Robert F. Funke

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Listen to Without You

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Robert’s thoughts:

I hit play on this track and unmuted my computer and immediately assumed there was a YouTube video running simultaneously, because this song sounds like three kind of terrible songs happening at once. Ginuwine adds enough spoken “uh huh”s “Ginuwine”s “Christmas”s and “[whatever record company this is]”s to make this song super confusing. He also does really loud Lamaze exercises throughout, but only in one of your ears. It’s like he’s giving birth next to you at his own concert. In this scenario I’m imagining that he has the Tesla machine from The Prestige.

There are some real lyrical gems in here.

Girl I wish we could

Hug and kiss on ea-

chother HOW COME (how come, how come [it’s Christmas, we’re not together])

It’s hurting me so bad

Girl you don’t know how

I miss you SOOOO

This makes me LOL because obviously at some point Ginuwine decided that the lyrics were a strong enough statement in their content that they didn’t need to rhyme. And then he hugged and kissed on one of the fly girls the studio presumably provided.

The beat is really bad. It sounds like a keyboard’s built-in drum beat, but a few BPMs slower than you want it.

I will say that there’s some pretty innovative harmony/key mixing, and I can’t tell if it’s indulgent or experimental or just the product of way too much production, but about 3 minutes in, when ‘Wine says How will I make it through this Christmas? Baby I need you get with me right now! so many voices are harmonizing in so many different keys it sounds a little like Dirty Projectors.

JP’s thoughts:

You know that thing in Microsoft Word where you can have it replace a certain word you type with a different word?  For instance, in middle school this kid got in trouble for changing the kid next to his computer to say “Gayboy” when he typed his name.  That’s what Ginuwine has done here. Without You seems to be just a song rejected from one of Ginuwine’s regular albums (that’s saying a lot) that he has replaced some word like “today” or “tonight” or something with “Christmas.” Look  out for this jam to be playing for years to come at your local Burlington Coat Factory or TJ Maxx.