A singer's singer: Toni Braxton
Her material hasn't always backed her up, but *that voice*
It should be considered canon that Toni Braxton is one of the greatest singers of the past 30 years.
From the moment she appeared, as Babyface’s muse on the 1992 Boomerang soundtrack, she impressed. “Give U My Heart,” on which she was the “feat.” credit to ‘Face, is a bouncy uptempo spotlighting her talents — but she never feels like second banana on the track, and in fact gets the entire first verse to herself. And then on her own “Love Shoulda Brought You Home,” whoa. That was the declaration that Braxton had arrived and wasn’t playing around. Grand without being grandiose, this is an expert L.A. & Babyface ballad, and Braxton knew exactly what to do with it. She’s masterful — and was just getting started.
Her 1993 eponymous debut spun off hit after hit after hit, notching three top 10 pop and four top 10 R&B singles. And it made some history along the way, too:
Toni Braxton would eventually top both the R&B and pop album charts and sell 8M copies in the US. And what hits it had! The elegant “Another Sad Love Song” and “You Mean the World to Me,” the melodramatic “Breathe Again,” the sexy shuffle “I Belong to You” - not to mention “Seven Whole Days,” for my money the best track on the album and one of Braxton’s best, period. The L.A. & Babyface composition is a slow burner which Braxton imbues with genuine passion; where lesser singers might’ve been tempted to go full-on belter, she uses her subtlety and colors her vocal with just the right emotions. Listen to the way she sings “You coulda had about anything you wanted/But you messed it up/Ooh, you had to be tough” at the 0:55 mark, switching up her syncopation and adding a discrete sass to her words; almost immediately after, she goes into center-stage balladry mode on the chorus. Having seen Braxton live in 2014, I can tell you that she pulls this off just as ably live as she did on record. Her performance was sexy, sassy and classy.
I’m not gonna blow-by-blow her career here. Braxton has had plenty more triumphs (like the massive #1 “Un-Break My Heart” from the pen of Diane Warren, which would’ve been better suited for Celine Dion, and I can’t stand), and eventually a fair amount of duds, too. Some of her mid-career uptempo records rank with her best, cf. the absurdly sexy kiss-off “He Wasn’t Man Enough.” There was time spent in the reality TV wilderness too, ugh.
But in 2013 she reunited with Babyface for the duet concept album Love, Marriage & Divorce, one of the decade’s finest in any genre, and the R&B cousin of Shoot Out the Lights. As for lead single “Hurt You,” between ‘Face’s pen and the stunning ache in Braxton’s voice, “Hurt You” is pure pain on record. The second verse spelling out that both of the song’s characters cheated on each other? Devastating. 20 years on from their collaboration on Braxton’s debut, she and Babyface could still make magic, a perfect producer/songwriter and singer/muse pairing. (And watch this live performance of the song, and marvel at the sheer control she has over her voice.)
I can’t say enough about the album, which is fairly a masterpiece. And it seemed to re-energize Braxton artistically, as each of her subsequent albums — 2018’s Sex & Cigarettes, which I put in my year’s top 10 and 2020’s Spell My Name — has featured some great songs and earned Adult R&B airplay #1s in the forms of the magnificent “Long As I Live” and the pained “Do It.” She’s still got juice in her tank, and I will continue to look forward to her future work. Braxton isn’t an A-list artist, but when she’s on, she’s still on; don’t ignore her.