It is not an exaggeration to say that Sunday night’s Verzuz featuring Patti LaBelle and Gladys Knight was a reinvention of the form, in a way that, on paper, shouldn’t have worked.
That is, the idea of a ‘battle’ was entirely gone last night (and to a certain extent was with Brandy and Monica too, but there was That History) – this was overtly just two old friends reminiscing, with decades of history behind them, and a free-flowing conversation that casually involved ‘Oh, I wrote that with my ex-husband’ or ‘We were together for so many losses, so many deaths’ in the same breath as ‘you know, I have to keep my shoes and stuff…on stage up on here like I do when I’m on tour’.
To me, that was the best part of watching this. Obviously, the songs were incredible and so formative (my favourite was Patti referring to one of her songs on the Beverly Hills Cop soundtrack as ‘really corny, but I love it anyway’), but there was no sense of trying to ‘beat’ one another, or that playlists were curated to top the previous track; they kind of couldn’t care less, because who could possibly debate either career? Who!?
They’re singing along with each others’ songs, with no dumb lip service paid to ego or politics – they’re great songs, of course you want to sing along! They’re waiting impatiently for their lyrics on the prompter. “…Where my lyrics?!” or getting irritated with production, “That’s not my song!” They’re making heartfelt confessions in front of the world:
“"Gladys, can I tell you...
(Long pause)
...I have a flip phone"
In fact, that revelation was part of one of my favourite storylines of this broadcast – Gladys Knight says her son was the one who convinced her to do the show, and Patti confesses she didn’t know what a Verzuz battle was (which makes sense, why should she?), we get tangents about how Patti’s son doesn’t like to trade on her name (and, while we’re on names, Patti’s son Zuri and Gladys’s son Shanga get a lot of mentions, and with those names, why wouldn’t they?) and, deliciously, when they play well-known, or even famous, songs, we get much-needed context:
“Now, Celine did this song… but AFTER me.”
In short, this is the best possible evolution of one of the surprise joys of the pandemic – this is less a battle than an ‘In Conversation With’ – even if sometimes the conversations came up because they were killing time waiting for the next song to cue up, and clearly less than impressed by the looseness of production, at times. (Which… while we’re on the subject, I know this is a live feed in a COVID-friendly setup, but I would really have killed for some closeups, or at least a push in now and again – am I asking too much?)
But the differences in format were what made this amazing. They were near giddy when they shouted out Oprah and ‘Mrs. Obama in the front row’ (and encouraged people to vote so that ‘we can get another Obama in the White House’). They were as likely to go on tangents about dinner as they were about the writing or production of a given song. They forgot lyrics, because when you have this many songs, you can’t be expected to know all of them. They even said, about certain tracks, “That one, I’ll have to tell you later” – they’re telling us right up front that some stories are not for us, but that they still have gossip they haven’t divulged to each other!
More than anything, though, this ‘battle’ was relaxing and nostalgic and restorative in the extreme – in a way I didn’t know I needed. Even the pace of the conversation, the timbre of their speaking voices, spoke to a calm that I don’t know the organizers could have predicted … or maybe they could, and that’s why this was the Verzuz that was most important to produce now.
These songs, to me, evoke long relaxed drives in the back of my parents’ car while they told me what real music should sound like. At the same time, of course, it’s not the same for me as for those for whom this music was the soundtrack of a million family gatherings, or for whom “AuntieChella” is more than an amusing hashtag. But as in all the best entertainment, it can be utterly transporting and significant even if it’s not ‘for’ you - and that way, it becomes ‘for’ everyone. Specificity, once again, is universal.
For everyone watching, this wasn’t just a song-off, because we all remember these tracks, because they never went away (though, as evidenced on Twitter, there are people who Don’t Know Gladys enough relative to Patti LaBelle, and they are missing out). This was a time to hang out with two legends who have seen a lot, who are affected by what’s going on in the world, but who are also aware that their job in the global community is to help people to feel. Ideally to feel good, but most importantly just to feel something other than the fear and uncertainty that’s gripped us for so long. Social media is awash with jokes about how to send this to your parents to enjoy after the fact, and I suspect we’re going to be talking about it – or watching a subsequent full-scale concert – with our families all fall, remembering times that seem simpler and more wonderful the further in the past they are.
