I bought The Ultimate Aaliyah today. It had two CDs of music plus a DVD that included an hour long documentary. I just watched the doco and man, I should've KNOWN I was gonna cry. For me, Aaliyah is the only celebrity whose death has made me weep. The day I found out about her plane crash was just so sad and I couldn't help it. People cried when Lennon died. Others when any other number of young artists (on any field) died. And Aaliyah was one of the first of it's kind in my lifetime. When you hear about all the famous people dying they're usually old enough to have experienced life, but Aaliyah was 21 when she died.
It was a tragedy for music, really. To quote one of Aaliyah's closest friends and choreographer from the doco - "She was an angel. A true angel."
I remember first hearing an Aaliyah song when I was 12 with "If Your Girl Only Knew" - a brilliant hip-hop song. I don't remember ever hearing from her again until the undisputed classic that is "Try Again" came out. I immediately bought the Romeo Must Die soundtrack which included 3 more Aaliyah tunes - all of which was excellent. I then fell in love with her "One In A Million" album and then she released one of my all-time favourite albums. The self-titled "Aaliyah". I immediately fell in love with classics such as "U Got Nerve", "Rock The Boat", "We Need A Resolution", "What If", "Smooth Rap" and "I Care 4 U".
And then I was on the internet one day and went on Yahoo only to see the news in the side panel 'Singer Aaliyah Dies In Plane Crash' and I was just in shock. I continued to read the articles as they came in every 10 minutes or so. It was a sad day.
Thankfully, even though she was 21 she had created such a legacy that will be remembered forever. 3 albums plus a whole bunch of soundtrack (including Dr Dolittle's "Are You That Somebody" and Anastacia's Academy Award nominated "Journey To The Past") as well as the producer of her being. It's fairly well known that everybody that knew her loved Aaliyah and that she didn't leave anyone with bad feelings.
It's sad that that when she died she had just finished filming the video clip for what is ultimately one of her greatest songs - "Rock The Boat". Definitely one of the sexiest songs I've ever heard.
Anyway, I just wanted to discuss this. A lot of people have stories about when their favourite performer died. And I felt like talking about this.
Interesting fact for the movie oriented out there: Aaliyah was only the second african-american female to perform at the Academy Awards ("Journey to the Past").
...or, I'm pretty that's true. Whitney Houston and then her... right? I dunno. I'm gonna go liven my mood and go watch an episode of "Arrested Development"
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