The Last Time

This entry is about a song that I doubt very many people heard that was on an amazing album that got very little play. Sadly much of that, oh hell, all of that was due to the artist’s personal life at the time. No one wanted to hear anything by Eric Benet, the guy who checked himself into a clinic for sex addiction, the man who broke Halle Berry’s heart in the process. Even I was one of them. I’m not big into celebrity gossip and nonsense but even I thought “damn, that’s some foul shit”. But one day as luck would have it I was in a music store (hard to believe I know) and I came across “Hurricane” by Eric Benet and if it wasn’t on sale I wouldn’t have looked at it twice. Luckily it was and I decided to buy it. I brought it home and gave it a listen. It blew me away.

I was never really a fan of Eric’s. His voice never really grabbed me, it’s a little on the light side and his songs felt like they were rejected Brian McKnight tunes. His main audience was of course the ladies and they fawned over him until the unforgivable Halle Berry debacle. He was front page cannon fodder and was dragged over the hot coals for a good minute so basically he disappeared and went off to lick his wounds. He re-emerged with “Hurricane” and from listening to it his time away was well spent. It’s a collection of songs filled with regret, hurt, and promise by a man who realized he’s made some mistakes. As I made my way through the material I was impressed that these tunes didn’t sound like rejected McKnight songs and while his voice still didn’t impress me, “The Last Time” damn sure did.

It starts of with a beautiful piano melody and it immediately comes across as a torch song or an old Blue Eyes standard. The orchestration is beautiful, the melody is haunting, and the lyrics are perfect. I went in to listening to this CD that was on sale not expecting much and I‘ve been haunted by this song ever since and sadly this wonderful album was hardly touched and this song was hardly heard. That was a shame. Now please understand that after this CD he went right back to being the weak voiced Benet that I never liked but his “Hurricane” album was the perfect storm. A broken man who had to rediscover the artist that the world beat down and trampled into the ground. He came back and in my humble opinion captured lightning in a bottle and “Last Time” exemplifies that emphatically. Take a listen and see if you agree with me…