I do love the way she says “ne-GO-tiate”. Very striking...the one moment that really burrows into your brain.
Rachel Stevens - "Negotiate With Love"First "Sound Of The Underground", then "Toxic”, now “Negotiate With Love”. The spy/surf guitar trifecta has been completed. How does it stack up? Well, it’s good. Very good actually. However, it differs from those other two tracks mainly through its straighforwardness. “Sound Of The Underground” and “Toxic” were chaotic collision courses of sound, hook after hook introduced at a breakneck pace. “Negotiate With Love” has this strange consecutive orderliness about it. Numbered word map of “Negotiate With Love”: 1) begin radiator style bass intro, 2) add light foot-tapping beat, 3) begin verse 1, 4) end vocal verse 1 with jarring siren squelch, 5) begin verse 2, 6) end vocal verse 2 with extended less abrasive siren squelch, 7) begin chorus, 8) follow nearly every iteration of “Negotiate With Love” line with spy guitar, 9) rinse and repeat with minor alterations. Sure that’s a slight oversimplification, I mean, there’s a bridge inserted in there somewhere, but essentially, this is what we have. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not condemning traditional song structure. Given my taste in music, that would be utterly ridiculous. What has me a bit wary is the separateness of it all, how the sounds are so concretely disconnected and staggered. It’s like Vacuum just needed to stick this thing in a vice or twist it with a corkscrew or something to warp it up a bit. Now I did state at the start that I do like this, and yes, regardless of its shortcomings, I still find “Negotiate With Love” quite enjoyable. When you bite Brian Higgins’ style so blatantly, you’re destined to receive damning praise (from me), but the bonus is, from an instrumentation standpoint, it's almost guranteed to sound pretty fucking good (see also “Toxic”). This song certainly follows that trend, though strangely, I like it more on my crappy computer speakers than on my headphones. What totally makes this song though is the title phrase. “The case is closed I don’t negotiate with love.” How’s that for a pronouncement? She doesn’t sing it with bitter malice in fed up rock chick poseur fashion, nor does she turn it into an emotional weepy breakdown. This is the nice girl done wrong trying to hide her hurt behind this single, coldly matter-of-fact, absolute. And then just for contrast, this fiercely adamant hard line stance is followed up by a modestly polite request. “Could you turn down the track a little bit, please?” Awwww, she’s still nice.
