To celebrate Valentine's Day in today's LA Weekly's music section, some staffers and writers contributed short pieces on our favorite love songs. Gendy Alimurung wrote about K-Ci & Jo-Jo's "All My Life," Judith Lewis wrote about Shakira & Alejandro Sanz's "La Tortura," Ernest Hardy wrote about Aretha Franklin's "Prove It." I dropped some words on Aaliyah's "I Care 4 U":
Aaliyah’s voice in the track is a melancholic, angelic echo. Every time I hear it now, the song fills me with an unbearably heavy sense of loss and longing. We all loved Aaliyah immensely. She was so classy, so sultry, so glamorous, so sweet. And just as with the horrible death of Tex-Mex goddess Selena in 1995, Aaliyah’s passing permanently affected us.
That first day my siblings and I heard “I Care 4 U,” it must have had a particular effect on one of my brothers. He and his wife named their first child, a daughter, Analiyah, honoring both the singer and a beloved aunt of ours who died in 2000. Analiyah and I, to my great honor, share the same birthday. Life is death is love is life, I guess.
Check out all the Aaliyah MySpace tribute pages. In this brief and spine-tingling clip, Aaliyah sings from "I Refuse," a cappella. Still so pissed she's dead:
Airbrush portrait on top by "Sue J."