Glitter By Glitter #2

Glitter By Glitter #2 Sylk & Sync

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This part immediately takes off with the young Billie Frank's insecure face fading into the young-adult Billie Frank's face projected on the screen at a dancing club. Then the camera moves down and we see Billie, now a grown woman, probably 20 or below, dancing.

You know I find this scene damn damn damn funny because the music that plays is like very retro, and then Billie (aka Mariah) starts dancing like she think she very sexy lidat. Hahahahahha, and so she comes off looking stupid to me la! And all those facial expressions she give that make me think she like trying to impress people by dancing like she's posing for a camrea. Hahahahahha!

And does the little girl look like Mariah? The hair does la. Hahaha.


We go backstage, where Billie is with her two friends (the ones that approached her the moment she sat down all those years ago at the child care centre), Louis and Roxanne. The three are resting when they are suddenly approached by a man and a woman.

You would recognize that man as the guy who plays a friend of Iron Man in the 2008 Iron Man film. The actor's name is Terrence Howard. And that woman, nope, no one really knows and cares.

They turn out to be a music producer and a rising singer, and that guy, named Timothy Walker, wants the three girls, Billie, Louis and Roxanne, to do back-up singing for that rising singer, named Sylk.

Hope it's not confusing. It's not what.

The other two are very keen, but Billie is not, saying that they are like "doing our own thing", even though I have no idea what is it that they are planning. In the mean time, I don't see the point of attaching three back-up singers to one celebrity. Why do they like to do that in the past?


The three girls go home. They live together, I guess, and they have a conversation of persuading Billie to agee to do the back-up job. The other two are keen, because they just need to do a few "ooohs and aaahs" and they get money. And Roxanne (the one in red, at Billie's right) starts saying that Billie has an incredible gift of a voice, and her mom would want her to do use it.

Billie immediately retorts, "why? why do you have to bring up ma mom?"

Which is, to me, a very poor injection of Billie's strained relationship with her mom. I know the film is trying to stress that, but implementing it into a conversation down the streets just feels very obvious. I don't know.

Still, at the end of the conversation, Billie is successfully persuaded to do the back-up singing.


Next shot: the studio, and the big revelation.

It turns out that Sylk, that woman Timothy Walker was with when they approached Billie and the girls backstage previously, is a bloody lousy singer who is out of tune, out of pitch, out of everything. The only thing she has a commercial celebrity look.

Which makes me wonder. Why is she a singer then? Can't she do something else like acting? They would have done some demo sessions to see if she's a singer, and knowing that she can't, they shouldn't be embarking on a music career then! Just do acting or modelling la!

Timothy Walker obviously finds it painful to the ears, and that is when his hearing catches something else.


He realises that in the background, Billie's singing is really nice, and so he pauses the recording and tells Billie to sing Sylk's part, "just for the back-up".

Billie and Sylk both sing, and Timothy Walker tells his assistant to "turn Sylk way down. Bring Billie all the way up," so whatever Sylk sings, they don't hear it at their side of the studio. Only Billie's voice.

And the great revelation. Billie can sing. But nope nope nope, he doesn't jump ship and turn her into a celebrity as you or I may think.


We get to the club again, and we're introduced to a character, Max Beeseley, who goes by the nickname of Dice. Don't know why, I think they explain so, some Lucky 7 dunno what thing, but that's not important. The performance starts, and if you're watching the film for the first time not knowing anything, you would think Billie is performing solo.

But actually, she's still standing at the back, as back-up singer with Louis and Roxanne, and in front, is still Sylk, who's yes, lipsyncing.

The song is All My Life, and it's on the soundtrack, sung by Mariah Carey instead of the actress who plays Sylk. Cause after all, Billie did sing the song back in the studio.

And about lip-syncing. Was it common in the past? I think it's brainless because it's easy to tell the differences in voices, and for example, if a host asks Sylk to sing something spontaneously, Sylk will not be able to do. There's just no sense in doing lip-syncing.


Backstage again. The DJ, Dice, is very impressed with Sylk and "had no idea you could blow like that". Sylk obviously does not tell him and starts getting horny with him, prompting Billie and the girls to start leaving the room.

That's when a photographer comes in and asks for a shot of the four of them. Sylk starts waving that feathery thing around her arms and says, "oh you don't need them. They don't matter. They're just back-up."

Which is true, though it pisses them off.


And then, something really interesting happens. Billie starts singing one of the lines in All My Life out loud, and Sylk's smile fades away. She skips off with the other two following behind her, and Dice realises everything.

If I were Sylk, I would be more careful as to not offend the person whom I'm lip-syncing to, but maybe the signed a contract of secrecy not to reveal anything, so Sylk thought Billie wouldn't sabotage her?


As the three girls leave, Dice quickly chases after and calls "hey! You in the hat!"

Billie turns around, and Dice says he needs to talk to her personally. Dice tells her that he knew it wasn't Sylk, and that Timothy Walker is ghosting Billie by using her voice for Sylk. Billie replies that she's okay with it.

"You can let Timothy use the best of you," Dice tells Billie.

"What makes you think that's the best of me?"

"There's more?"

Cause All My Life doesn't have any high notes, and Mariah Carey is a high-note singer.


Dice, being the DJ of the club, initiates a freestyle. It seems to be really fun. There's a music beat playing in the background as he goes around the dance floor, flooded with people, and then he'll randomly go up to one person with his microphone, and that guy has to sing or rap.

He does it twice, one with a guy and one with a girl, and then, he approaches Billie to allow her to show him what she can really do.

And of course, Billie starts belting, and ends with a whistle. It's to the song, Don't Stop (Funkin' 4 Jamaica), which is in the soundtrack performed by Mariah featuring Mystikal.

Nothing much to comment about this scene, except that the girl who raps before Billie gets the microphone sounds like shit. Hahaha, sorry but it's true.


They go out of the club to have a proper talk this time, and the super-impressed Dice says,

"I want to produce you."

And it sounds really funny, as though he wants to make her, hahahaha, but he's of course saying that he wants to be Billie's music producer, and Billie tells him she doesn't want to play games, prompting Dice to assure her that he's serious.

And there they have it. Billie agrees to it, although she tells him that she already signed a contract with Timothy Walker. Dice says he will settle it. He says.

*

In the next part, we see how Billie and Dice try to obtain a record label with their underground single, Didn't Mean To Turn You On. I should say, It's not as eventful as what happened in this part.

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