Vanessa Williams is making a case for having the best legs in the biz.
The former Miss America dropped "Legs (Keep Dancing)," her first single in 15 years, and -- surprise, surprise -- she looks stunning, and proves she can keep up with a bevy of dancers who are easily half her age.
"Who sets a limit when we all fall apart? / I'm 'bout to give 'em hell again," the 61-year-old declares, putting ageists on blast right from the song's intro.
It's her first original music since 2009, and an accompanying album is forthcoming. In a press release about the new tune, Williams explained that the title was inspired by her late co-star, Diahann Carroll, another multi-hyphenate who was nowhere near done with her creative output in her 60s. Carroll's 2008 memoir was titled The Legs Are The Last To Go -- a line Williams has turned into an uptempo affirmation that you're only as old as you feel.
Perhaps "Legs (Keep Dancing)" is also giving a subtle nod to Kylie Minogue, whose 2018 single "Dancing" is thematically similar. Minogue, who is known for her electronica dance music, experimented with a more country-pop sound on that release, and the result was a well-received reflection on how she "can't stand still / won't slow down / when I go out I wanna go out dancing."
Like Minogue, Williams is a one-time ingénue who has been through the ringer, come out stronger on the other side, and continued to influence culture multiple decades into her career. "Legs" would surely be Kylie-approved, and not just because it sounds like the disco-inflected dance-pop earworms that the Aussie star is an undisputed master of.
Williams' most successful career single was the ubiquitous 1992 ballad "Save the Best for Last," which garnered three Grammy noms and is still in regular radio rotation. But her pop and adult contemporary contributions were steady during the '90s and '00s (including her end-credits rendition of "Colors of the Wind," which Disney released as the lead single from Pocahontas in 1995; the song was a Top 10 hit).
In tried-and-true dance song tradition, Williams uses the bridge to name-check all the cities she intends to strut her stuff in -- Paris, Atlanta, San Francisco, New York, L.A. All sensible locations for a woman who wants to hit the town but doesn't need to see the sun come up in Ibiza or Tokyo.
With her strong vocals and even stronger gams, Williams is the picture of self-assured confidence on this track. Besides, with a wide-ranging career that is still going strong (she's set to star in Elton John's new musical adaptaion of The Devil Wears Prada this fall on London's West End), Williams is unbothered by any preconceptions about how she should act at her age.
"My time is managed doing much better things / Than tryna provе myself to you," she sings. Preach!
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