My taste in books is, with the exception of Dave Barry, almost painfully esoteric. And yet in music, which I care about the most, I am oddly willing to embrace some of the most unashamedly mainstream impulses. I like a fair amount of music that most people would identify as incomprehensible or broken, but I also believe that Alanis and Roxette are brilliant, and I stubbornly cling to the notion that Jewel will have a long and significant career once she fires her image consultants and stops recording glossy, soporific crap. Rick Springfield's album Karma was on my 1999 top-ten list not as a joke, nor as some sort of abstract commentary on the state of modern music, it was there because I heard more than a thousand records last year and thought Karma was better than all but five. It was not innovative at all, but insisting that every individual artwork must innovate is myopic, and resigns art to a drunkard's walk in place of progress.
Innovation is an incredibly important force, but so is refinement.
The past can be defied, or it can be drawn upon. And yet, the only thing I find myself unable to decide is which of these songs exemplifies the Corrs' unerring instinct for perfect pop songs most completely. Mutt Lange, Shania's husband, produced and co-wrote it, and it has the characteristic square thump and simple hooks of Shania's singles. Mutt plays some Dolores O'Riordan-ish production tricks with the girls' vocals for the first few seconds, but then backs off and lets them just sing. I suspect adjunct guitarist Anthony Drennan and bassist Keith Duffy account for a disproportionate number of the noises, but if that bothers you, just pretend they're neighborhood kids the Corrs grew up with.