Song of the Week - You are my life

valeryjackson

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What do you think of this song?
[video=youtube;EZEyNuzTQVw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZEyNuzTQVw[/video]


Lyrics:
Once all alone
I was lost in a world of strangers
No one to trust
On my own, I was lonely
You suddenly appeared
It was cloudy before but now it’s clear
You took away the fear
You brought me back to life

[CHORUS]
You are the sun
You make me shine
Or more like the stars
That twinkle at night
You are the moon
That glows in my heart
You’re my daytime my nighttime
My world
You’re my life

Now I wake up everyday
With this smile upon my face
No more tears, no more pain
‘Cause you love me
You help me understand
That love is the answer to all that I am
And I’m a better man
You taught me by sharing your live

[CHORUS]

You gave me strength
When I wasn’t strong
You gave me hope when all hope is lost
You opened my eyes when I couldn’t see
Love was always here waiting for me
 
It's another SOTW Ballad!! Respect's gonna be maaaddd at you ;)

I like it! Maybe it's because I was a relatively new soppy Dad in 2001!
 
That's Valery and Tony in my bad books now. Btw, has anyone seen my book? It's got a black cover and you open it up and it has Tony and Valery's name inside?

YAML is a sweet song. It's not one I listen to a lot, but whenever I do I really enjoy it.

Don't forget that it's all for love, l.o.v.e guys :D :cheeky:

Anyway i really love this song, it's so sweet.
 
I always think of how he wrote/sang this for his kids, so of course it's wonderful. But, I don't listen to it very often, either.
 
That's Valery and Tony in my bad books now. Btw, has anyone seen my book? It's got a black cover and you open it up and it has Tony and Valery's name inside?

YAML is a sweet song. It's not one I listen to a lot, but whenever I do I really enjoy it.

I've got your book here. It must be yours, it has a page entitled 'Stupid things I've said' including 'I listen to Invincible more than any other MJ album' and 'TWYMMF is one of the worst songs on Bad'.

Anyway, and I don't mean this dismissively but YAML could have been on a Disney soundtrack album alongside The Lost Children and Childhood. He could have done a great score.
 
As for the song, not my favourite, but I appreciate the fact that MJ was never scared to be this genuine - and didn't care if it was "cool" or not or whether someone might find it "cheesy" or not. If it was in his heart he did it.

Exactly.

YAML
TLC
DYKWYCA
HTW

I love that it was music first, cool second. It made him cooler in my eyes growing up.
 
Yes, I can quote it again from Kanye what I quoted in the Heal The World thread (as it is specifically about that song but it fitst here as well).

Thanks. Love that. He's said some crap in his time has Mr. West, but that is spot on.

I also include a dedication to 'the children of the world' on the back cover of HIStory, his first album post the allegations.
 
valeryjackson;4193344 said:
What do you think of this song?

For me, ‘You Are My Life’ is the lowest point on that album.

Moreover, the fact that MJ sounds (or tries to sound) like Babyface here is even more disturbing. I mean, he does not need to. The same, of course, goes for the other Babyface-influenced/produced song called ‘On The Line’ that was recorded some years earlier.

Melodically, ‘You Are My Life’ is very weak. It has a very simple chorus, too simple lyrics & it never really explodes while it approaches its end.

Also, despite the happy, optimistic theme of ‘You Are My Life’, MJ sounds slightly sad while singing these lines.

Finally, it is even more frustrating to think that (according, at least, to some accounts & reports) ‘You Are My Life’ made the album at the expense of ‘Shout’. In my opinion, that was an unforgivable decision.
 
It's a nice melody, the chorus is good and really memorable. Of course Michael sings it extremely well, one of the stronger vocals on Invincible for me.

It's not one of my favourites off the album but I'll take it over a few songs on Invincible (I'm looking at you Don't Walk Away)
 
YAML should never have been included on any KoP album. This was one example of Vince's notoriously bad track listing issue. It had too many tracks, many were filler and should have been removed IMO. The album would have been FAR better without tracks like YAML, LC, Cry, Privacy, DWA etc.
How could the man responsible for uber hits such as Smooth Criminal, Billie Jean, Beat It end up recording and releasing sappy crap like YAML? There are ways to convey the same messages in a much more commercially acceptable way - a way that can enhance the album and increase sales. The way those songs were recorded showed that MJ had lost his way (IMO). I'm not criticising the message but the execution was cheesy, messy, and unappealing to the masses.

Somebody mentioned the YAML being weak melodically and lyrically. It was. The same can be said for Lost Children. *shakes head*

I know some people hear love songs like YAML and Lost Children, but they were not good choices to put on an album that was (after many years of absense) a comeback album for the King of Pop. Though some say MJ didn't need to be cool, MJ SHOULD have been cooler than that. He had lost so much credibility by 2001 that the last thing he needed was to include tracks like that on his album. At least he didn't have the foolishness to release them as singles...oh wait!. Cry was released as the second single. It killed album sales dead. Not to mention the foolish (mostly) one-sided public spat with Sony.
 
It's a beautiful song. It's one of the first few songs that I heard of MJ. The melody always get me quite emotional. It is a hidden gem on Invincible and deserves more love. I've always loved YAML.
 
Never understood the criticism MJ gets from some fans for including 'sappy' ballads songs like YAML, TLC, DWA on Vince. That was Michael going back to his roots with all these ballads. It was like the late 70s-early 80s Michael again.
 
I love this song!, its so relaxing and calming, 2000 watts Privacy and The lost children are my least favorites, following by Cry (It has grown on me tho, so i listen to it sometimes) but even 3/4 songs I dont like on Invincible, Its still my 2nd fav MJ album.
 
It's not the best song on the album, but it's certainally not the worst *Glares at Privacy*
 
I think it's a very sweet song. Not a classic that will go down in history, maybe it should have been released as a b-side single.

I enjoy the song a lot. .- I also like to think its a song MJ wrote thinking of Paris and Prince.
 
If you want to be so critical of MJ at least you should be fair and criticize him for things that were his own doing and not someone else's.

Cry was released as a single because Sony wanted to. MJ didn't. He wanted to release Unbreakable or Threatened. He refused to appear in the video for Cry exactly because making it a single was against what he wanted. One of MJ's problem with Sony was exactly that they did not give him any control about what will be a single and what not. MJ wanted to release Unbreakable as the lead single but Sony pushed for YRMW. Choosing Cry despite of MJ wanting other songs as singles was the last straw for him.

Sony probably thought that Cry would have been a big hit just because it was written by R.Kelly.
 
If you want to be so critical of MJ at least you should be fair and criticize him for things that were his own doing and not someone else's.

Cry was released as a single because Sony wanted to. MJ didn't. He wanted to release Unbreakable or Threatened. He refused to appear in the video for Cry exactly because making it a single was against what he wanted. One of MJ's problem with Sony was exactly that they did not give him any control about what will be a single and what not. MJ wanted to release Unbreakable as the lead single but Sony pushed for YRMW. Choosing Cry despite of MJ wanting other songs as singles was the last straw for him.

Playing devil's advocate here, but if Michael was still living by his incredible ethos of 'every song on the album should be single worthy' the it shouldn't have mattered!

But yeah, crazy choice of single, made by some lazy exec who wanted to repeat the success of YANA.
 
The last album MJ made where every song could stand on it's own as a single was Dangerous (IMO).
 
Maybe MJ the single dad of two in his forties wasn't the same MJ you grew up with in the 80s and 90s? Age and life experiences change us, and I think Invincible demonstrates this, irrespective of how you feel about the songs.


Maybe MJ wasn't primarily concerned with being "cool" - usually people stop worrying about stuff like that when they get older. There are plenty of songs on Invincible that sounded modern and contemporary in 2001, so maybe MJ felt like he wanted to also include a few songs that reflected where he was in his life at that time and I definitely feel that both YAML and TLC are examples of this. It may not be what you wanted to get from a Michael Jackson album in 2001, but it was from the heart, so you can't fault him for that.

MJ really cared about commercial success, that was what he craved.
Lack of commercial success was one of the catalysts for his embarassing tirades against Tommy M and Sony generally.
It is clear MJ still wanted to be massively successful, and you can't achieve that without attracting an audience, and it's hard to do that with the songs chosen for inclusion on Vince. Sometimes less is more, and if they trimmed some of those less commercial tracks from Vince the reviews would have been better, word of mouth would have been better. It would have been a better package overall. MJ (and Sony) should have known that some of the songs included on Vince were NOT the right material to achieve the success MJ craved.


If you want to be so critical of MJ at least you should be fair and criticize him for things that were his own doing and not someone else's.

Cry was released as a single because Sony wanted to. MJ didn't. He wanted to release Unbreakable or Threatened. He refused to appear in the video for Cry exactly because making it a single was against what he wanted. One of MJ's problem with Sony was exactly that they did not give him any control about what will be a single and what not. MJ wanted to release Unbreakable as the lead single but Sony pushed for YRMW. Choosing Cry despite of MJ wanting other songs as singles was the last straw for him.

If Sony wanted Cry released then it was a good sign that either they didn't understand how to make MJ successul or they deliberately wanted MJ to fail. Both sound unlikely because both hurt their own bottom line. As for the reason for MJ's non-appearance in the Cry music video, it was long rumoured that he chose not to appear, but recently I read that the director himself decided that it would be good to create a video without MJ. I believe there was also a quote to that effect.. I'm not sure which is the truth. As for Unbreakable vs YRMW, I can see why Sony chose the latter - it was the safe option. Personally I prefer Unbreakable but I'm not sure it would have been a bigger hit.
 
Not a fan of the song at all. I respect MJ's intentions with it. I remember when Invincible came out a review stated that it sounded like it was sang with the muppets. I wouldn't go that far but I'm sure there were other songs he could of put on the album besides this one.
 
I like the song. I like it but am not crazy about it. There's something about Michael's music that just drags me in, he could have sang the phone book and I'd find it fascinating and enjoy hearing it. I'm not comparing YAML to singing the phone book (lol) but I can definitely see why it wasn't a hit with critics or the wider masses. The sentiment of the song is nice but I also find it very sad as well. You really get a feel for MJ's loneliness in the lyrics and the way he sings them, especially in the opening verse. With YAML it was obviously included for a reason personal to Michael, and I admire him like others in this thread have said for just going with what was important to him.
 
Every song being "single material" is not necessarily always a measure of quality. Little Susie, Morphine or Speechless aren't exactly single material, but they're great songs and their respective albums would be weaker without them.

Well yes, not radio friendly single material by this point. E.g. This Time Around is more radio friendly than Little Susie much LS is a hundred times superior.
 
I like the song. I like it but am not crazy about it. There's something about Michael's music that just drags me in, he could have sang the phone book and I'd find it fascinating and enjoy hearing it.

Lol i agree, he could have sang literally anything and i still would have liked it.
 
Personally I absolutely love this song. I get that it is not a stand alone single but it gave such an insight into how he felt about his children and for me personally seemed as though it was written for me to say to my husband. Hence I came down the aisle to this song. It fulfilled two roles, it said exactly how I felt about the man I was about to marry and it meant Michael was with me at that moment, which was essential. Now I have children of my own I can appreciate even more how Michael was inspired to write such beautiful lyrics.
 
Well I love this song. It reminds me so much of the old J5 ballads and I'm a sucker for those.
 
I grew to love this song very quickly, after the Invincible album first came out. Someone told me it was written about his kids, which makes sense...but the lyrics could also be interpreted spiritually. Its probably the closest to outright gospel, that Michael ever got.
 
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