Fool me once shame on, shame on you, fool me – you can’t get fooled again. Ah, Bush. I don’t really need to say much more. Ever felt like you’ve been a fool? I’m kinda wondering if Mother Nature and Country America are feeling like fools right about now. Who knows? I’m hoping they do. As for me, have I ever felt foolish? The answer is: Yes. In fact, just yesterday I went into a situation kinda blindly and was asked to do something that I did without question, but looking back on it now, even just a few hours later – could come back to be either very funny or somewhat embarrassing. I’m shooting for the former.
What did I do, you ask? The story goes like this, a friend of mine, Tiffany Kyees calls me up and asks “Hey are you busy? Can you come be in a mock video for my video shoot?” Meaning can I do a little acting to help block out a video to see if the stuff works before shooting a real video. I’m thinking, sure I’ll help out since I’m going to ask you to sing a bunch of backups on my huge christmas project. It’s a fair trade – or so I thought/think. Its for her song called Psycho – I’ll be featuring it on a Sunday’s Child installment in the near future. As you may guess its about a psycho ex-boyfriend. So we get to the location and start shooting scenes. Then while we’re waiting for the director to make some decisions, Tiffany reads out part of the script and the director asks if I’m cool with it. Of course I say yes, but I’m sitting and Tiffany asks, didn’t you read the script? Uh, no I didn’t know there was one, you just called me and asked a few hours ago. To which she’s saying, oh I meant to call you Friday, oops. Heh.
So what was I asked to do? A scene where I find her panties and put them on under my pants. Actually quite harmless. I’m secure in my manhood enough to know that I don’t care about it. I like women and I don’t need to dress like them to get off. But this is to help a friend for her video. So why not. I think what is more hysterical than the act of me doing what was requested, is the running comentary of the director as she’s telling me what to do. It was damn near impossible to keep a straight face while doing it.
We had fun, but if that video did come to light on the internet, it might get misconstrued. That’s about the only thing I can think off about it that could be foolish. Which leads me into this song…
I can’t remember where I first heard this song. But I’m fully engulfed in Crystal’s voice. I have to harken back a few days to the Barlow Girls and say that again I’m not understanding how she’s labeled as Inspirational. I guess it’s more the fact I don’t have great depth on her catalog. Maybe a large majority of the rest of her material is just that. I’m drawing a weird comparison to Melanie Doane. Chances are it’s due to the more ethereal quality of the song. I actually like the mixture of textures going on here. What slays me is the vocal. She has such a sultry quallity for what appears to be a “goodie-two-shoes” type of personality that her website seems to portray. Hmmm, just how Tiffany is being portrayed in her video too. Heh.
The rap in the bridge is great contrast to the rest of the song and her vocal. The only thing that would have made it even more amazing would have been for her to have Eminem to have done the rap. Why? I think Em would have brought it way over the top, given it a bigger kick in the pants.
Inside the recording there are lots of little noises for the loops and the percussion and synths. There’s a lot happening within all the space that they’ve created. That’s a contradictory concept. How could something be so full yet have so much space? In reality, it can’t. But in feel it very certainly can. There’s is lot happening, but a vast majority of it is subtle, which is a great production trick to create massive space. There’s a crazy radio-tuner type of phased sound happening that opens up an interesting twist. In fact I used a similar effect in a song on A Natural Leap Forward.
The ultimate reason I love this song is the vocal melody. It’s mesmerizing. At some point in my own song writing I hope to write a melody, or hell even a song for that matter, that can pull a mood like this out of me. Crystal has certainly achieved a bit of heaven in this song. While I question the genre niche she’s promoted to, I do find What A Fool I’ve Been to be something that will inspire me to wrie a mega-selling hit using techniques from this song. I own it. So should you. Buy it now. Don’t question me. You’ve heard the song, you’ve read my story. Pay the girl and get the song and/or many of her CD’s – she’s got a lot of them.