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Originally written September 12, 2005. The Britney album has a strange little quiet place near the end. In between the bombast of Bombastic Love and the not-so-mellow melodrama of Before The Goodbye are two little tracks that most people never think of – That’s Where You Take Me and When I Found You. It seems that when a listener switches off from one of them, he/she also switches off from the other, so both end up getting ignored. But both tracks are little gems.
Today I’m gonna talk about That’s Where You Take Me.
As with a lot of song words, once one person posts them on the internet and gets them wrong, everybody else copies them and you can’t find the right words anywhere. But I’ve been listening hard and these are the RIGHT words for “That’s Where You Take Me”!
Oh Baby, Oh Baby
Oh Baby, Oh Baby
In love, no belief
Never found inside of me
Built these walls up so high
Needed my room to breathe
Oh Baby, Oh baby
You tear them down
Can't believe you've changed my mind
Oh Baby, Oh Baby
I saw your smile
Stay with me a while
Chorus:
All things fall into place
My heart, it feels so safe
You are my melody
That's where you take me
With you I get so high
Lost in the crystal sky
You are this melody
That's where you take me
I never fell before
How did you find my door
The key to my soul
To you forever more
Oh baby, Oh baby
You make me rise
And never did I once think twice
Oh Baby, Oh baby
You make me smile
Stay with me a while
(Chorus)
Bridge:
Afraid to let it all inside
Now I wanna hear you'll
stay with me a while
stay with me a while
la-la-la-la-la-la
la-la-la-la-la-la
la-la-la-la-la-la
That's Where you take me!
Chorus
TWYTM, like Anticipating and Don’t Hang Up – both of which I’ve discussed previously – was written and produced by Brian Kierulf and Josh Schwartz. As usual, Brian Kierulf played all the instruments and did all the programming. The backing vocals are provided by Britney and Jennifer Karr, but it's mostly Britney you can hear.
The production is completely characteristic of Brian and Josh. The stereo imaging is simple, with Britney’s lead vocal dead centre, and the backing tracks are shared evenly between left and right channels. The percussion track isn’t flashy and crashy with cymbals but does canter along with some well-placed snaredrum rimshots.
One odd feature I should draw attention to is that there’s a subtle and unobtrusive bass melody which you can hear perfectly on cheap earphones or small speakers, but which is dominated and pretty-much overwhelmed by one-note synth bass thumping if you use heavier-duty hardware.
As is also usual with Brian and Josh, there’s more to it than immediately meets the ear. The bell-like figure at the beginning persists for a few bars into the song, then all kinds of things seep in around it. Repeated listening reveals tiny piano, guitar and synth interjections, tinkles, windrushes, bubbling noises, vocal stabs, breathing, and – most importantly - a quite beautiful string part.
Britney’s vocal exudes youth and innocence, and she sounds very much the virgin everybody thought she was at the time. Here she is making no attempt to be sexually ambiguous or coquettish. She begins in remarkably breathy, confidential style and ends with a delightfully girlish giggle. In the bridge she sounds more confident in expressing what she’s feeling, but the LA-LA section soon puts a stop to that. Vocal anoraks will notice that she makes good use of one of her keynote sounds “I never fell beforrrre-AH!” “To you for evermorrrre-AH!” to add some extra drama and weight as necessary without resorting to extra volume. Clever stuff.
In the final analysis, most listeners would probably consider both the production and the song to be merely pretty, and not in themselves very dynamic. It's more than likely that in the hands of most singers, TWYTM would sound dull, dumb and lightweight. It’s therefore a credit to Britney that she manages to put so much of herself and her personality into the song and make it sound so pleasing and so intriguing.
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