did not like the breakthrough at all, for the record. anyway, the appeal of mary is that she's very much a woman, not a girl, and she has been from the beginning. she has been very open about her life, so open that you can't help but to be pulled in by it, engage with her. her monologues are very much dialogues -- we respond because her honesty and earnestness are so apparent. she has also quite obviously been in very intense therapy for a long time, and there's a commonality of language that she uses that's very familiar. she feels like a real person but sings like a fucking god. how can you not love her?

― Jams Murphy (ystrickler), Thursday, 15 February 2007 16:28 (seventeen years ago) link

jams otm! :)

(except about the breakthrough)

there's something about mary j in teedra moses, who is also very much a grown woman

― lexpretend (lexpretend), Thursday, 15 February 2007 16:57 (seventeen years ago) link

they both have this tremendous store of emotional wisdom; songs which make you feel, instinctively, what the singer feels; and then you hear the lyrics, and when they sink in you realise, y'know, they have proper life lessons in them.

― lexpretend (lexpretend), Thursday, 15 February 2007 17:04 (seventeen years ago) link

I like her DESPITE the approving things jams cite. She's a great singer because she forces you to ignore the awfulness of the therapeutic clichés in which she invests so much.

― Alfred Soto (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 15 February 2007 17:10 (seventeen years ago) link

Soto en el dinero.

― The Reverend shines like a lighthouse (Rodney J. Greene), Thursday, 15 February 2007 17:24 (seventeen years ago) link

i agree about teedra, lex. it's also why tori alamaze's "don't cha" is so much better than the pussycat dolls'.

― Jams Murphy (ystrickler), Thursday, 15 February 2007 17:47 (seventeen years ago) link

Please tell me this thread is one long joke. There is not one drop of sincerity in Mary J Blige.

― brightscreamer (brightscreamer), Friday, 16 February 2007 01:01 (seventeen years ago) link

Like James Brown, music would have been better today had Mary J. Blige never happened.

― Geir Hongro (geirhong), Friday, 16 February 2007 01:15 (seventeen years ago) link

eventually the polluted river had to give him up, i suppose

― bohren un der club of gear (bohren un der club of gear), Friday, 16 February 2007 01:18 (seventeen years ago) link

Like a cockroach crawlin' on a white rug.

― Alfred Soto (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 16 February 2007 01:18 (seventeen years ago) link

That one-two punch of WTF is pretty impressive, tho.

― David RER (Frank Fiore), Friday, 16 February 2007 02:45 (seventeen years ago) link

KILLFILE HOW-TO

― The Many Faces of Gordon Jump (Leon), Friday, 16 February 2007 03:21 (seventeen years ago) link

She's a great singer because she forces you to ignore the awfulness of the therapeutic clichés in which she invests so much.

Change "ignore" to "buy into" and you've explained the appeal of maybe like 95 percent of R&B vocalists worth listening to of at least the last 30 years (and maybe forever).

I think what Mary does is the very opposite of forcing you to ignore. That's coming from within, dude.

― Richj (Richj), Friday, 16 February 2007 06:25 (seventeen years ago) link

Yeah, there's not much point to her *without* that stuff. That's like saying you dig Johnny Rotten except for all his champing at the leash, or George Jones except for the woe.

― cynical and vile (Factory Sample Not For Sale), Friday, 16 February 2007 08:43 (seventeen years ago) link

Oh, c'mon, Blige's therapy-speak was less marked in the early/mid-nineties! (and George Jones is a lot funnier than Mary, but the comparison's not fair for either of them)

― Alfred Soto (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 16 February 2007 13:52 (seventeen years ago) link

Yeah, I was just dropping some shorthand.

― cynical and vile (Factory Sample Not For Sale), Saturday, 17 February 2007 00:28 (seventeen years ago) link

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