It's one of those albums that has a couple hits that you already know because you grew up hearing them occasionally on the radio. Those songs on My Name Is Joe are "I Wanna Know" and "Stutter." The interesting thing is that the former peaked at #4 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, but the latter hit #1. So, objectively speaking, "Stutter" was more popular than "I Wanna Know." And the part that interests me is what that says about the human condition. What about "Stutter" connected just a little bit more than "I Wanna Know"?
We can look at the themes of each song (since, musically speaking, all these songs are cut from the same cloth). "I Wanna Know" is a classic song of romance. The protagonist is so amazed with his partner, and so in love, that he's willing to move mountains to make her happy. "Tell me what will make you smile, and I will do that thing without question," he says. "Stutter," on the other hand, is a song of jealousy. The protagonist knows that his partner is up to no good. He sees the alleged "signs." And he lashes out at that partner due to these suspicions.
Throughout both songs, the protagonist—Joe, in this case, and we assume this is the same man in both songs—is completely overtaken with emotion. In "I Wanna Know," he's bowled over with love, and in "Stutter," he's rapturous with hate. On paper, you'd think that the nice, happy song would be the one to be a big hit, but in reality, to the ears of millions of American pop fans, "Stutter" was the winner. And I have to imagine that has something to do with how we as humans operate, how maybe being distrustful comes more easily to us than being completely trusting. Which is sad, but if it's a truth, then it's just a sad truth, that's all.
I'm not the perfect husband. I fuck up constantly, and I've put my wife through all kinds of heinous shit. But one thing that she has not had to deal with in the past decade or so, not fucking once, is jealousy on her husband's part. It's just easier, man. Jealousy and mistrust weakens the foundation of one's relationship, so I've found that's it's better to just... not be jealous? I don't mean to paint that as easier than it is, but it really does feel that easy. Just don't fucking be jealous. Your girl was out late last night? With another man? Okay... so? My wife is beautiful and sexy and it totally makes sense that other men would be attracted to her too, and nothing that my wife could ever choose to do in that kind of situation would invalidate our love and our relationship, as far as I could imagine. The trust comes in when you know that you're in love with each other and that love is way deeper than some innocent Saturday night shenanigans. The trust is easy when you're not worrying about petty bullshit. Don't want your girl to s-s-stutter-stutter? Don't be such an asshole that you're giving her a reason to be scared of you and causing her to s-s-stutter-stutter.
I don't mean for that to sound holier-than-thou, like I have everything figured out. I don't. Ask anyone, up to and including my wife—at my very best, I'm incredibly flawed. But in this one specific realm, I do feel like I'm the one Joe out of two who has it figured out. And yet, for the rest of America, it seems like they connected more emotionally to "Stutter"! I feel compelled to come to a conclusion based on this fact, and that conclusion is that your average American listener is more inclined to feel jealous than to feel open enough to trust someone completely. Which is extremely sad, and probably not Joe's intention, but there it is. What I guess I'd ask that average listener, if in some hypothetically scenario they found themselves reading this extremely niche album review on a blog, is to start the process of questioning that automatic response within themselves. I'm not asking you to change yourself, but I am asking you to examine yourself. Why do we as humans come upon jealousy and hate so easily? And why does it take so much strength to trust someone completely?
My theory about Joe's singles from My Name Is Joe falls apart completely when you consider the third single, "Treat Her like a Lady," which has similar lyrical content to "Stutter," a similar ultra-slowed-down ballad vibe like "I Wanna Know," and peaked at #63, without anyone today remembering this song at all. Maybe the commercial success of "Stutter" had nothing to do with its dark, unforgiving energy (or maybe, in the opposite direction, it had everything to do with the single version's featured rapist calling women "heifers," which, if that's what America was truly responding to, then maybe this country is broken beyond repair). Conversely, maybe "Treat Her like a Lady" is lush and generic in the same way every non-"Stutter" song is on this very lush and very generic album.
I'll say that this is probably the best R&B album we've covered in this music club so far. I'll also say that this is probably only because that it somehow doesn't seem to suffer from the clichés as some of those other albums have (like Boyz II Men). All the symptoms are there—the busy drum beats, the showy singing, the flamenco-like guitars and wind chimes, the tastefully horny lyrics. I don't love them here, and I'm not going to say anything like "this music is interesting" because it's not, but... I don't know, it just seems really well-done, like this was the peak of this particular style. Talent shines through the muck.
Probably doesn't hurt that Joe does a good job at underlining a theme that keeps popping up with these types of albums—the idea that true R&B artists saw their work commodified and pop-ified by Swedish robots via clueless pretty boys. Joe just puts *NSYNC directly on his albums. It's an idea so ballsy that it might work. Kinda sucks to hear Branch the Troll on the album of the week, but I appreciate Joe's audacity, that's all I'm saying. Shoutout to Nas for earning another paycheck too.
In general, I need more than goopy love ballads, but you knew that already. I've beaten that horse to death through every R&B album review I've written in the past five-plus years. This ain't my shit. But I guess it does make it a tiny bit more palatable to just acknowledge that this shit ain't built for me in the first place. This is your-average-music-listener music. And I think it's okay in this instance to more look at that majority of listeners and consider them statistics instead of critics. Let their tastes tell me something about how people behave.
Why "Stutter"? Null hypothesis says that this shit is just generic and uncomplicated and thus calming, but the null hypothesis is boring to me. Instead: people love "Stutter" because people are afraid of intimacy, and are terrified of giving themselves over completely to another. That's better. That's more fun.
GRADE: 2.5 pukes out of 5
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