Songoftheday 9/13/22 - He met Marmalade down in old Moulin Rouge, struttin' her stuff on the street...

 

 

"Lady Marmalade" - Christina Aguilera, Lil' Kim, Mya, and Pink

from the album Moulin Rouge! Music from Baz Luhrmann's Film (2001)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #1 (five weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 17

 

Today's song comes from the movie Moulin Rouge, a musical film starring Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor written, directed, and co-produced by Baz Luhrmann. Set in Paris at the turn of the 20th century, the movie is heavy with the loves of the lowly artisans and the craven money brokers that finance it. The music in the piece, sung partly by the cast, spans decades of history, from the crooning of "Nature Boy" (made famous by Nat King Cole) to Elton John's "Your Song" to a redo of DeBarge's "Rhythm Of The Night". One of the songs the wasn't done by the cast was a remake of the soul classic "Lady Marmalade" originally recorded by the group of one of its writers, Kenny Nolan. Nolan, who wrote the song with Bob Crewe, has his Eleventh Hour record it for as a bonus for their greatest hits album in 1974. This is how the original sounded...

But the version most people know was the one done a year later by the trio LaBelle, whose producer Allen Touissant transformed the primitive track to a epic force of nature spoken through the voice of the women of the night. Labelle's take went to #1 on both the pop and R&B charts in 1975...

With the Moulin Rouge version, producers Missy Elliott and Dana  "Rockwilder" Stinson take Patti LaBelle's lead and split it between three singers - Christina Aguilera, Mya, and Pink, and added a rap bridge from Lil' Kim. All four had previously scored top ten pop hits, with Mya's last big one "Case Of The Ex" going to #2 at the close of 2000,  Pink landing a pair of top tens from her debut with "There You Go" and "Most Girls" that year, and Christina, having top billing as you will, coming off four giant hits from her self-titled debut including three #1's in "Genie In A Bottle", "What A Girl Wants", and "Come On Over Baby". And Lil' Kim's top ten hit "Not Tonight" conveniently had her collaborating with four other name artists for a movie soundtrack single. 

As for the finished product, well it is certainly a product, but at least sporting worthy components as all of them give their all to their portion of the record. Mya starts things off as the opening act in the first verse, with a sassy yet somewhat restrained vocal to allow the others to build on. P!nk comes in next vamping up the second verse (she was still in her early sexy girl phase). After the interlude from Lil' Kim and a series of key changes Xtina arrives to blow the house down and she knows her job. They all regroup to land the ending like a wave of sound while Missy announces their names like a credits scene. Is it necessary? Hell no. Is it entertaining? Fuck yes. And everyone else agreed, sending the quartet's "Lady Marmalade" back to the top of the charts...

"Lady Marmalade" became Aguilera's fourth, and Pink, Mya, and Lil' Kim's first, #1 hit on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 in June of 2001. The song made it to #43 on the R&B Singles chart (Christina's only charting single there), while the dance remixes of the song helped it go to #3 on the Dance Club Play chart. On the radio, the track topped the pop airplay chart for nine weeks and led the dance-oriented Rhythmic list for five, peaked at #25 on the older-skewing Adult Top-40 format, and just missed the top-40 on the R&B Airplay chart at #41. Internationally, the single was just as massive, hitting #1 in the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Australia, Switzerland, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Greece, and Hungary, and reached the top ten in the Netherlands (#2), Denmark (#2), Belgium (#2F/#3W), Finland (#2), Romania (#2), Austria (#3), Croatia (#5), and Italy (#6), and almost made it in France at #12. The Moulin Rouge original soundtrack, released in May of that year, climbed to #3 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, going on to sell over three million copies. A second music release from the film, Moulin Rouge 2 which had more of the actual movie pieces, came out the following February, and went to #90 on the Billboard 200. At the Grammy Awards in 2002, "Lady Marmalade" won the foursome a Grammy for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals, while the Moulin Rouge album was up for Best Compilation Soundtrack Album, losing to the equally big O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack. 

A second cut from the movie, "Come What May" sung by the film's leads McGregor and Kidman, went to #10 in Australia and #27 in the UK. All four - Christina Aguilera, Lil' Kim, Mya, and Pink, will return to the series.

(7/10)

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Here's an edit of the club remix from Thunderpuss that helped it climb to the top 3 of the dance chart..

 

 The foursome recreated their lingerie-ad video for the MTV Movie Awards in 2001...

And they did one better at the Grammys the following year by including Patti LaBelle...

Up tomorrow: This female rapper lets loose.