Who Did It Better
As
The Original -- 1976
Stevie Wonder
<p>The song imagines a love that outlasts the universe itself, conditional only on impossibilities... until the rainbow burns the stars out of the sky, until the ocean covers every mountain, until the day that eight times eight is forty-four. The narrator is not being romantic. He is setting the terms of an argument so absolute that nothing in the known world can break it. Stevie wrote this one in the key of life indeed... a song that takes the grammar of devotion and stretches it until the syntax breaks, each new impossibility ratcheting the stakes higher than the last.</p> <p>That same stretched syntax gets a different kind of tension in Mary J. Blige's 1999 reading, recorded as a duet with George Michael for his *Songs from the Last Century*. Where Stevie's original is a joyful, overflowing production ... clavinet runs, a horn section, a party happening in the same room as the vow ... this version is a conversation between two people who have both lived long enough to know what forever actually costs. Mary brings the scars. George brings the ache. They trade lines not like a duet but like an argument two lovers are having in the same bed at 3 a.m., each trying to convince the other that the impossible promises are still worth making.</p>
The Cover -- 1999
Mary J. Blige
Mary J. Blige's 1999 reading, recorded as a duet with George Michael for his *Songs from the Last Century*. Where Stevie's original is a joyful, overflowing production ... clavinet runs, a horn section, a party happening in the same room as the vow ... this version is a conversation between two people who have both lived long enough to know what forever actually costs. Mary brings the scars. George brings the ache. They trade lines not like a duet but like an argument two lovers are having in the same bed at 3 a.m., each trying to convince the other that the impossible promises are still worth making.</p>
