I love Mary but I don't know, this is a mighty tuff song to sing.

The only cover version who gave it a good treatment was the Mariah/Patti Labelle duet live but tey still didn't do it justice(and we're talking about POWERHOUSE divas this time).

I just hope she don't mess it up thats all.

***

Jul. 26, 2004) *Missy Elliott and Christina Aguilera will team for a remake of the 1977 Rose Royce hit “Car Wash,” while Mary J. Blige takes on Cheryl Lynn’s dance floor staple “Got to Be Real” for the soundtrack to the animated DreamWorks film “Shark Tale.”
This marks the second time Missy and Miss “Dirty” have appeared together on a 70s-era song. Both had verses on a Grammy-winning remake of the Labelle’s “Lady Marmalade” for the 2001 “Moulin Rouge” soundtrack.

Also confirmed for the set is a Ziggy Marley/Sean Paul collaboration on Ziggy’s father Bob’s "3 Little Birds" and an unknown song by Will Smith, who voices the film's featured character, Oscar.

Marley also teams with Doug E. Doug to voice a pair of Rastafarian jellyfish in the film named Ernie and Bernie, respectively.

The film, also featuring the voices of Robert DeNiro (as the shark, "Don Lino"), Renee Zelleweger ("Angie" the angelfish), Angelina Jolie ("Lola" the dragon fish), director Martin Scorsese (puffer fish "Sykes"), Peter Falk (shark "Ira Feinberg") and Vincent Pastore (octopus "Luca"), will premiere in Nw York on September 27.

I can see her doing a good version of it. Maybe not as good as the original, but then again is there anything as good as Cheryl Lynn's Got to be Real? I really dug Mary's remake of First Choice's Let No Man Put Asunder (another of my fave dance cuts), so I don't think she'll disappoint.

NOOOOO!!!!!

Harlepolis said:

I'm with you 100% on that.

In the words of A.I.'s Randy Jackson, Mary J has a tendency to be a bit "pitchy".
Cheryl Lynn not only sang Got To Be Real up there in range, those bends are in perfect pitch. (Whatcha thiiiiink, ah)

Not to mention the modulation. Ouch.

Hope she's been doing some vocal exercises.

tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...rmusic.htm

....and Mary butchers yet another urban classic. As long as she stays away from "Ain't Nobody" I guess I'm pleased. Yet she did do justice to "I'm Going Down". A happy accident?

How about just getting Cheryl Lynn to do it?

Why do that get other ppl when the original artist is still alive and still can sang!!!

theAudience said:

My sentiments exactly.

Rhondab said:

Because the marketing of it isn't really open to old(er) school artists. With extremely few exceptions much like mainstream radio, and pop music in general, it's about youth.

Rhondab said:

Mary just does not have the vocal control required to sing that song perfectly (ie. the way Cheryl Lynn sang it). There really is no improving on the original, althought I doubt they'll go for a direct remake - the idiots will probably try arranging a reggae-tinged version or some shit like that.

This begs the question - why don't they just put the original version on the soundtrack? Why not introduce kiddies (who are going to be buying this disc) to real classics, instead of having them think that Missy, Christina, Mary, etc. are the originators? The rights can't be all that hard to get, considering how many soundtracks it's been used on already.

CynicKill said:

Damn, there's a lot of Mary J. hatin' at the Org! Which was the other urban classic that she "butchered?"

theAudience said:

I'm still confused as to what exactly "pitchy" means ( apparently having pitch is an undesireable thing...Randy is bonkers with his made up words), but that's a different argument.

Any good remake, much less a remake of a classic like this, wouldn't dare try and copy the formula. Keep the spirit of the original and give it a little different spin. Hopefully that spin isn't typical, tired, generic urban beat with a heavy bass line and not much else in the way of instrumentation.

Who knows what she'll do with the vocals at this point? If all she does is try to emulate what Cherly Lynn did, then yeah, she'll definitely fail. If she does something new with it that fits her style, it could end up being good. We'll see, I guess, once any of us hear it.

RipHer2Shreds said:

She also butchered "Sweet Thing" and definitely "You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman".

Supernova said:

co- NOOOOO!!!!!
[This message was edited Mon Jul 26 15:21:30 2004 by psykosoul]

CynicKill said:

Butchered Sweet Thing? Her version of that was just as good as the original. Can't say that I prefer one over the other, but I do like both. Natural Woman was a'ight. Not my favorite, but I don't think she made a mess of it.

RipHer2Shreds said:

Good Lawwwd.

RipHer2Shreds said:

WTF?

RipHer2Shreds said:

Just in case you really didn't get what I was talking about.
"Pitchy" in RJ-speak means the inability sing on pitch...




...ala William Hung.


tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...rmusic.htm

Let's not forget her cover of Rose's " I'm going Down". I haven't been the greatest fen of Ms. Blige, but she has earned her respect just for having talent and charisma to outlast her hip pop/urban music. Even if she relys heavily on producers and trends, it's working fine for her. Does this mean we'll hear this song aaaaalllll the time on the radio?




p.s... Where's originality when you NEED IT?

Supernova said:

Don't hurt yourself. Just my opinion is all.

While we're on the subject, I just remembered Mary's perfomance on VH1 Divas Duets.
The duet with Stevie on Superwoman...well...I really felt sorry for her.
There are mode and key center changes happening through the melody.
You can't fake or shout your way through that tune. She just sounded lost most of the time.

(Maybe there was a shard of kryptonite hidden in the piano.)

Without going into detail, the Sweet Thing duet with Chaka was also not pretty.

To paraphrase Dirty Harry, "Vocalists need to know their limitations."

tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...rmusic.htm

theAudience said:

100% agree. I like Mary but she needs to learn NOT to try anything that will embarrass her.

theAudience said:

Yeah, I get what it's supposed to mean. Just makes no damn sense.

VoicesCarry said:

I ain't gonna lie, Mary can hit some clunkers in concert. That's part of the reason why, even though she's one of my favorites, I've yet to see her live. Other times, she is really brilliant. Her performance of No More Drama at the Grammys a few years ago was one of the best live performances I've seen in recent years, and she got a standing ovation for it.

But you're getting off point to try and prove your point. I don't think she's every sounded bad on a studio album. We can disagree on whether or not she did a good or bad version of Sweet Thing (I still think it was excellent, but others don't...it's just a preference issue), but her spotty live performances have no bearing on her studio work.

RipHer2Shreds said:

Perhaps. I meant she should not try to sing songs she clearly was not intended to sing, however. I hated her version of "(You Make Me Feel Like A) Natural Woman", for example, and that was a studio cut.

Father MC (feat. Mary J. Blige) "I'll Do 4 U" [1990]

Why? Sorry, but I'm still trying to get over that last VMA performance from her. She was off-pitch, off-key....just off all over. I've learned that there's a fine line between music and noise and she has been hopping back and forth across it lately. That performance was terrible. She screamed pretty much the entire time. And why this song??? I only like her re-make of "I'm goin' down" and even that wasn't comparable to the original. I heard a girl on "Showtime At the Apollo" sing that song better than Mary, so I ain't going to say Mary's version was great. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. I say the song should stay as is. I'm kinda interested in the Missy/Christina "Car Wash" remake, because they might actually do something interesting with it, but "Got To Be Real" is perfect just the way it is and Mary doesn't have the range to do it justice. Just my 2 cents.

VoicesCarry said:

I agree 100%. Little kids are going to think that these songs were written by the person singing them. Most of them don't read the liner notes and even if they do, they aren't going to know who the people are. That's like when "Forget Me Nots" used to come on the radio and my little cousins would start saying that it was Will Smith's "Men In Black." People, teach your children.

CinisterCee said:

Maybe she wants to come full circle and dead her career with the same sample that started it all

CinisterCee said:

Another Mary-mistake was when she did "No More Drama" at one of those "Diva" shows. It was after the Grammy performance which was real and true. Mary really did tear it up but it was an honest performance. The standing-O was totally unexpected and it surprised her. So what does she do on Divas? She tries to replicate the performance and comes off like a fool. She yelled, jumped, just totally spazzed out. It came off as a parody of her Grammy performance. She's definitely hit-or-miss (mostly miss of late) as a live performer.