In fact, "At Your Best (You Are Love)" was originally dedicated to the Isley Brothers' mother, Sally, and in the original, Ronal Isley takes a thoughtful approach that turns ever more slightly seductive as the song goes on.
It's reassuring, like an embrace from a dear friend or even a family member. As the arrangement unfolds, satin, around her, she takes in each phrase and makes the listener consider it, moving slowly and deliberately, as if she's explaining something. It begins a capella, showcasing the singer's trademark flute-like head voice.
The album version, though, shows Aaliyah very gently pulling the song away from the much older man then dominating her life. A remix later made the song a hit by adding a typical '90s beat and various murmured interjections from Kelly. Kelly, an Isley Brothers acolyte who enlisted his muse to pay tribute in an arrangement very close to the original. "At Your Best (You Are Love)" is the only song on Aaliyah's debut not penned by her then-paramour R. The echo he applies surrounds his loving words like a wet cloud.Ĭompare even the first notes of Ocean's version (renamed "You Are Luhh" for the Internet age) to Aaliyah's a story emerges that's more complex than a come-on. "An artfully cultivated falsetto, crooned by an Al Green or a Bee Gee, has become a vocalized foreplay," the critic Anthony Heilbut once wrote Ocean is well aware he's unbuttoning every shirt within his reach. It's viscous and commanding, fulfilling that register's irresistibly persuasive potential. Ocean's take begins with a heartbeat rhythm, just a couple of pulses on a keyboard. A comparison of Ocean's interpretation to his heroine's, and to the original 1976 version by the Isley Brothers, points toward something more: the way in which Ocean is reimagining R&B by responding to its legacies in his own coolly audacious way. Aaliyah included the song on her 1994 debut album Age Ain't Nothin' But a Number, and it was her first ballad to break through on the charts. Posted on the boundary-blending singer-songwriter's Tumblr the day after what would have been Aaliyah's 36 th birthday, the new track was widely received as a tribute to the late singer, whose death at 22 in a plane crash halted one of the most promising careers in '90s pop. When Frank Ocean released his version of The Isley Brothers' Quiet Storm classic "At Your Best (You Are Love)" last week, it was both a flower left at a grave and an investment in the future.
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