It’s easy to understand why so many women identified with the fantastically damaged early Mary J. Blige and her heartfelt songs of betrayal, loss, and scars. Years later Mary has survived and flourished and she’s now singing about her joy and fortitude as fervently as she proclaimed her pain.
On her new, supremely confident and engaging disc Growing Pains, Mary wants her legion of fans to know that there is no need to embrace the bad times or cling to unfaithful men and there is indeed light when the shadows seem much too ominous. While not as immediately accessible and commercial as her The Breakthrough this still is Blige firing on all cylinders.
The singer has as many emotions and deep feelings as she has wigs and the secret to her success is that she has been willing to lay them all out and expose herself unlike almost no other pop star.
Here, she wants to express her joy and wonderment at the small epiphanies of life she so often ignored previously and her strength and passion seems so immediate and genuine that you can’t help but go with her flow. That said, a lot of these songs come across as intense Oprah you-go-girl sessions. It’s as if that Mary went through some deep therapy trials and figured she’d share the revelations with the help of the who’s who of modern pop R&B producers. “Work That,” the insistent single boosted by the ubiquitous iPod commercials, and “Just Fine” could be theme songs for female empowerment conventions. On the forceful “Roses,” the singer explains the new dynamics of love relationships diagrammed Mary style and it’s a feisty, forceful track.
It helps that these are expertly arranged songs without an ounce of fat (very few empty cameos) and her collaborators ranging from Pharrell to Ne-Yo to Tricky Stewart all serve her well and provide the beats and hooks but recognizing that Blige is THE hook that matters. And her singing is graceful and nuanced — she’s toned down her tendencies to shout (hey, the message is getting through) and she’s as playful as she is defiant and on the beautiful “Smoke” she brings a feathery touch that has eluded her previously. Indeed, Blige has grown up and the scars are as permanent as her prominent tattoos. While she sings on “Come to Me (Peace)” that she wants to make peace with her lover, her biggest accomplishment was in making peace with herself.
Article comments
1 - k
This is a beautifully written review. Mary's new album is fantastic, I enjoy listening to every song. She is not stuck in a rut musically (like ALicia Key IMO) it is so different from her other albums and so fresh at the same time.