Songs for Singers, #2

Song: On Again Tonight by Trent Willmon

Singer: Toni Braxton

Trent Willmon’s bittersweet love song just rocks. Maybe it’s because I’ve had those kinds of relationships in the past where it’s over but it’s not over and yet it’s over but you just can’t quite let go… or maybe it’s just because I like the song. Whatever the case, I love that song.

But again, like many of the stars of contemporary country music, Trent Willmon’s voice has a very masculine, happy quality to it that doesn’t do enough justice to the possible pathos in On Again Tonight. I mean, consider these lyrics:

I don’t expect things to change.
We’ve got to get on with our lives.
Space is a beautiful thing,
When you need some room.
I don’t know about you, but I’m lonely right now:
I’m just thinkin’ out loud.

I wish you would come over,
An’ drink my best bottle of wine.
You can lay on my shoulder,
An’ I can lean on you just one more time.
You can mess up my head,
An’ mess up my bed,
An’ leave before the mornin’ light.
An’ I need your on again, off again, on again tonight.

As sung by Trent Willmon, it’s far too easy to hear this as a booty-call type of song. As in, “Yeah, we broke up, but damn, I’m horny and won’t you come over for a little sex with an ex action?”

I think having someone like Toni “Unbreak My Heart” Braxton would invest the song with a whole new emotional timbre that would elevate it to the next level. This is a woman who made a song to weep to with banal lyrics like these:

Take back that sad word good-bye
Bring back the joy to my life
Don’t leave me here with these tears
Come and kiss this pain away
I can’t forget the day you left
Time is so unkind
And life is so cruel without you here beside me

I can imagine Toni’s slightly throaty voice singing “you can mess up my head / and mess up my bed / and leave before the morning light” and investing it with an incredible longing, heartbreak, and sadness.  That song becomes about the pain of having to let go of someone you love, someone you still need, instead of a booty-call affair.

Ah, it’d be amazing.

-TS