Another hit-making machine to start her pop era off the heel of the Mickey Mouse Club (holla at Brit-Brit and JT!), Christina Aguilera is the next PYT to takeover MTV and excite teen hormones in 1999. She had already gained some attention with her song “Reflection,” featured in Disney’s Mulan, which highlighted her vocal talents that makes her stand out from the rest pop wannabes.
“Wild Wild West” is the fourth installment of what might be the most commercially successful run of five singles any one artist has ever released. In a little under two years, The Fresh Prince gave us the following gems:
1) “Gettin Jiggy Wit It” (January 1998)
2) “Just The Two Of Us” (July 1998)
3) “Miami” (November 1998)
4) “Wild Wild West” (May 1999)
5) “Will 2k” (November 1999)
Okay, so we might be missing Agent J’s anthem. But still, wow! Love him or hate him, there is definitely one thing we can say about Captain Steven Hiller: He made the lives of middle school dance DJ’s really damn easy. Detective Mike Lowrey was a hit machine. We’ll be highlighting a lot of different artists over this series, and all of them (well, maybe not Eminem) were trying to supplant Bagger Vance as pop music’s most reliable artist.
When compared to most of Hancock’s catalogue, “Wild Wild West” is actually a pretty quotidian effort from Dr. Robert Neville. It doesn’t have the cultural impact of “Getting’ Jiggy With It” or “Parents Just Don’t Understand.” Yet it’s not a total trainwreck like “Switch” or a lesson in narcissism like “Freakin’ It.” For a lesser artist, “Wild Wild West” is truly memorable. For Alex Hitchens, it’s just another big, fat, hulking paycheck.
“Wild Wild West” holds out surprisingly well, in that “I’m not ashamed to like it because everyone liked it” kind of way. Admit it, if all I told you was, “You don’t want to see my hand where my hip be at,” you would know precisely what I was talking about. And Sisqo sings the chorus, which was pretty cool at the time.
As for the actual movie Wild Wild West? That does not hold up so well. The thing is unwatchable. Fortunately, moviegoers eager to see some hilariously ridiculous robotic villains are in luck. Transformers II (and all its Michael Bayhem) comes out in two days!
Below are the three steps on how to be in a boy band:
1) After signing with a very suspicious middle-aged man, release two or three albums that simply own the charts, captivating the minds of young audiences, while weathering the vitriol of people who claim to really know music. Tour the world with well-choreographed, high-priced, over-the-top-shows that sell out stadiums.
2) Break up, citing “creative differences.” Launch a briefly successful solo career in an attempt to cash in on fan loyalty.
3) Reunite with your former bandmates for one last world tour, knowing full well that people will pay top dollars for the right to say they went to one of your shows.
In the late 80s to early 90s, New Kids On the Block was definitely in Stage 1. The incredible success of singles like “Be My Girl” and “Hangin Tough” (my personal favorite) is the reason people thought acts like ‘N Sync and The Backstreet Boys could make it. Last summer, the New Kids were in Stage 3. But in 1999, we all got to enjoy Stage 2.
Ten years ago, McDonald’s introduced the McVeggie. An attempt at drawing in the increasingly popular vegetarian clientele, the idea was novel. The appeal was congruous to when McDonald’s retooled their salad menu post-Fast Food Nation. People wanted to try them–No really, they are good. But like new Coke before it, consumer have proven that change isn’t always what they want. A marketing failure. America’s fast food chain can pretend to be veggie-friendly, but McDonald’s is for meat*.
And much was the same with Nu Metal. Championed by KoRn, the sub-genre exploded in the late 1990s alongside the Latin invasion and a hearty revitalization of bubblegum pop. How these musical styling co-existed is a mystery. An even greater mystery? How 16 million people thought Fred Durst, armed with a DJ and a creepy-eyed guitarist, shouting that he “did it all for the nookie (c’mon) the nookie (c’mon)/so you can take the cookie/and stick it up your (yeah)/stick it up your (yeah)” was worth $12.99 at Tower Records.
“Nookie” epitomizes the paradoxical nature of Nu Metal, a seemingly brilliant idea of combining punk, rock and rap, and is perhaps the sub-genre’s most anthemic tune. Like a bar band on steroids, Durst belts out the lyrics; the song is strangely catchy–you hate to love it it’s so plainly horrific. It represents a great idea gone wrong. But after too many listens, it’s clear that Nu Metal is a bad idea with grave consequences (see: Woodstock ‘99). Run DMC and Aerosmith? Great. Rap and rock? Not great. Fred Durst and singing?Almost as bad as a McVeggie.
The Song: I think this song ushered in a whole new genre of music, which I am going to call “Diss Pop.” T-Boz, Left-Eye and Chili spend a tad over 4 minutes creating the blueprint on how to sell records while humiliating the opposite sex. Before Destiny’s Child complained about their bills, before Justin Timberlake told a certain someone to cry a river and before Katy Perry sacrificed any shot of legitimacy, TLC used the one-two punch of “No Scrubs” and “Unpretty” to sell a whopping 11 million copies of Fanmail (remember people, this was pre-Napster).
The Hype Williams-directed video is cool in that pseudo-futuristic way. If anything, it definitely proves that Chilli is the most attractive member of the group. Left Eye, of course, looks crazy. But not in that “street cred” way she was probably going for. More like an actual insane person. Her rhyming is not very good and she dates herself terribly with the line “you as clear as DVD on digital TV screens.” All in all, this song passes the Decade Test, because I still know about 75% of the words.
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