TLC’s “Waterfalls” Features Vocals from CeeLo Green and a Paul McCartney Interpolation
Few songs spark deep feelings of 90s nostalgia like TLC’s “Waterfalls”, the third single from the group’s 1995 CrazySexyCool album. The song hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100, went platinum, and received a Grammy nomination for Record of the Year.
More than just a catchy song to sing along to, “Waterfalls” has the distinction of being the first #1 single to talk about AIDS. It also helped break down racial barriers as TLC became the first black artists to win a Video of the Year award at the MTV VMAs. In addition to these accolades, “Waterfalls” functioned as many people’s first experience with the music of Organized Noize, the production team behind much of Outkast’s early output.
As if that weren’t enough, the song features backup vocals from a then little-know CeeLo Green. Green, through connections with Organized Noize via his rap group Goodie Mob, was in the studio while the song was being recorded.
“He was chilling in the studio, so I was like ‘Hey, you sing good, why don’t you [sing backup]?’” T-Boz told Fuse TV in an interview about the making of “Waterfalls”. “He was in Goodie Mob, we grew up together, we go way back. He did and it was amazing! I love his voice,” she said.
In addition to receiving some assistance on vocals form CeeLo, another famous singer may have played a role in the creation of “Waterfalls”. Paul McCartney’s 1980 album McCartney II features a song of the same name. If you listen to the beginning, it seems that someone from the TLC camp may have used the song’s opening as a springboard for their chorus.
Don’t go jumping waterfalls
Please keep to the lake
People who jump waterfalls
Sometimes cam make mistakes
This similarity was not lost on McCartney. When asked in an A.V. Club interview if there were any songs from his catalog that he felt should have been bigger he said, “One called ‘Waterfalls,’ I think is nice. In fact, somebody had a hit, a few years ago, using the first line, ‘Don’t go jumping waterfalls / Please stick to the lake…’ And then they go off into another song. It’s like, “Excuse me?”
For reference, the actual TLC chorus is:
Don’t go chasing waterfalls
Please stick to the rivers and the lakes that you’re used to
I know that you’re gonna have it your way or nothing at all,
But I think you’re moving too fast.
While McCartney seems annoyed by TLC’s rework in this interview, his reaction is surprising. The Beatles have a well-documented history of borrowing musical elements and lyrics from Chuck Berry and McCartney has voiced approval when other artists have sampled his work before. While the first two lines of TLC’s “Waterfalls” chorus may may be similar to McCartney’s version, they are far from an exact duplicate. On the other hand, John Lennon sang the lines “ “Here come old flat top, He come groovin’ up slowly” on “Come Together”, a word-for-word duplicate of Chuck Berry’s “You Can’t Catch Me”.
Since McCartney did not elaborate on his apparent annoyance with TLC’s interpolation of “Waterfalls”, it is unclear why it bothered him. Whatever the reason, TLC was able to take elements from two lines of his song and turn them into a track that brought the AIDS epidemic to the forefront of popular culture. To say that “TLC ripped off Paul McCartney”, as the A.V. Club article stated, is inaccurate and unfair.
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