In defence of Amerie’s Tiny Desk...

There is just something about Amerie y’all. She’s unproblematic. She minds her business. She is also incredibly fine. And despite not having a huge and lengthy discography, she has a tight and very replayable one. So whenever she pops up out of the blue to do a thing, I always check it out. So, she popped up to do a Tiny Desk? I clicked immediately.

Amerie’s Tiny Desk went a little viral, but unfortunately for her, not because everybody was singing its praises. Lots of folk had things to say about how Amerie didn’t sound great.

And what I am about to say is not shade. But…when has Amerie ever sounded ‘great’?

I can’t even chalk it up to it perhaps being a minute since everybody listened to some Amerie, because “Why Don’t We Fall in Love?” is the annual Summer anthem for many Black Americans. And “1 Thing” is a song that everybody around the world hears somewhere at some point every now and then. So…why is everybody acting surprised?

Amerie has never been a great singer. Being surprised at Amerie sounding pitchy, having zero tone and a bit flat is like being surprised that Jennifer Lopez didn’t sing her own background vocals. Amerie has no tone, sounds pitchy and flat on the damn records and we were all fine before.

I think the ‘backlash’ against Amerie’s Tiny Desk is less about her and more about the expectation that many have for Tiny Desks now. Over the past couple of years alone, we’ve had Black artists pull up to NPR’s Tiny Desk and deliver amazing performances. Amerie is coming after Teedra Moses, Durand Bernarr, Brittney Spencer, Kierra Sheard, Chaka Khan, Babyface (who had Avery Wilson, Chanté Moore and Tank as his backing singers), Raye, Usher — and several of these went insanely viral. As is often the case with MANY things, Black people come in and set a standard and an expectation which isn’t reflective of the regular programming. NPR has an incredibly wide range of acts doing Tiny Desk Concerts and not all of them are great singers, and that’s fine. But the unfortunate thing for Amerie, is that the same crowd who tuned in for her Tiny Desk is the exact same crowd who tuned in for most of the aforementioned Tiny Desks — so I think that’s what she’s being compared to in some cases and that just doesn’t make sense.

Me, personally? I liked Amerie’s Tiny Desk. She performed “I Just Died”, “Rolling Down My Face” and “Talkin’ About” — which are some of my favourite songs of hers. So ain’t no way I could hate this. If she had performed “Crush”, I woulda sent a bitch a Mario Kart World trophy. It’s actually crazy that despite how good of a song “1 Thing” is, that it’s far from her best song.

I’m gonna give Amerie grace. She’s never been that great of a singer. How she sounded on her Tiny Desk is more or less how I expected her to sound. Also, considering how mad out of practise she probably was, she still managed to deliver. Amerie’s energy was so great throughout the whole thing and she genuinely seemed so glad to be given the platform and the chance to perform again, so I really hope she considers giving the music thing another chance. And there is also no better time for her to also work the angle of releasing music in Korean. The North remembers Amerie recording a song with Seven and performing with 4 Minute.

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