"Waterfalls" single cover.
"Waterfalls" is a 1995 song from R&B music group TLC, and the third single from their album CrazySexyCool.
"Waterfalls" was produced by Organized Noize (made of the team of Rico Wade, Ray Murray and Sleepy Brown) and written by them as well Marqueze Etheridge and TLC member Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes. When released, the song spent 7 weeks on at number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, as well as being an international smash on the globe. The song is considered to be TLC's Signature Song, due to its success, message and subsequent legacy.
The music video, directed by F. Gary Gray was also very successful on channels such as MTV and BET. The video won four Moonmen at the 1995 MTV Video Music Awards, including Video of the Year.
Both the song and music video provide examples of:
- A Wild Rapper Appears!: Left Eye's rap comes off this way, as the song is a R&B track. Not that a lot of listeners minded, as her rap is seen as a highlight.
- Aesop Amnesia: The second verse ends with T-Boz singing "Y'all don't hear me", as TLC has spent much of their careers promoting safe sexual practices and people still end up in situations that could be avoided had they protected themselves.
- Artistic License – Medicine: It takes about 2-4 weeks for the first symptoms of HIV to show up, that is if they show up as a lot of people can be asymptomatic for that period. In the video, the man shows signs of HIV infection a short time after having sex with the HIV-positive woman. The song is a little better about this as it doesn't specify how long before the man started showing symptoms, just "One day he goes and takes a glimpse in the mirror/But he doesn't recognize his own face".
- Downer Ending: For both the subjects in the song. The boy in the first verse is killed in the drug deal gone bad, and in the music video, his ghost/spirit is unable to give his mother any comfort. The man who has unprotected sex with an HIV-positive woman ends up contracting HIV and dying of AIDS, and to further punctuate this, the woman dies of AIDS as well in the music video.
- Drugs Are Bad: The subject of the first subject is a drug dealer and enjoying the money, but it comes at the expense of his mother's worry. He ends up getting killed in a deal gone bad.
- Really Gets Around: The woman in the second verse; the music video has a picture frame flashing with all of her lovers as the man starts regretting his choice and sees the rashes forming on his face.
- Scare 'Em Straight: The song and video are a cautionary tale about the allure of gang life and unprotected sex and being careful and trying to avoid danger, no matter how glamorous it looks. The song uses a waterfall as a metaphor, as waterfalls are beautiful but also deadly should you fall from them.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: At the beginning of the music video, the group are these Blob Monsters formed from the water that they dance in before they shift into the human forms.
