Songoftheday 11/28/21 - You can buy your hair if it won't grow you can fix your nose if he says so, you can buy all the make up that M.A.C. can make...
"Unpretty" - TLC
from the album FanMail (1999)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #1 (three weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 24
Today's song comes from the R&B/hip-hop trio TLC, who had the most memorable single of their career with the #1 smash "No Scrubs" in the spring of 1999. At that time, another cut from the album, "I'm Good At Being Bad", got enough airplay to make it to #38 on Billboard magazine's R&B Singles chart and "bubbled under" the pop Hot 100 at #117 without even being promoted. The second commercial single from the record would be "Unpretty", a "message" record in the same vein as "Waterfalls" was. Written by T-Boz Watkins with producer Dallas Austin, the group tackle the subject of self-image, which was a thing even before the social media age. It's definitely not didactic, as T-Boz sings about the struggle with herself, and wants the person she's singing to to understand what the jabs do to her psyche. It doesn't try to be above it, but rather to let their audience identify with it. Not bad...
"Unpretty" became the second #1 hit from FanMail, and also the group's final #1 (or top ten for that matter) on the pop chart in September of 1999. The song also climbed to #4 on Billboard's R&B Singles chart. Internationally, the single topped the chart in Iceland, and reached the top ten in Canada (#3), Australia (#3), New Zealand (#3), Ireland (#4), the UK (#6), the Netherlands (#8), Sweden (#8), Hungary (#8), Switzerland (#9), and Norway (#10). At the Grammy Awards in 2000, "Unpretty" was nominated for two categories, losing Best Pop Duo/Group Performance to Santana for "Maria Maria" and Best Short Form Music Video, which went to Korn's "Freak On A Leash".
It was a shock when the third offering from FanMail, "Dear Lie", stiffed down at #51 on the Hot 100 and #70 on the R&B list. Maybe it's acoustic guitar base sounded too much like "Unpretty", I think it deserved better. But it signaled a sharp turn in their fortunes. They'll be back to the series, but for one more muted time.
(9/10)
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There was an original six minute version of the music video for "Unpretty" that also gave plotlines to T-Boz as a bullied kid in school and Left-Eye caught in a gang fight...
and live on an awards show...
Speaking of awards, TLC did both "Unpretty" and "No Scrubs" at the Grammys in 2000...
Fast forward to 2019 with T-Boz and Chilli in concert (Lisa Left-Eye had died already)...
Up tomorrow: A "Loca" singer mourns a lover.
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