"Adorn" by Miguel

Song 19:

"Adorn” by Miguel

Peak: 17

Year: 2012

Year end position: 84

Alphabetical Songs by Artist: 1/1

Chronological Songs by Artist: 1/1

Video?: Yes

Wikipedia?:  Yes:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adorn_%28song%29

Spotify?:  Yes

Lyrics:  http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/miguel/adorn.html

So far in this blog, the songs we have gone over have averaged coming from the year 1988.  That skews a little more recent since the overall average year is 1981.  If all years were equal, the average would be somewhere in 1985.  I bring this up because today is the most recent song chronologically we have had, appearing on the chart in 2012.  If you remember my post about "ABC", you know my theory about short titles, and this song fits that criteria perfectly.  There is also a trend to make the singers names shorter.  As evidenced by this graph:

It looks like around the early 90s (roughly the start of the hip hop era), men's names became more prominently one name, as opposed to 2, which was clearly the norm before 1990.

Miguel was born Miguel Jontel Pimentel in Los Angeles, California.  As of the time of this writing, he is considered a one-hit wonder.  That seems a little premature to say, since this song is only 3 years old, and he is still producing records.  So far, most of his success has been with critics and on the R&B Charts.  As of this writing, he has only had one other top 40 song other than "Adorn".  There is still a lot of hope for Miguel to avoid becoming a one-hit wonder, but the jury is still out on whether that will happen.

Miguel actually poses an interesting conundrum.  What are the rules for determining who is and who isn't a one-hit wonder.  From my definition, I am currently classifying anyone who has had one and only one song as the main artist hit the top 20.  But, take the example of Chris Stapleton into consideration.  He just had his first song hit the top 20 this week.  Is he a one-hit wonder?  It seems quite premature to say that he is.  It seems more appropriate to have some kind of time consideration thrown in.  I don't really know.  I'm just posing the question.

This song made me go to the dictionary to look up what "Adorn" actually means.  Apparently, it means "to make more beautiful or attractive".  That's pretty good usage by Miguel, as he sings a lot in the song about letting his love adorn the woman he is singing to.  It also works pretty well in that it sounds similar to "Adore", which Miguel also says he does.  I read some influences of Miguel, and this song seems to have a similarly smooth delivery and similar rhythm to Marvin Gaye's "Sexual Healing".  I wasn't able to find anywhere where Miguel lists him as an influence, but this song seems so similar to me.  If nothing else, this song seems to be treading over similar ground in that the aim of the song is tell the object of the song how much the singers love and appreciate them.

There is a video for this song, and it looks like it was filmed primarily in a vacant building.  Miguel is singing in some empty hallways and bathroom stalls.  There is at least one woman in the bathroom wearing a veil which you don't see every day.  For some reason I couldn't comprehend, there was some shots of a cheerleader, and another of a woman in a leotard doing handsprings down the hall.  It was a little strange, but maybe they were going for a mood, which they do somewhat effectively.

Unfortunately, if you go looking for this video on YouTube, you may run into another infamous video related to this song.  At the Video Music Awards, the stage was configured so there was the main stage, and then a semicircle in front that the performers could go that surrounded a pit of fans.  I'm sure this made for a great effect on TV, as the act could look like they were surrounded by fans if they were on the semicircle part of the stage.  At some point in singing this song, Miguel decides he is going to jump over the pit and land on the semicircle part of the stage.  Unfortunately, he doesn't quite make it, and essentially  bangs two fans heads into the stage as he comes down.  I felt bad for everyone involved.  Miguel finished singing the song, but the women needed medical treatment afterwards.  It's not the way any of them wanted to remember the VMAs.  Hopefully, that's just a strange footnote in history for Miguel, and he can have more chart success in the upcoming years.