MILIAN - "when you look at me"
it is impossible to get bored of this because it has enough hooks to fill an entire ashanti album, and none of them really sound like they belong in the same song (which merely shows up the inherent tyrany of "songs" anyway!). so you can spend weeks trying to "get" this tune, to feel comfortable with it so you can move on to sap the energy out of another track, but it won't happen because it doesn't fit together like most radio songs do - in fact it sounds like milian set out to prove that "you think i'm so predictable" line to be false. mostly it's the same kind of very playful messing with pop-r'n'b convention as "am to pm" was, except this has even weirder textures, like the distorted synth bass that pops up before the chorus - why is it there?? i dunno but it captures my attention and it sounds like a brilliant "hey! what about a distorted synth bass!" studio moment.

i still have this feeling like i'm gonna look back on this in a year and wonder why i listened to such a strained, unnatural thing all the time. i think i considered the same thing about "i'm a slave 4 u" though - and nine months later that's my favourite britney tune ever! and wu tang forever is my favourite wu record now!