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Who is Babyface, You Ask?

My favorite songwriter, and a legend. Thanks for asking. He wrote this song. And this one. And this one. You can hear him singing the background vocals pretty clearly. I don't know what to tell you. I daydream about writing a pop song half as magnetic as he's done routinely.

His own albums blow me away. "For The Cool In You" is the perfect R&B/pop album. And that came in 1993, after the LP "Tender Lover" made him a star. Have you heard this one? And cue the wedding standard. That last one was from 1996, off the album "The Day." It's incredible. The whole bloody thing. And then he got bored, and did a Christmas album, which gave us this. If that doesn't end up in a sappy picture slideshow of my life, someone's in trouble. That's all I'm saying.

If you put out a greatest hits collection a mere 14 years after your debut as a solo artist, and it gets criticized for being incomplete, you've done very well indeed. I've just given you a small sample. I love this song, which is just a chorus. But I heard this in a bar in Tampa Bay, performed by a white dude who sang better than Adam Levine, (of Maroon 5) and I knew that my favorite dude had a much bigger influence on people in music than the sales figures might show.

Just letting you know.

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