In the Spotlight showcases a cross-section of an artist’s cover work. View past installments, then post suggestions for future picks in the comments!
Marrying the old school (Aretha, Chaka, Gladys and the soul of the ’80s, Anita Baker in particular) with the new school (hip hop), Mary J. Blige’s debut album, 1992’s What’s The 411, and her stone cold classic sophomore LP, 1994’s My Life, changed the sonic game in soul and pop forever. I was working in an HMV store in NYC when 411 was released, and I can tell you that the fever and excitement about the album back then was palpable as f*ck. Mary was from Yonkers. She grew up listening to the same radio stations as us all of us Gen X squirts at the store. She was tough, gorgeous, cool and vulnerable at the same time. It quickly got to the point where you didn’t even have to refer to her by her surname. When a customer came into the store and asked for the “new Mary album,” we all knew who they meant.
It’s hard to accurately express just what a big deal she was in the early ’90s and just how impactful her sound was and continues to be in the R&B and hip-hop universe. Mary’s magnificent, raw, coloring-over-the-edges, steamrolling voice has an air of believability and lived experience. Mary doesn’t pretend when she sings. She has been open and brutally honest about her childhood trauma, depression and substance abuse issues in multitudes of interviews. It’s all realness, all the time.
Like so many before her, Mary’s career was set into motion by singing a cover song. But her discovery story was gloriously human (a mall was involved) and completely fantastical ( “listen to my stepdaughter singing this song”). In 1988, she’d gone to the Galleria Mall in White Plains, NY and stepped into one of the fun-sized recording kiosks they had where you could tape yourself singing a popular song. The tune she chose was the then premier quiet storm queen Anita Baker’s “Caught Up In The Rapture.” She played the tape she’d recorded for her stepdad, who was so blown away he passed it to a friend he knew in the music biz. This seemingly whimsical moment at the mall resulted in her getting signed, for real, to Uptown Records. Years later she performed the song that launched her career with Baker herself, and couldn’t help but let the tears flow and remind everyone just how she got there (see here).
Here are a few of her finest covers from after she was discovered, not before.
Mary J. Blige – Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word (Elton John cover)h5
This cover was unassumingly stuffed into the 2004 soundtrack album for, you guessed it, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (a film I have never seen and never will). It has a decent 52,000 streams on Spotify, but is hardly what you’d call popular (especially compared to Kylie and Beyonce tracks on the LP). It features one of Mary’s most low-key vocals ever, over sparse Rhodes keyboard-led instrumental backing. It’s gentle, regal and resigned. And that subtle bit of vocal shredding on the last verse is fire.
Mary J. Blige – I’m Goin’ Down (Rose Royce cover)
If you would have asked me what my favorite movie of all-time was as a child in 1977, I would not have had to ponder even for a second. It was unquestionably the gritty, massively-casted, occasionally gross, casually sexist, but superbly soundtracked 1976 film Car Wash. Thanks to the repetitive nature of cable TV back in those days, in the space of a year, I must’ve watched it at least 20 times. The film’s soundtrack, featuring R&B funksters Rose Royce performing songs written by Motown genius Norman Whitfield, is a ’70s soul classic. The album is home to no less than three stone classics: the title track, unrequited dreamboat “I Wanna Get Next To You,” and best of all, the beauteous, bombastic, broken-hearted ballad “I’m Goin’ Down.” Mary’s version of the latter very nearly eclipses the original… well, not nearly – it does. While Rose Royce’s Gwen Dickey is gorgeously crying in the dark alone, Mary is wailing out a window into the night sky, shattered, shook, and simply stunning.
Mary J. Blige – Ain’t Nobody (Chaka Khan and Rufus cover)
Chaka Khan is one of Mary’s longtime heroes, and while this “Ain’t Nobody” cover sounds like a straight-up tribute (faithful, straightforward, nothin’ fancy), there is something ridiculously infectious about how producer Rodney Jerkins synth lines dance around Mary’s superfine vocal. Wave your hands in the air…