Perhaps to make everyone forget about the plagiarized choreography in "Countdown," Beyoncé has quickly unveiled another new video, this time for "Love on Top." When you're already embroiled in one controversy for stealing dance moves, it's best to follow that up with a video that's completely original. Instead, "Love on Top" is a direct homage to New Edition's "If It Isn't Love." (Whereas Knowles failed to give credit to choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaekeron on "Countdown," New Edition was named early on as an inspiration.) The main difference between Beyoncé's video and the one Bobby Brown's group made is that B's dance studio is probably worth a lot more on the real estate market.
To those looking for more evidence of a baby bump conspiracy, there's no smoking gun here, since it's evident from the belly-baring final minute that this video was filmed before Knowles announced she was pregnant. There is one problem with "Love on Top," however: The video completely eradicates the song's second verse, resulting in a version that has an intro, one verse, and then two minutes of the chorus repeated over and over again. This edited "Love on Top" is 90 seconds shorter than the 4 original. Cutting down the runtime made sense in the olden days, when artists had to compete for screen time on MTV. But in the freewheeling YouTube era, the edit just weakens this great (co-written by The-Dream) track, and that in itself is a controversy to our ears.
Here's New Edition's "If It Isn't Love" video. It came out in 1988, but how much does that dude just standing around look like Jamie Foxx? It's not him (we don't think), but they could be twins: