In Defense of Poppery, I: "With You"

Pop example: Chris Brown's "With You"

What redeems it: Your typical R&B love song, "With You" features Chris Brown crooning in those extra, breathy trills that are supposed to make our hearts swoon.

That's fine and all, but since Boyz 2 Men, it's been ye olde hat. What makes Chris's crooning sweet and, ultimately, winning, is the generosity and innocence of the lyrics.

"With You" starts chorus-first, letting us in on the plot: "I need you boo / Gotta see you boo."

At this point, people who have no experience with African-American sweetheart slang are probably confused. People who do have experience are delighted. To me, "boo" seems particularly personal and genuine, much better than "baby" or "girl." He also refers to his love as "little shawty," though by the time he does this in the song, it's lost the sexual overtones it often has in, say, a 50 Cent song. (But then, what word in a 50 Cent song doesn't have sexual overtones?? He could make Clorox bleach sound dirty.)

The song's bridge makes good use of slang, and for me has a semi-comic effect that adds to the song's overall cuteness -- it helps that Chris recognizes a typical guy-reaction to all this fuzzy-wuzziness and heads off our "yeah, right" reaction by earnestly declaring that he "won't front" and he'll "be straight" if only he can have his "boo":

And I will never try
To deny that you are my whole life
'Cause if you ever let me go
I would die, so I won't front
I don't need another woman
I just need your all or nothing
'Cause if I got that
Then I'll be straight
Baby you're the best part of my day

(I admit it's hard to see how Chris would be satisfied if his shawty said "Well, have my nothing, then" -- so he really just needs her "all," then -- but I suppose a sloppy line or two can be forgiven.)

But the chorus is the reason to listen to this song.

Instead of insisting, self-centeredly, that no one else has EVER FELT THIS WAY BEFORE EVER (see "Hey there Delilah" for an annoying example of this), Chris looks at the world and sees that everyone must be feeling this way about their own boos. He even sings about them in a variation on the chorus near the end of the song:

I need you boo
I gotta see you boo
And there's hearts all over the world tonight
Said there's hearts all over the world tonight

They need they boo
They gotta see they boo
Said there's hearts all over the world tonight
Hearts all over the world tonight

And now I know I can't be the only one
I bet there's hearts all over the world tonight
With the love of their life who feel
What I feel when I'm with you, with
you, with you, with you, with you...

How many love songs do you know that manage to seem both self-consciously genuine and un-self-centered?

Not many, I'd bet.

4.5 stars, out of...oh, I don't know...whatever.