Shiny & New Turns 2: #18 "Blindfold Me" - Kelis

"Hold up, you got a pretty strong team / Got somethin' on the bench that Kelis ain't seen"

In 2006 when “Blindfold Me” was released, Kelis was riding along on the surprise success of her previous album campaign’s lead single: the monolithic “Milkshake”. Her label understandably but misguidedly had hooked her up with every ‘hot’ commercial hip hop and R&B producer in the industry in the hopes that her next album, the muddled but brilliant Kelis Was Here, would finally propel her into the stratosphere. It didn’t happen, but it was probably for the best. Kelis and ‘mainstream’ don’t go hand in hand. This is a woman who pushes boundaries most other female singers don’t realise are there, and who continues to delight and surprise even in the context of shameless hitseeking. But anyway…

The first time I heard “Blindfold Me”, it was accompanied by the music video (you can watch it above, it’s dark and incredibly sexy) and I immediately knew it would be a hit. It wasn’t, in fact it flopped spectacularly and prematurely ended what otherwise could have been a lucrative campaign in the US. But, yet again, it didn’t matter. This was a song that took what is otherwise as lame and tired a sexual cliché as fluffy handcuffs (bleh) and made it sound like the best idea since sliced bread. A song with pulsating almost atonal synths and a disturbing high pitched spoken intro that caused a 15 year old boy to reconsider his previous disdain for a whole genre. Music is at its best when it is surprising and alarming and “Blindfold Me”, in 2006, in a sea of fairly inventive commercial R&B, still managed to cut through and sound ‘fresh’. Long live Kelis.