"My Prerogative": Get Off Bobby Brown And His Trusty Thesaurus's Back, All Right?

From dictionary.com:

prerogative [pri-rog-uh-tiv, puh-rog-]

noun

an exclusive right, privilege, etc., exercised by virtue of rank, office, or the like:
the prerogatives of a senator.
a right, privilege, etc., limited to a specific person or to persons of a particular category:
It was the teacher's prerogative to stop the discussion.
a power, immunity, or the like restricted to a sovereign government or its representative:
The royal prerogative exempts the king from taxation.

"His what-ative?" No matter what any hot-shot Grammy-winning record producer might say while sitting behind a recording console in a VH1 documentary, let me tell you a surefire way to churn out a smash R&B hit: use a ten-dollar word that nobody else has ever dared to shoehorn into a pop lyric. Although the track's merits are many, I feel - when all is said and done - that this is the alpha and the omega of the majesty that is Bobby Brown's "My Prerogative." Janet Jackson and her little "Escapade" can go kiss Bobby's big fat linguistically-gifted ass.

As a discerning nine-year-old music listener, I knew a winner when I heard one. It was pretty simple. Guess how many other pop songs in 1989 featured the word "prerogative." Yeah, that's right, that would be ZERO. What in God's name was a "prerogative"? Was that like some kind of marsupial? An advanced branch of mathematics? But see, herein lies the genius of "My Prerogative": after one listen, anyone who didn't know beforehand what "prerogative" meant would have learned exactly what "prerogative" meant. What it means, in layman's terms, is that Bobby Brown can "dew what he wantsta dewww."

Given Mr. Brown's subsequent altercations with the law, I feel like "My Prerogative" has taken on a more sinister and disturbing air than it would have carried back in 1989. I pulled up Brown's Wikipedia page, looking for a quick refresher on the man's less than savory deeds, and I was confronted with a neatly bullet-pointed list than appears to be longer than the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway. What I'm saying is this: In 1989, I think Bobby was well within his rights to claim that things like "leaving New Edition," "sleeping around," "keeping the money he'd earned," and "making the kind of records he wanted to make" were certainly his prerogative. However, I'm not sure if it was truly Bobby's prerogative to:

• Beat a nightclub patron in Orlando
• Kick a hotel security guard
• Crash into a condominium sign while driving drunk
• Strike his spouse (a certain Whitney Houston) and threaten to "beat her ass"
• Miss three months of child-support payments

And that's just a sample. In other words, what might have been seen at the time as "harmless and playful bragging" now has the whiff of "crippling personality flaw" to it. But whatever - it still slams!

With its minor key sax and/or synth riff, "My Prerogative" sounds like a hard-hitting new jack swing update of the Inspector Gadget theme - and let it be noted that co-producer Teddy Riley also co-produced Doug E. Fresh's "The Show," which explicitly interpolated said theme. Other R&B artists were inspired by James Brown, Marvin Gaye, Al Green; Teddy Riley heard the Inspector Gadget theme and knew where his destiny resided. At least "My Prerogative" is mercifully light on the quasi-rapping that, in my opinion, has not worn too well on other Brown hits of the era such as "Don't Be Cruel" and "On Our Own" (AKA "That Bobby Brown song from Ghostbusters II that I thought was unbelievably awesome at the time but, you know, I was nine years old"). No, "My Prerogative" has something even better: Bobby's gloriously bratty rant about how he "can't have money in my pocket and people not talk about me ... got this person over here talkin' 'bout me, this person ... I made this money, you didn't - right Ted?" Like many a legendary rapper to follow, I fear that Bobby greatly overestimated how much other people cared about all the hassles that resulted from his massive success. "What is this, a blizzard?" No, more like a persecution complex.



The video treats us to a sampling of the Bobby Brown concert experience, where he's flanked by a female sax player and a female keytar player, both sporting halter tops and hot pants, and both probably having signed contracts to keep any complaints to arbitration only. At 2:58 Bobby thrusts his body against Ms. Keytar and attempts to play a few notes, until she ducks and he swings his leg over her head to coincide with the line "Yo Teddy! Kick it like this!" I'm thinking that, ten years later, Bobby wouldn't have even tried to miss her.

This Time, Producing Donna Summer, You Knew Stock, Aitken & Waterman Were For Real

Did Stock, Aitken & Waterman ever do anything useful, you ask? To which I say: Did you ever do anything useful? Go ahead, snicker at their entire catalog: "Never Gonna Give You Up," "I Should Be So Lucky," "Venus," "You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)" ... I needn't go on. Call them a slimy pimple on the pubescent face of '80s dance-pop, scoff at their ability to take their one solitary "120 beats per minute" production trick and shamelessly run it into the ground, throw virtually their entire discography into the proverbial garbage heap. But at the very least, with the last ounce of mercy in your cynical little heart, please, I beg you, if you give them nothing else in your entire life, you've got to give them "This Time I Know It's For Real."

It's funny to think that "This Time I Know It's For Real" only came out six years after "She Works Hard for the Money," and yet I suppose it qualified as a "comeback" single. Six years is like a fart in the pop music wind these days. I wrote in an earlier post that, as opposed to the vast majority of her peers, Donna Summer initially seemed to weather the post-disco comedown that was the '80s with popularity and credibility intact, but if so, well, to paraphrase Rick James, entropy is a hell of a drug. By 1987 she was playing footsie with the Top 40, peaking at #48 with singles like "Dinner with Gershwin," surely the best '80s R&B single to name-check Rembrandt, Mahalia Jackson, and Marie Curie in the same batch of lyrics (the song did better in the UK, hitting #13).



Honestly, I'm kind of digging this one! Brenda Russell, the song's author, almost made it into my Summer of '88 series with her sultry slow jam "Piano in the Dark," but, well, I had to draw the line somewhere. The point is, by 1989, Donna wasn't quite lighting up the dance floor like she used to - not like all those hip kids from Britain with their Linn drums and their high-waisted pants and their squeaky-clean videos were. No, "Dinner with Gershwin" wasn't quite the fitting last hurrah she'd been envisioning. So she shrugged her shoulders, looked around to see who was hot, and said, "Fuck it, I'll team up with those guys."

Funny story: though I had no idea at the time that "Got My Mind Set on You" was George Harrison's comeback hit, or that "Hungry Eyes" was Eric Carmen's comeback hit, I actually knew that "This Time I Know It's For Real" was Donna Summer's comeback hit (it peaked at #7 in the US and #3 in the UK). When I was a toddler in the early '80s, my family used to have a cassette copy of On The Radio in frequent rotation on the car stereo (I recall my father always trying to fast-forward through "Love to Love You Baby" in a panic). And yes, I knew that the Donna Summer on that cassette ... was the same Donna Summer that was having a comeback hit! (Amusingly, although I was extremely familiar with 'She Works Hard For the Money," I did not learn that that had also been sung by Donna Summer until many years later). At any rate, I remember being quite glad for the woman, even though I was only nine years old, and even though I didn't know her personally. It was a rare moment of empathy from my younger self.

I think there are a couple of reasons why "This Time I Know It's For Real" rises above the usual SAW fare. Reason #1 is that Donna Summer actually co-wrote it, which might explain the presence of some atypical chords and harmonic tricks. Oh, it still reeks of SAW all right, but the melody doesn't sound quite as recycled as the others do. Perhaps the greatest moment in Stock, Aitken & Waterman's entire recorded output occurs at the 1:11 and 1:56 marks, when Donna sings the chorus, except when she belts out "for real," the vocal melody rises while the keyboard melody dips, and something otherworldly occurs and the song just enters an alternate dimension of deliciousness. That is the moment. That is the peak of SAW's career, my friends, that exact harmonic bit. We're talking some serious "If I Fell" harmonic shit right there.

The other element that elevates "This Time I Know It's For Real" over SAW's endless stream of Rick and Kylie songs is that, well, Donna Summer is the one singing it. As rock critic Paul Gambaccini comments, with grudging respect, in the British documentary The Hit Factory: The Stock Aitken and Waterman Story (highly recommended if a) you can't get enough of Stock, Aitken & Waterman, b) you thought I was pulling all these songs out of my rear, c) you wanted to expand your knowledge of artists like Mel & Kim, Princess, and Sinitta, and d) you've got 47 minutes to kill): "For me their greatest record is the Donna Summer [one], 'This Time I Know It's For Real.' First of all, it is a great track. And it is a great pop song. But she is also a great vocalist." Indeed, Summer carries eons of dance music history inside her powerful pipes. And it seems to me she is fully aware that it's a comeback song she's singing. Call it the "Night Shift" effect. I mean sure, I can get down with Astley and Minogue as much as the next sardonic '80s music blogger, but they couldn't bring the same intangible aura of hard-won experience that Summer brings. For example, I have a hard time picturing 19-year-old Kylie crooning lines like "I've been around though long enough to know." Let me put it like so: with all due respect to "Dinner with Gershwin," this time Donna Summer knew her comeback was for real. And yet, she doesn't sound like an old fogie trying to hang with the teens. She still exudes energy and spunk. It's not a sympathy hit, you know? This was the final hurrah she deserved. When she holds that very last "for real" at the 3:11 mark, and holds it and holds it, I can practically feel her effervescent essence soaring into the Great Disco Beyond.



The video was apparently filmed in Dr. Frankenstein's laboratory, a constant stream of electrical bolts and laser beams pelting Donna and the dancers throughout, but perhaps it's keeping everybody on their toes. I get the feeling Stock, Aitken & Waterman were already working on a video for one of their crappier artists, and then decided to turn this into a Donna Summer video at the last minute, because there's an extreme "Nickelodeon after school special" vibe to this one, but at least they didn't force Donna to mix in with all the riff-raff. I love the dude wearing a bullfighter-style vest and hat along with some regular jeans. He runs in place like he's been waiting to run in place his entire life and is finally getting his chance. If he's not the same dancer who played the bartender in the "Never Gonna Give You Up" video, I'll bet he's at least that guy's cousin. Frankly, my favorite thing about the video is also my favorite thing about the song, which is Donna Summer. She loves the camera and the camera loves her back. She even looks good in a bowler hat.