Rissi Palmer - No Air

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Those more au fait than me with country might like to unpick the countrification of this song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWwS6aQjZog

I like it a lot, but then I love the original. I don't think Palmer does a half bad job with it though.

Comments

[koganbot]

Holy fuck, why didn't know about this?

Last year Rissi Palmer was the first black woman to get into the country top 60 in about twenty years, with "Country Girl," which is a killer groove song, got on the country dance lists (there are such things), was one notch away from my country critics ballot and probably should have made it; interestingly, it was one of the bluesiest, blackest tracks on her album, and she tends to be best when she's blackest, "No Air" being a prime example.

Anyway, the Jordin/Chris "No Air" has a way of being precarious, there's actually plenty of air in the arrangement, so the vocal inhales and exhales and reverberates in space and has this sense of assuredly not finding its balance (if that image means anything). Rissi Palmer's version is relatively more steady and staid, a pretty version of a pretty song. Doesn't come close to the original and isn't going to compete for my top 50, but it's a nice version of a very good song.

[koganbot]

"Country Girl"

[koganbot]

Rissi's "No Air" currently at no. 52 on Billboard's Hot Country Songs.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Hmmmmm. Really love the chorus in this incarnation, but the verses need more claustrophobic goop. I'm not sure if the original I'd describe that way, but you do get a sense of Jordin being actually out of breath, which lets you not think about the sorta weirdness of the metaphor, which they really stretch to the limit in this one. PAST the limit, but the song is so good it doesn't really matter. (Usually when you're suffocating it's because someone won't give you ENOUGH air, not because they've given you too much. Though I suppose it's possible to have too much oxygen, right?)

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Other cliches that complicate things: "You take my breath away" (which is punned on, but then they try to keep working the pun and it gets confusing), "it's like I'm drowning" (again, SURROUNDED AT ALL SIDES by water, not "too much space"), and I think the list goes on. It's just a really really silly song! So the lack of a little bit of cheese (an almost tropical/breezy instrumentation in the original, something a little disquieting about it, actually, listening again. I mean, I could imagine it, with a weaker beat, being a lite FM tune, hushed lone electric guitar figure, Pure Moods piano, constant choral oooohs....)

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Yeah it's nice but not as great as the og: Palmer doesn't get anywhere near the EPIC nature of the Jordin and Chris version, and it's a song which really needs to be EPIC because as Dave says it's so ridiculous. Also, she sounds older and more world-weary, which doesn't work quite as well as J&C's teenage self-absorption/melodrama ("oh NOES the WORLD IS GOING TO END if I can't be with you" etc)