Entirely Banal Dance Track Single: Deborah Cox's "Things Just Ain't The Same" Flops

The Good: Decent voice, Production isn't bad.
The Bad: Short, Terribly predictable rhymes, Insipid dance beat.
The Basics: Deborah Cox may have talent, but it's not evident on her two-track single “Things Just Ain't The Same.”


My local library has had a stack of c.d.s they've been trying to sell for months and they're down to the dregs. Fortunately, for me, that means I have something to listen to while I type on their terminals! Today, I picked up the two-track single “Things Just Ain't The Same” by Deborah Cox. It appears right around the same time Arista was trying to sell "...Baby One More Time" (reviewed here!), they were also trying to sell Cox and the single “Things Just Ain't The Same.” I suppose we all know how that ultimately turned out for them.

The single for “Things Just Ain't The Same” features the dance radio mixes of “Things Just Ain't The Same” and “Who Do U Love,” neither of which are written, produced by or feature any instrumental accompaniment from Deborah Cox. Instead, she simply sings the songs she was given and these are very obvious dance-pop, hip-hop songs. With only two tracks and nine minutes of music, this is a terrible use of the c.d. medium.

That said, “Things Just Ain't The Same” is a very simple and obvious dance album featuring two songs with heavy basslines, an obvious drum machine laying down the beats and synthesizer elements that do not so much create a tune as they provide something to distract the listener from the lyrics. Both songs have a sound which is keyboard and vocal driven, but is so overproduced that there is no real instrumentation evident. In other words, these sound like songs created at a mixing board as opposed to composed using sheet music and instruments. “Things Just Ain't The Same” is danceable in a club-dance sort of way, while I have no idea how one might groove to the nightmarishly repetitive “Who Do U Love,” though it does have the overproduced handclap sounds.

Usually, I try to focus some on the vocals, but on these two songs, Deborah Cox's voice is almost entirely absent. Instead, her natural soprano voice has been produced, overdubbed and mechanized to the point where it is almost entirely unrecognizable. What does manage to get through hints that Cox can sing, but she has overzealous producers.

Sadly, Cox's voice is clear enough that the lyrics can be completely understood. While this is usually a good thing, on “Things Just Ain't The Same,” this is a serious detraction. Both songs are about the loss of love and both have terribly lines like “I'm still in love with you / And I know that you feel it too . . . I'm so ashamed of me / My heart is not complete / I know you walked away / My heart wants you to stay” (“Things Just Ain't The Same”). On “Who Do U Love,” Cox sings predictable rhymes and continually rhymes “me” with itself.

Sadly, between being short, obvious and often amelodic, it is easy to give this two-track “single” a pass.

For other singles, please check out my reviews of:
"I Don't Want To" - Toni Braxton
"Waterfalls" - TLC
"Gimme More" - Britney Spears

2.5/10

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© 2011, 2010 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.


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