Sunday, October 23, 2011

"More Than a Woman"

Aaliyah - More Than a Woman (2001)

Not a cover of the Bee Gees song.



I had to look up "electro hop" (Wikipedia has it marked down as one of the genre's of the song). It's hip hop with harsh synth sounds, distorted guitar and bass and more minimal drum sequences than a typical hip hop song. Well the distorted sounds are evident for sure. There are some fairly straight forward electric strings on the track that aren't really distorted, and the electric guitar sound isn't really messed with much, but the bass sound is really changed. The guitar may be a real guitar, but there is no bass player listed on the album's personnel, so I think it's a synth bass sound that is then heavily distorted.

Producer Timbaland gets a lot of work out of a looped sample of Syrian performer Mayada El Hennawy called Alouli Ansa. The sample is right at the start of the song. Timbaland is also one of the song's two writers. The other is Steve "Static Major" Garrett. Static was Aaliyah's primary writer, who penned most of her top ten hits. This song is about young woman's coming into her own woman-hood and feeling confidant, sexy and strong. It was written by two late 20 something men. May sound weird, but they were successful; this song was a big success in America and a bigger success in the U.K. Unfortunately, it was one of the last singles released before her plane crash.

No comments:

Post a Comment