| |
|
This is quite interesting background reading. I'll reproduce the whole thing below as the NY Times requires registration.
Don't Cha Blink
By PHILIP SHERBURNE
Published: July 24, 2005
Before the rise of the singer-songwriter, songs were properties to be test-marketed in search of the ideal hit-making synergy. (See "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" by Gladys Knight and the Pips and "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" by Marvin Gaye.) The producers who dominate hip-hop and modern R&B have brought that model back, and the short history of "Don't Cha" - first recorded by the Atlanta singer Tori Alamaze, now a hit for the Pussycat Dolls - is a good case study. It also demonstrates how, in the Internet era, original versions that might have been forgotten can now leave ghostly echoes.
JANUARY 2004: In a basement studio in Atlanta, Cee-Lo Green produces his composition "Don't Cha" with Ms. Alamaze, a former hair stylist and backup singer for OutKast. With a reprise of the hook from Sir Mix-a-Lot's 1988 song "Swass," it has the chorus, "Don't cha wish your girl was hot like me/ Don't cha wish your girl was a freak like me."
JULY 2004: Interscope Records signs the Pussycat Dolls, a sextet spun off from a burlesque group best known for its sometime member Carmen Electra.
AUGUST 2004: Felli Fell, a Los Angeles producer and D.J., hears Ms. Alamaze's demo while recording in Atlanta. He begins playing the song on Power106 in Los Angeles.
NOVEMBER 2004: Ms. Alamaze signs with Universal Records, like Interscope a part of the Universal Music Group.
JANUARY: Unhappy with Universal, Ms. Alamaze says, she agrees to release her rights to the song to get out of her contract. "I feel like I got caught up in the middle of egos and favors," she says. She completes an album with Cee-Lo and shops it to other labels. The San Francisco producers Justin Martin and Sammy D. make a house-music remix of "Don't Cha" for their D.J. sets, but don't press it on vinyl, believing the song is too obscure. "Then we went to Miami, and lo and behold, the song was playing on every radio in the city," Sammy D. says.
JANUARY-MARCH: Copies of Ms. Alamaze's "Don't Cha" reach stores. Meanwhile, Cee-Lo re-records the song with the Pussycat Dolls. The new version sounds almost identical but adds a verse from the rapper Busta Rhymes.
APRIL 14: Z100 in New York plays the Pussycat Dolls "Don't Cha" three times the day it's released. According to Z100's Tom Poleman, listeners call in immediately: "This is one of those big reaction records." In the next three months, Z100 will play the song 379 times.
MAY: The Pussycat Dolls' single is No. 75 on Amazon.com, which is selling only used copies of Ms. Alamaze's single. A reviewer on the site writes that Ms. Alamaze's version "is way better than that one of Pussycat Dolls." Posters to various message boards echo the sentiment. One writes, "The Pussycat Dolls are better known as the Copycat Dolls."
JUNE: Hip-hop retailers stock an unofficial 12-inch single, "Breezy Blends No. 3," that includes a mash-up of Ms. Alamaze's "Don't Cha" with Rick James's "Cold Blooded" and a Dave Chappelle sketch. File-sharing services offer an anonymous "chopped and screwed" rework of her recording.
LAST WEEK: The Pussycat Dolls rise to No. 4 on Billboard's Hot 100. In Poughkeepsie, N.Y., Ms. Alamaze gives a concert and is furious to find herself billed as "Tori Alamaze of the Pussycat Dolls."
I've got the Tori Alamaze version on a mix CD somewhere, I'll have to have a listen again and compare the two. Neither stood out immediately for me the first few times I heard the song, but maybe I just find the sentiment... unsettling. |
|
|
