25 November 2000
Good puzzle would be cross November 2000 without hearing ‘Can’t Fight The Moonlight’. However, I’m surprised that it actually got all the way to number one here and in the UK. Yes, it was on our radios and TVs more often than the news headlines. Still, I can’t picture a quorum of mainstream music-buyers then rushing out excitedly to buy this watery, unremarkable record all the way to the top of the charts. The title rhymes tidily, but you’d cringe if you had to utter its naffness aloud. LeAnn Rimes had a hit before with one of the competing versions of ‘How Do I Live’ but was hardly a star here. Surely this song wasn’t that big a pop-cultural smash, right?
I suppose one reason for this single’s success is its cinematic New York video, thanks to being on the soundtrack to Coyote Ugly. This is a Diane Warren composition, and like her first Irish number one, the enjoyably cheesy ‘Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now’, the video for the song saves me having to watch the movie. Surmising from the video, Coyote Ugly looks like it’s about (act 1) an aspiring young songwriter who ends up working in a rowdy bar where the female staff line-dance and sass-ify on the counter, which (act 2) gets her insecure fella all huffy and leaves her broken-heartedly watching other couples shifting on the subway, but (act 3) they make up and she learns that going mad on a bit of moonlight-induced female independence is all fine just as long as you ultimately file back to your place as one man’s exclusive eye-candy and chattel. Yeehaw.
Another reason is how similar it sounds in structure and vibe to ‘…Baby One More Time’. The glossy R&B-lite production—by ’80s UK studio supremo Trevor Horn of all people—fits it to that purpose. (We’ll soon hear another unlikely Trevor Horn-produced number one single with another questionable video portrayal of young women.) Added to that, Rimes as a young country star singing US adult contemporary pop-rock provides that holy grail of the American music industry: crossover appeal. Otherwise, ‘Can’t Fight The Moonlight’ itself is notably corny and old-fashioned. Its title is a giveaway: songs about moonlight and starlight were already old hat on ’50s Broadway and perhaps even 1890s Tin Pan Alley, and the rest of it sounds like a corporate workshop wall of Post-it notes around that title. But hey, Diane Warren never fails to get the big bucks from you people, so what do I know.
