Amerie: 1 Thing (Video: Windows Media | QuickTime | Real)
Touch (Video: Windows Media | QuickTime | Real)
This post is really all about the single “1 Thing,” featured in the movie Hitch. Built around a fat beat, courtesy of The Meters, and a couple of thick funk-guitar hits, it has the same momentum and summertime energy as Beyonce’s “Crazy in Love.”
Amerie’s first album, Why Don’t We Fall in Love, was produced by Rich Harrison, who also produced the Beyonce hit, although he didn’t work with Amerie on her second record, Touch, from which the new single is drawn. She’s no great artist, and her voice and demeanor are pretty standard Beyonce/Alicia Keys-style R&B, but there’s a nice catch in her throat, and like I said, “1 Thing” is a fine three-and-a-half minutes of summertime soul.
Other than that, there are only two things I can think of that would distinguish Amerie from the scads of other hip-hop singers out there. First, that girl can do some serious squats. Second, if you watch the “1 Thing” video, you might notice that at about 3:12, there’s a closeup of a tattoo on the small of Amerie’s back. It’s her name in Korean script: 에므리. According to her AllMusic bio, “Amerie is the daughter of a Korean mother and an African-American father who was a career military member. She grew up on bases from Alaska to Germany, meanwhile gaining an appreciation of the classical arts from her mother and of R&B music from her father.”
