This Time, Producing Donna Summer, You Knew Stock, Aitken & Waterman Were For Real

Did Stock, Aitken & Waterman ever do anything useful, you ask? To which I say: Did you ever do anything useful? Go ahead, snicker at their entire catalog: "Never Gonna Give You Up," "I Should Be So Lucky," "Venus," "You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)" ... I needn't go on. Call them a slimy pimple on the pubescent face of '80s dance-pop, scoff at their ability to take their one solitary "120 beats per minute" production trick and shamelessly run it into the ground, throw virtually their entire discography into the proverbial garbage heap. But at the very least, with the last ounce of mercy in your cynical little heart, please, I beg you, if you give them nothing else in your entire life, you've got to give them "This Time I Know It's For Real."

It's funny to think that "This Time I Know It's For Real" only came out six years after "She Works Hard for the Money," and yet I suppose it qualified as a "comeback" single. Six years is like a fart in the pop music wind these days. I wrote in an earlier post that, as opposed to the vast majority of her peers, Donna Summer initially seemed to weather the post-disco comedown that was the '80s with popularity and credibility intact, but if so, well, to paraphrase Rick James, entropy is a hell of a drug. By 1987 she was playing footsie with the Top 40, peaking at #48 with singles like "Dinner with Gershwin," surely the best '80s R&B single to name-check Rembrandt, Mahalia Jackson, and Marie Curie in the same batch of lyrics (the song did better in the UK, hitting #13).



Honestly, I'm kind of digging this one! Brenda Russell, the song's author, almost made it into my Summer of '88 series with her sultry slow jam "Piano in the Dark," but, well, I had to draw the line somewhere. The point is, by 1989, Donna wasn't quite lighting up the dance floor like she used to - not like all those hip kids from Britain with their Linn drums and their high-waisted pants and their squeaky-clean videos were. No, "Dinner with Gershwin" wasn't quite the fitting last hurrah she'd been envisioning. So she shrugged her shoulders, looked around to see who was hot, and said, "Fuck it, I'll team up with those guys."

Funny story: though I had no idea at the time that "Got My Mind Set on You" was George Harrison's comeback hit, or that "Hungry Eyes" was Eric Carmen's comeback hit, I actually knew that "This Time I Know It's For Real" was Donna Summer's comeback hit (it peaked at #7 in the US and #3 in the UK). When I was a toddler in the early '80s, my family used to have a cassette copy of On The Radio in frequent rotation on the car stereo (I recall my father always trying to fast-forward through "Love to Love You Baby" in a panic). And yes, I knew that the Donna Summer on that cassette ... was the same Donna Summer that was having a comeback hit! (Amusingly, although I was extremely familiar with 'She Works Hard For the Money," I did not learn that that had also been sung by Donna Summer until many years later). At any rate, I remember being quite glad for the woman, even though I was only nine years old, and even though I didn't know her personally. It was a rare moment of empathy from my younger self.

I think there are a couple of reasons why "This Time I Know It's For Real" rises above the usual SAW fare. Reason #1 is that Donna Summer actually co-wrote it, which might explain the presence of some atypical chords and harmonic tricks. Oh, it still reeks of SAW all right, but the melody doesn't sound quite as recycled as the others do. Perhaps the greatest moment in Stock, Aitken & Waterman's entire recorded output occurs at the 1:11 and 1:56 marks, when Donna sings the chorus, except when she belts out "for real," the vocal melody rises while the keyboard melody dips, and something otherworldly occurs and the song just enters an alternate dimension of deliciousness. That is the moment. That is the peak of SAW's career, my friends, that exact harmonic bit. We're talking some serious "If I Fell" harmonic shit right there.

The other element that elevates "This Time I Know It's For Real" over SAW's endless stream of Rick and Kylie songs is that, well, Donna Summer is the one singing it. As rock critic Paul Gambaccini comments, with grudging respect, in the British documentary The Hit Factory: The Stock Aitken and Waterman Story (highly recommended if a) you can't get enough of Stock, Aitken & Waterman, b) you thought I was pulling all these songs out of my rear, c) you wanted to expand your knowledge of artists like Mel & Kim, Princess, and Sinitta, and d) you've got 47 minutes to kill): "For me their greatest record is the Donna Summer [one], 'This Time I Know It's For Real.' First of all, it is a great track. And it is a great pop song. But she is also a great vocalist." Indeed, Summer carries eons of dance music history inside her powerful pipes. And it seems to me she is fully aware that it's a comeback song she's singing. Call it the "Night Shift" effect. I mean sure, I can get down with Astley and Minogue as much as the next sardonic '80s music blogger, but they couldn't bring the same intangible aura of hard-won experience that Summer brings. For example, I have a hard time picturing 19-year-old Kylie crooning lines like "I've been around though long enough to know." Let me put it like so: with all due respect to "Dinner with Gershwin," this time Donna Summer knew her comeback was for real. And yet, she doesn't sound like an old fogie trying to hang with the teens. She still exudes energy and spunk. It's not a sympathy hit, you know? This was the final hurrah she deserved. When she holds that very last "for real" at the 3:11 mark, and holds it and holds it, I can practically feel her effervescent essence soaring into the Great Disco Beyond.



The video was apparently filmed in Dr. Frankenstein's laboratory, a constant stream of electrical bolts and laser beams pelting Donna and the dancers throughout, but perhaps it's keeping everybody on their toes. I get the feeling Stock, Aitken & Waterman were already working on a video for one of their crappier artists, and then decided to turn this into a Donna Summer video at the last minute, because there's an extreme "Nickelodeon after school special" vibe to this one, but at least they didn't force Donna to mix in with all the riff-raff. I love the dude wearing a bullfighter-style vest and hat along with some regular jeans. He runs in place like he's been waiting to run in place his entire life and is finally getting his chance. If he's not the same dancer who played the bartender in the "Never Gonna Give You Up" video, I'll bet he's at least that guy's cousin. Frankly, my favorite thing about the video is also my favorite thing about the song, which is Donna Summer. She loves the camera and the camera loves her back. She even looks good in a bowler hat.

"Escapade": Leave Your Worries Behind ... Unless You're A Jackson, In Which Case, Well, Just Do The Best You Can

Once upon a time, in a world where malls contained indoor ice skating rinks, our local rink went by the beguiling name of "Ice Capades." Then one day, out of the blue, Janet Jackson came out with a terrific song extolling the virtues of ... my local skating rink? Why she wanted to proclaim the glory of Ice Capades for all the nation to hear, I had no idea, but who was I to argue? Ice Capades was cool. Ice Capades was exciting. I usually had fun when I went there, as long as I didn't slip on my ass and bruise my knee. Nevertheless, something about Janet's paean to this rather obscure attraction didn't quite add up. I quickly learned that Janet was not singing "Ice Capades" at all, but rather, the mysterious word "Escapade."

"Escapade"? What the fuck was an Escapade?

Yes, "Escapade": the most creative usage of obscure vocabulary in late '80s R&B this side of "My Prerogative." But it takes more than the talents of any old Scrabble champion to create a #1 hit, and while the title may have earned Janet, Jam, and Lewis a couple of extra points, it was the music behind it that truly landed them a triple-word score. One observation I will make about "Escapade" that is neither praise nor criticism: the hookiest, catchiest part of the song is not the chorus, or even the verse, but the pre-chorus. Essentially, the song opens with the melody from the pre-chorus, which flies through the air on a trapeze of synthesized keyboards and chimes. It's a very counter-intuitive structural choice - so I suppose that's praise after all. Another observation that might sound like criticism but is intended as praise: In an era when Madonna was doing everything in her Kabbalah-sanctioned powers to turn her lower register into one resembling Johnny Cash's, Janet was unashamed to let her super-squeally little girl voice soar to the skies. I think I can claim, with some confidence, that at 3:20, she utters the purest, holiest "C'monnnnnnn!" ever uttered in the annals of dance-pop. And I've always enjoyed the way the song awkwardly tumbles to a conclusion, with only some hints of percussion and backing vocals remaining as Janet carries on obliviously, eventually noticing that the party has seemingly ended without anyone having informing her, leading to a slightly haphazard "On-an-escapade bebe," cold stop.



Yeah. Honestly, that's about all I have to say about "Escapade," so let me use the rest of this post to utter a few words on Rhythm Nation 1814 as a whole (although I might reserve discussion of a certain silky ballad for a separate entry). Do I feel comfortable calling Rhythm Nation 1814 a "great album"? It certainly was ahead of the curve in one respect: like a many a '90s album, I'd say it runs a little long. We're talking 64 non-stop minutes of Janet here. In fact, this was arguably one of the first pop albums to be designed primarily for the CD and not LP audience, as 64 minutes is not a great length for an LP (too long for a single album, but a bit skimpy for a double). Some of the length is an illusion: although it appears to have 20 "tracks," at least eight of those are merely spoken word interludes, so in truth, there are only twelve tracks proper. But given that each of those tracks are five minutes long, that's still too many! I wouldn't even call some of the non-hits like "State of the World," "The Knowledge," and "Lonely" "filler." In a way, I feel like the album is actually more consistent than Control. I guess I just prefer my Janet in 45-minute bursts.

At any rate, I knew it was a blockbuster album, but frankly, I forgot how many high-charting hits Rhythm Nation 1814 kept tossing off, as if Janet were the Yankees and the Billboard charts were the World Series. Sure, have another championship trophy, Janet! It's not like anyone else was desperately longing for a #1 hit that week. There are hits from the album I don't even remember hearing back in the day, like "Alright" and "Love Will Never Do (Without You)." I can't say I dislike any of these singles, but upon revisiting them, they all come off a tad ... samey to me. When it took over the airwaves in late 1989, I drooled all over "Miss You Much," but now it sounds a bit underwritten to these ears; I feel like the melody isn't catchy enough for a beat that's so mid-tempo. If your song is going to be powered by the beat, it better be a beat like "Rhythm Nation," you know what I'm saying? "Black Cat" sounds like an early demo of "Escapade," but with a heavy metal guitar riff slapped on top of it. Everybody's made such a big deal about "Janet making a hard rock song!" But isn't "Black Cat" basically what every fifth Prince song, give or take, sounded like? Points for a sprinkling of diversity, but I'm more partial to the idea than to the execution. "Alright" sounds too much like her later hit "Runaway," and I have established, in the court of Little Earl, that it is possible for an artist to plagiarize her future self (see Glenn Frey and "All Those Lies"/"You Belong To The City"). That said, I thought I might as well at least click on the video, and I'm glad I did; picture the video for "When I Think of You" but with unexpected cameos from the swinging (as opposed to New Jack swinging) Cab Calloway and Cyd Charisse. At this point I fear that Janet was beginning to suffer from Paula Abdul Syndrome, which is defined as the following: "An affliction common in the dance-pop genre, where an artist's videos are sometimes considered more entertaining than the songs they are promoting."



"Love Will Never Do (Without You)" has a more melodic chorus than "Miss You Much," I'll grant it that, but ... I dunno. I just feel like these five songs are essentially five different versions of the same basic template, with "Escapade" being the absolute very best version of that template.

Final thought: as I watch the "Escapade" video again (which strikes me as perhaps a mash-up of Lionel Richie's "All Night Long" video, Black Orpheus, and Mad Max?), I'm also having trouble with what you might call the "Janet/Michael" Conundrum, best summed up by a male peer of mine in the mid-'90s: "Janet's so good-looking and hot, but ... she looks like Michael, and Michael is like the exact opposite of hot." It's really not her fault, and there's nothing she can do about it, but it cannot be denied. Janet in her prime was, shall we say, an extremely attractive woman, and yet ... there's something in the back of my brain that doesn't allow me to enjoy this quality of hers to the fullest. It is what it is. This might help explain why Janet sounds so convincingly enthusiastic on a song like "Escapade." I mean, we could all use a vacation now and then (although I suspect few of us will be taking one any time soon), but let's just say that, with a family like hers, Janet could have really used one more than most.

"Rhythm Nation": A Dangerously Unstable, And Yet Extremely Funky, Young Republic

I've heard of Woodstock Nation, Red Sox Nation, even Fast Food Nation, but what precisely is a "Rhythm Nation"? Is it a nation where only terrific dancers are allowed to become citizens? A nation where only percussionists are allowed to vote? A nation where every presidential candidate is obligated to begin their stump speech by beatboxing? I'm about 98% certain that Janet Jackson, Jimmy Jam, and Terry Lewis had no idea either; they probably thought the phrase just sounded cool - and they were right!

I mean, I'd rather live in a Rhythm Nation than some of the other nations out there. Who do you think they put on their currency? James Brown? Bo Diddley? Etc. etc. And yet, how to make this Rhythm Nation a reality? The trio sat in their Minneapolis studio late one night and asked themselves this critical question: "What would a Rhythm Nation sound like?" The answer: lots of snappy, metallic, clanging stuff! And brief, repetitive samples of Janet saying "bass-bass-bass"! You know, a bunch of chaotic, punchy, hi-tech noises that imitate malfunctioning hard drives!

I get the feeling that Jam and Lewis were trying to conjure up an aural experience that would have, in 1989, evoked "the future," but in 2019 mostly evokes a "1989" idea of the future. Which is fine, because if they'd actually created a song that had managed, against all odds, to capture the sound of a pop music single from 2019, I probably wouldn't like it very much.

How to create a "Rhythm Nation":

1. Sample the guitar break from Sly & the Family Stone's "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)"
2. Place twenty frying pans on the studio floor and whack the hell out of them for five minutes
3. Pick out three eerie descending chords on an organ and play them very slowly
4. Chant out a string of pseudo-slogans and vaguely political phrases that sound anthemic and uplifting on first listen but might not hold up to deep intellectual scrutiny

Works for me! For some reason, "Escapade" continued to garner airplay long after 1990, but I went for about twelve years without ever hearing "Rhythm Nation" on the radio even once, which is funny, because at the time, it was about as ubiquitous as hearing my classmates blurt out "Don't have a cow, man." When I did finally hear it again, I thought, "Well, they sure were using a towering pile of slightly dated production effects, but my nine-year-old self was correct: this song was a serious banger." Let's face it, there is a lot of rhythm in "Rhythm Nation." I fear that if it contained any extra rhythm, it might simply devolve into one long, sustained, five-minute beat. But unlike, say, that Missy Elliott song where she sounds like she's humping a buffet table in an Indian restaurant, "Rhythm Nation" still has melodic hooks and vocal harmonies and all the secret goodies that I crave. It doesn't just smack me over the head for five minutes with one idea.

Is it just me, or does the way in which Janet & Co. bark out that chorus (which to my nine-year-old brain sounded something like "People-Uck-A-Wuck-A-Duck, Wuck-A-Duck-A Wuck-A-Ducka-A-Duck, Of Life") possibly owe more to glam rock than the hip-hop that might have been their actual reference point? And then they mix it up with a little Gregorian chant, as a disembodied, seemingly all-male choir responds with "We are a part of the rhythm nation," successfully demonstrating their military, and spiritual, unity. Another great touch is Janet's little interjections of "Sing it up!" Every time she peppers one of those in there, frankly, I feel inspired to charge into battle against the evil anti-rhythmic forces that threaten to destroy our fiercely pro-rhythmic kingdom. Just when they seem to be repeating themselves, Janet, Jam, and Lewis throw in a gonzo, head-spinning bit like the one around the 1:46 mark, after Janet sings "Things are getting worse/We have to make 'em better." Without warning, all the instrumentation vanishes, leaving Janet and her sisters-in-rhythm to harmonize a capella for about five seconds (I believe they sing "It's time dooo gethuh something get togeh-thuh!") before a squiggly synth and a quick shout of "Come on now" propel us right back into the chorus. Long story short: this song totally gets me going! (Note: the lyrics of that section are actually "It's time to give a damn, let's work together." Did not know this until today.)

What I'm saying is that "Rhythm Nation" was not a case of false advertising. It's propulsive in a way that most late '80s R&B arguably was not. When Janet was recently inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, predictable howls of protest arose from the basements of angry Judas Priest and Iron Maiden fans worldwide, but here's what Def Leppard's Joe Elliott had to say: "Janet Jackson, for all her success ... People might argue that it's not rock & roll, but that 'Rhythm Nation' stuff kicked ass." And I know what he means. Hell, "Rhythm Nation" probably rocks harder than a lot of Def Leppard songs!



I've always assumed that working deep in the bowels of a factory would be a tedious, hazardous, soul-crushing experience, but damn was I off.  Virtually overnight, the video for "Rhythm Nation" must have tripled the number of job applications submitted to industrial warehouses nationwide. When they finally shut those thick metal doors at night ... it's time to get the party started! If Bob Fosse, Devo, and R. Lee Ermey had ever collaborated on a music video, they might have ended up choreographing something like this. At least the edits are spaced infrequently enough so that I can get the sense of Janet & Co. genuinely dancing their fancy dance. But here's what I'm picturing: about five seconds after the video ends, some little old lady in horn-rimmed glasses pokes her head out of the office door and yells, "All right, kids, you had your fun, now get back to work!"

The One Paula Abdul Song I Will Straight Up Defend

Like the approval ratings for ol' Herbert Walker himself, my level of affection for certain artists from the 1989-1990 era has, shall we say, risen and fallen. Paula Abdul may have been Forever Your Girl, but I would not say that all of her four #1 hits (!) from that album have "forever" held up over the years. For instance, the title track sounds like the theme for an all-star ABC sitcom that sadly never was (starring, perhaps, Joey Lawrence, Will Smith, and Alyssa Milano?). "Cold Hearted" now strikes me as a less effective "Maneater," trudging through a well-worn chord progression (Pebbles's "Girlfriend" would like a word) to uncertain effect (judging from the relative apathy in Paula's voice, I feel like this guy's heart is probably lukewarm at worst). "Opposites Attract" is sort of a Gershwin/Porter-style standard on autopilot (for two more plausible, and acidic, '80s treatments on the same theme, I would recommend Billy Joel's "A Room of Our Own" and the Go-Go's' "We Don't Get Along"). But like Madonna and Janet before her (or even Alice Cooper and Kiss for that matter), I can recognize that the chief appeal of Paula Abdul in her heyday wasn't exactly her musical output.

Unnecessarily harsh YouTube users will often insult contemporary pop singers by saying something along the lines of "XXX can't even sing, she's just a fucking dancer." The thing is, if you said this to Paula Abdul, she might actually agree with you.

Paula Abdul was a dancer. She was better than the average dancer. After helping choreograph several of Janet Jackson's Control videos, some opportunistic record executive must have droolingly backed her into a corner at some record release party and laid out a persuasive spiel: "Look Paula baby, you see Janet? You think Janet's got the greatest vocal range? Fuck no. But can Janet make great dance-pop? You God damn right. You could do the same thing. You got looks, you can dance ... think about it baby." And so, Paula Abdul became a dancer with a recording career. How did she do this, you ask? Well, you see, once upon a time, there was this television channel, and it made certain kinds of things possible that simply weren't possible before.

Back in the day, the release of every Paula Abdul single from Forever Your Girl felt like a mini-event - at least to my brother in me as we sat in our parents' car on the way to the mall. The thing is, I don't know if I genuinely liked Paula's singles as songs, or simply as cool music videos that happened to have songs associated with them. I remember my brother and I sitting in the back seat, listening to her singles on the radio, and spending the whole length of the song talking about the "awesome video!" She was dancing with a rapping cartoon cat! What could top that? In hindsight, I can't say I would strongly recommend Paula's old hits to a contemporary listener. It's like reminiscing about MC Hammer, Vanilla Ice, or "Do the Bartman." You sort of just had to be there.

Except for "Straight Up."

For this child of the '80s at least, "Straight Up" holds up. You know why? "Straight Up" is lean, it's mean. "Straight Up" hits hard. Whoever was responsible for "Straight Up" (possibly someone other than Paula?) wrapped up all their whistle-ready hooks and playful synth riffs into one seamless, raunchy little package (Wikipedia is giving me the possibly made-up name of Elliot Wolff). "Straight Up" appears fun and fluffy on the surface, and yet it has a sinister, accusatory bite to it. Take the best tracks from Madonna, Janet, or the Boys of Pet Shop, and let me tell you something: "Straight Up" could straight up go toe-to-toe with any of them. What's funny is that, as a kid, I did not prefer "Straight Up" to her other hits in any way. But now, it's the only one I genuinely enjoy.

A few of the ingredients that do it for me:

1. The "trumpet" synth. I'm a sucker for "trumpet" synth. You know what Van Gogh's problem was? He didn't have enough trumpet synth. Otherwise he might have snapped out of it. The trumpet synth is cute and playful, and yet it adds just enough of a hint of sass.
2. The wah-wah guitar that "answers" the trumpet synth: roll over Isaac Hayes.
3. The blazingly loud multi-tracked electric guitar that pulses through the entire song: Obviously this is a dance-pop song, but do you hear that guitar? Listen to that virile buzz underneath the chorus. It brings almost a stadium rock feel to what could have otherwise been electronic goo.
4. The brief, metallic synth riff that pushes the bridge into the chorus and sounds like a robotic spider rapidly climbing its way up Paula's skirt
5. Paula's quasi-rapping during the bridge ("I've-been-fooled-be-fore-would-n't-like-to-get-my-love-caught-in-the-slam-min-door") which then culminates in a surprisingly high-pitched "pleeeeeeease?"
6. The call-and-response backing vocals during the second verse that dart out from behind Paula in the center channel to stake out their territory on the left and right channels: "Time's standing still/waiting for some (waiting for some) small clue/(Ah-let me tell you now) I keep getting chills/When I think your love (when I think your love) is true." They've got Paula's back, jack.
7. "False" ending: After Paula's "please, please, a-please please", the backing track seems to simmer down noticeably (the guitar intruding much less frequently), while Paula chants a highly abridged version of the chorus ("Straight up now tell me ... tell meeee"). Part of me always assumes this is the start of the fade-out, and while I enjoy this section, a piece of me is always a little disappointed that this is the alleged fade-out, because, for all its merits, it is a bit "low energy." But guess what, I'm in luck, because it's not the actual fade-out. Wisely, the full-fledged, guitar-heavy chorus comes back with guns a-blazing, and the song fades out on that. Phew!

To say I'm not too fond of the other singles from the album is not to say that I don't admire the artistry behind the videos. First of all, one wouldn't think that the film taste of budding young auteur David Fincher and former Laker Girl Paula Abdul would possess much overlap, and yet this just goes to show you how All That Jazz is one of those films that has a little something for everyone. You like bitter, self-loathing, semi-autobiographical, genre-bending late '70s cinema? You'll love All That Jazz. You like none of those things, but you like great dancing? You'll love All That Jazz! I remember viewing Bob Fosse's singular "feel-bad" musical with my co-blogger Herr Zrbo several years ago, and during the "Air-otica" scene, he suddenly turned to me and he said, in a moment of blinding epiphany, "I think I just realized that Paula Abdul's video for 'Cold Hearted' is basically a shot-by-shot re-make of this scene.'" Honestly, until he pointed it out to me, I hadn't realized it either. I knew co-bloggers were good for something. And "Opposites Attract" (not directed by Fincher) is like the best bonus feature the Who Framed Roger Rabbit? DVD release never had.



Unlike the clips for "Opposites Attract" or "Cold Hearted," the video for "Straight Up" sports no obvious gimmick, nor does it cash in on a cinematic reference near and dear to Little Earl's heart. I just find it more compulsively watchable. Every frame oozes ... style. Fincher appears to have employed the grainiest black and white film stock he could find (perhaps one might more accurately describe it as "dark blue and white"?) and the longest telephoto lenses he could get his hands on, making Paula seem as if she's being filmed from 50 yards away and one gentle tap on the cameraman's arm would cause her to fly right out of the frame. Speaking of tap: this is one of those rare instances where the fact that a music video doesn't immediately begin with the song in question doesn't bother me one bit. There's also something laughably simple and yet inherently pleasing about the sight of Paula strutting and swaying in her little mini-trench coat in front of a background that is solid black on the left and solid white on the right. It's like she's dancing the tango with the Parallel Lines album cover. Now I may be able to name more Blondie songs I like than Paula Abdul songs I like, but I'll tell you one thing: Debbie Harry's dancing couldn't hold a candle to Paula's.

"Something About You": Jazz-Funk Fusion That's Simply On Another, Ahem, Level

Countless '80s hits, from "Take My Breath Away" and "St. Elmo's Fire (Man In Motion)" to "Shattered Dreams" and "Hands To Heaven," could be credited to that legendary group known as "What's Their Name?" Quite a group they were, What's Their Name? - seemingly capable of churning out radio classic after radio classic. I don't know how they did it. Nevertheless, I am willing to go on record to state that "Something About You" might very well be What's Their Name's crowning achievement.

For years I heard a certain synth-pop nugget on the radio that featured the lyrics "You're only human after all," and assumed that it was the song "Human" by the Human League. Later I realized that "Human" is actually this song, and that the song I'd assumed was "Human" is actually called "Something About You," and was performed by a band called Level 42. Then, for a few years after that, I used to see the band names "Heaven 17" and "Haircut 100" in print and think, "Oh, those are the guys who did "Something About You"!

The point is: Level 42? Who the hell were Level 42?

Level 42 were the band that perfected the genre the '80s were hungry for, even if the '80s didn't know it yet: jazz-funk fusion.

Level 42 were like Chick Corea for soccer moms. Level 42 were like a Herbie Hancock burger with a helping of Tears for Fears sauce. While the rest of Britain's aspiring young musicians circa 1980 were gravitating toward the jagged, angular strains of new wave and post-punk, Mark King and Mike Lindup found their muse in ... instrumental jazz-funk fusion. But! The band soon discovered they possessed an extra asset that their other '80s jazz-funk fusion rivals lacked: vocal prowess. From Wikipedia:

Having considered recruiting a singer, the band eventually settled on giving King and Lindup the vocal role. The two men developed a complementary style, with Lindup's falsetto frequently used for harmonies and choruses while King's deep tenor led the verses (although Lindup would also sing entire songs on his own).

So the guy with the normal voice would do his thing, and then the guy with the funny high-pitched voice would come in and do his thing. This was Level 42's "shtick." This was their "gimmick." Hey, when it works, it works.

Honestly, I like Level 42 more than I like actual jazz fusion! I mean, Level 42 sang. They wrote lyrics. They composed pop songs. In the UK, they actually had hit singles, plural - twenty of them, in fact (but I'm not here to talk about those). In their home country, they were a jazz-funk fusion institution. In the US, they were the band who did that song that I thought was "Human" by the Human League.

The truth is, I'll bet even the Human League wished they'd been the band behind "Something About You," because, like "Don't You Want Me" before it, "Something About You" strikes me as one of those "perfect" British synth-pop singles. Nothing about "Something About You" would I alter in the slightest. It's got everything I need. Thumping dance beat. Continuous guitar riff on the right channel that sounds like a platypus wanking. Screeching guitar solo toward the fade-out. More hooks than a Peter Pan Broadway production's dressing room. Well, there's only one hook that really matters: it's the chord progression that kicks the song off and ultimately powers the chorus. Chord progressions like that are what the British synth-pop gods feast on, in vast mountain temples surrounded by bubbling cauldrons of virgins' blood. I'll take that chord progression any way they'll give it to me. I'll take it with a pile of descending "ooh"s. I'll take it with Mike Lindup swooping in like prime, pre-bedridden-in-a-bathrobe Brian Wilson as he belts out "Drawn into the stream of undefined illusion/Those diamond dreams, they can't disguise the truth." I'll take it with Mark King grunting his way through "Because there's something about you, baby, so right." I'll take it with a house. I'll take it with a mouse. The lyrics are, as far as I can tell, mainly romantic in nature, but with a vaguely philosophical and quasi-inspiring undertone? The verses are littered with unusual turns of phrase and bizarre imagery ("A love carved out of caring, fashioned by fate," "Fragile but free, we remain tender together," etc.), the line "We're only human after all" suggesting that the theme of the song is something along the lines of "Everybody plays the fool," but that doesn't quite jibe with the more nakedly positive statement that makes up the chorus and title. Who cares? Those hooks!

And yes, I know that "Something About You" charted in 1986, not 1988 (and was actually released in 1985), but for reasons unbeknownst to me, I feel like I didn't really hear the song on the radio until the Summer of '88. It seemed to linger in the air like exhaust from a red Corvette on a desert highway. I mean, you think I'd ever do a series called "Summer of '86"? What am I, crazy?

A long time back, the most popular YouTube result for "Something About You Video" used to be this clip from a French (?) television show, Super Platine, featuring the band performing in front of a black screen with a tacky white "tracer" effect hovering around their limber jazz-funk fusion frames. It was while watching this clip that I determined that Mike Lindup resembled Frankenstein's preppie Ivy League nephew. Nevertheless, my hunch that this was not the "proper" video proved to be correct.



Because the proper video is one of those genuine mid-'80s "mindfuck" videos that bears no relation to the song it's allegedly depicting and where the band must have stumbled into a meeting half-soused and told the director, "Look, here's the budget, just make it weird and incomprehensible and basically do whatever you want." Here, as far as I can gather, is the "plot": Mark King sits in a train compartment with his band mates, the video almost implying that they are strangers to him, and he begins to hallucinate that he is an evil vaudevillian clown-demon who is systematically destroying his other band mates' romantic relationships, which all happen to be with the same actress, and at the very end that same actress turns out to simply be some random stranger in the train station. I see.



Here is a noble attempt by one bold YouTube commentator to explain the various layers of meaning:

It's interesting that they would wrap this song with a video that deals with madness. The imagery and subtle body language of the characters tells the story of a young man on a train who is growing more agitated as the journey continues. The first thing we are shown is the "insanity" itself in the form of the very animated Clown figure who lives in a long hallway. When this figure appears, it serves as the surrogate to the young man as his visions of skewed relationships take shape. He periodically blurts out nonsensical words while sitting in the passenger car, much to the surprise and annoyance of the other passengers, eventually even needing to be restrained until he relaxes. As the journey progresses, he looks at the three young men sitting across from him (who are, in real life, the other members of Level 42) and, one at a time, imagines them in a relationship with a "dream" girl. You can see the young man furtively glance at the first one and then immediately start a dream sequence in which the Clown observes and reacts to a skewed moment of a relationship. The dreams are in color while reality is shown in black & white. This pattern continues with the other two passengers, each finding themselves uncomfortably the object of attention of the crazy young man sitting with them on the train while he imagines them with the Dream Girl. The Clown eventually gains full control in the young man's imagination, gleefully dancing until the madness swings to the other side of the spectrum and angrily lashes out at the dream girl. Fortunately for the other passengers, the train stops and the young man gets off, taking The Clown with him. But we also see the Dream Girl (still in color, and invisible to anyone else) ever-present in the young man's madness. Again, why they put this imagery with Something About You, I have no idea.

Make that two of us! I guess this video must exist on Level 42, and the rest of us are merely stuck on Level 41.

What Have I Done To Deserve "What Have I Done To Deserve This?"?

Gather around children: has Grandpa ever told you about the heyday of the '60s British Pop Diva?

Better get comfortable. One of my favorite subgenres of '60s pop is one that either rock scholars have barely acknowledged, or one that I happen to have personally defined: the genre of the "60s British pop diva." This was a thing, yes? Granted, it wasn't a particularly large genre. Some genres contain a roll call of hundreds of artists, and maybe a critic could reduce the key artists to a list of six. Well, the '60s British pop diva genre was literally a genre of six. Sure, I suppose you had your Twinkles and your Jackie Trents, but let's get real here: when we're talking about '60s British pop divas, we're talking about Petula Clark, Cilla Black, Marianne Faithful, Lulu, Sandie Shaw ... and Dusty Springfield.

While the boys were having all their fun please pleasing her and getting off their clouds and wanting to be with her all day and all of the night and falling to ruin in the House of the Rising Sun and whatnot, the girls were off shopping downtown and giving their hearts to Sir with love and sleeping in the subway, dahling. You know what the best of these songs sound like? Imagine someone melting down the entirety of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg into a three-minute pop single. That's what the best of these songs sound like.

In general, the '60s British pop diva was a transatlantic phenomenon, but Cilla Black and Sandie Shaw never really caught on over here like the other four. Petula Clark had two #1 hits in the US, Lulu had "To Sir With Love," and Marianne Faithful dated Mick Jagger, so everyone in America certainly knew who she was. Despite having several of her singles written by Lennon-McCartney, Cilla Black only managed to have one US Top 40 hit, "You're My World," which peaked at #26, but at least she beat out Sandie Shaw, whose biggest US hit, "Girl Don't Come," peaked at #42. Shaw released arguably the best version of Bacharach-David's "(There's) Always Something There To Remind Me," which hit #1 in the UK, but most of my Stateside peers are almost certainly more familiar with Naked Eyes' radically reinvented synth-pop version.

And then ... there was Dusty Springfield. Of all the '60s British pop divas, Springfield probably garners the most critical respect, the most admiration from fellow musicians, the most "street cred." For example, the only '60s British pop diva to receive a five-star rating on AMG for anything, be it an album or compilation, is Dusty Springfield. It is said that she had more "soul." Springfield was probably the only '60s British pop diva who could have sung a duet with Martha Reeves on television and not have looked like an idiot. Like Shaw and Black, she also benefited from the Bacharach-David songbook, scoring big hits in the US with "Wishing and Hoping" and "The Look of Love." Her 1969 album Dusty In Memphis always shows up on "greatest album" lists (and, despite my initial skepticism, is an album I enjoy almost as much as I think I'm supposed to). But by 1987, the hits had long dried up. Pondering her future in the world of entertainment, she may have spent many long nights sitting by the fire, scotch in hand, thinking to herself, " I don't know-whoa, how I'm gonna get through, how I'm gonna get through."

Fast-forward to 1987. As it went with '60s British pop, so it went with '80s British pop: some acts made it across the pond, some didn't. I've always been quietly impressed that, unlike peers such as, say, the Smiths, the Pet Shop Boys somehow managed to become highly popular on mainstream American radio. Not impressed with the band, mind you, but impressed with Americans. What do you think it was? Neil Tennant's milder, less pronounced accent? Their choice of genre (fey dance-pop rather than jangly guitar-rock)? Their wholesome, strait-laced, conservative Christian lifestyle?

That said, while the Pet Shop Boys may have scored several U.S. Top 40 hits in the '80s, I don't personally remember hearing too many of those hits in my youth. I first heard "West End Girls" on alternative rock radio in the '90s. When I acquired the Discography collection in college, most of the tracks, I have to say, were unfamiliar to me. But when "What Have I Done to Deserve This" came out of my CD player that day, well ... talk about Flashback City. For several years now, I've been harboring plans to eventually add a "synth-pop" series to Little Earl Loves the Music of the '80s, but at the rate I'm currently going, I may be living in an underground bunker and subsisting solely off the flesh of sewer rats by the time I get around to it. Obviously, the Pet Shop Boys are (were?) to receive a thorough treatment in such a series. However, this song is so Summer of '88 that I simply had to post on it now. I mean had to. While I probably enjoyed the track back in 1988, I possessed complete ignorance of key details, such as, for example, the fact that it represented the re-emergence of Dusty Springfield, what the phrase "pour the drinks" meant, or even what a gay person was.

It seems strangely fitting, given their respective levels of success in the U.S. or lack thereof, that when the Smiths chose to resurrect a '60s British pop diva, they chose Sandie Shaw, while when the Pet Shop Boys chose to resurrect a '60s British pop diva, they chose Dusty Springfield. From Wikipedia:

Despite having established themselves as a group, Morrissey and Marr still harboured ambitions that they would be recognized as songwriters by having their songs covered by others. Their top choice was singer Sandie Shaw, who had scored several hits throughout the 1960s and was one of the most prominent British vocalists of her era. In the summer of 1983, Marr and Morrissey began asking Shaw to cover their song "I Don't Owe You Anything", which they had conceived with her in mind to perform. The pair sent Shaw various letters coupled with song demos. Shaw was sceptical at first; she was discouraged by the negative media attention that accompanied the Smiths song "Reel Around the Fountain", and when she received a copy of "Hand in Glove" in the mail, she reportedly exclaimed to her husband "he's started sending me pictures of naked men with their bums showing!"

Eventually the unbridled enthusiasm of the two Mancunians won out, and in 1984 Shaw recorded a version of the Smiths' debut single, "Hand in Glove," with Johnny Marr, Andy Rourke, and Mike Joyce providing back-up. The song peaked at #27 in the UK, but didn't make a peep over here. While I'm glad Shaw was good-humored enough to acquiesce to Morrissey and Marr's odd bit of obsessive hero worship, the final product strikes me as more along the lines of a wacky stunt, rather than a natural, logical collaboration.



By contrast, whereas the Smiths had simply asked Shaw to reinterpret material that had originally been birthed in an entirely different context, and then let her ham it up, the Pet Shop Boys wrote a fresh new track for their cherished heroine, and then conceived it as a playful duet. What I think makes "What Have I Done to Deserve This" sweet without being contrived is that it does not, in any obvious way, reference Springfield's past work (unlike the way that, say, Eddie Money's "Take Me Home Tonight" references Ronnie Spector's "Be My Baby"). No siree, not the Pet Shop Boys. These two were above the cheap gimmick, the easy lure, regurgitated hook. Rather, they simply let her join in on another highly contemporary, devilishly deadpan Pet Shop Boys single. As a result, her appearance doesn't feel to me like a token one, or an appearance given out of pity. She sounds like she belongs, which makes the final product quietly inspiring (she also apparently borrowed Rod Stewart's hair and wardrobe for the video). "What Have I Done To Deserve This?" is gentle sound of the triumph ... of the survivor. Perhaps somewhat annoyed that fellow '60s survivor Grace Slick never needed to have a "comeback" in the first place, I almost feel like Springfield slips into her best Grace Slick impression during the fade-out, eager to show her how it's done as she belts, "We don't have to fall apart, we don't have to fight/We don't need to go to hell and back every night." Hell and back, indeed. What had Dusty Springfield done to deserve this comeback? As far as Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe were concerned, a hell of a lot.

Kylie Minogue, Version 1.0: Australia's Answer To ... Rick Astley?

By 1987, Stock Aitken Waterman had everything they could have ever wanted ... except their very own Madonna. I guess Hazell Dean wasn't going to cut it? Putting their mind-numbingly repetitive stamp on established veterans like Bananarama was all well and good, but they needed someone more fresh, more green, more pliable - someone they could mold into their own tacky Hi-NRG image. But where, oh where, were they going to find her?

She came from Down Under.

Kylie Minogue was a star on the Australian soap opera Neighbours, where, per Wikipedia, she played a "schoolgirl turned mechanic." Oh, one of those. After an early version of "The Loco-Motion" (not the better known, re-recorded version) became a #1 Australian hit, she headed to England to seek fame, fortune, and, as fate would have it, Stock Aitken Waterman. Little did the trio anticipate the magnitude of the moment. From Wikipedia:

After the success of her debut single "Locomotion" in Australia, Minogue traveled to London to work with Stock Aitken Waterman, a successful British writing and production team. They knew little of Minogue and had forgotten that she was arriving; as a result, they wrote "I Should Be So Lucky" in forty minutes while she waited outside the recording studio. Mike Stock wrote the lyrics for the song in response to what he had learned about Minogue prior to her arrival. He believed that although she was a successful soap star in Australia and very talented, there must be something wrong with her and figured that she must be unlucky in love.

Something wrong with her? What the hell dude? She was 19! Yeah, I'll tell you what was wrong with her: choosing to work with Stock Aitken Waterman, the guys who brought the world Rick Freaking Astley, had one lousy production formula that they ran into the ground, and who were known to pass brutally harsh judgment on 19-year-old Aussie soap stars they barely even knew! Well, you better believe that after the single became a UK #1 hit, they didn't think there was anything wrong with her then. Although most Americans probably assume that "The Loco-Motion" was Kylie Minogue's only US Top 40 hit until "Can't Get You Out of My Head" crossed over more than twenty years later, "I Should Be So Lucky" actually peaked at #28 over here - which ain't too bad for a single from an entirely unknown quantity that reeked from top to bottom of glitzy Eurotrash. The verses kinda sound like the bridge of Astley's "Together Forever," but I'll be honest, I'd rather stare at Kylie Minogue in a music video than Rick Astley.

The clip features footage of our Aussie ingenue prancing around in a credulity-stretching apartment (Q: Who has a bathtub just ... sitting in the middle of the room like that?), interspersed with shots of Kylie in some sort of strapless prom dress standing in front of several images that appear to have been blown up far beyond the point of quality resolution, their pixels having made me question the YouTube video bit rate until I realized that Kylie's face is perfectly high-res. At 2:51, her poor nail file gets some particularly violent treatment.

Goffin/King's "The Loco-Motion" had already been a hit twice over: first in 1962 for Little Eva at the crest of both the girl group and dance crazes, and then again in 1974 for Grand Funk Railroad under the glam-inflected thumb of producer Todd Rundgren, but clearly Kylie Minogue's version had one thing those other versions didn't:

Stock Aitken Waterman.

Boy, people must have gone for anything in 1988. Its popularity assisted by its appearance in Arthur 2: On the Rocks, this version peaked at #3 in the U.S., which may have seemed to augur a promising stateside career for Minogue, but in retrospect, may have convinced Americans that this was a recording artist whose subsequent work would not be worth following in any way, shape, or form. And who would have blamed them? Kylie spends part of the video dancing in front of what appears to be genuine New York subway graffiti. Yeah, you know Kylie, tagging those Bronx underpasses with her gang signs at 3:00 a.m. These days, she performs the song in a slightly more "adult" fashion.

If the U.S. had seen enough of Kylie, the U.K., Australia, and Europe were settling in for the long haul. "Got to Be Certain" and "Je Ne Sais Pas Porquoi" both hit #2 in Britain, the latter boasting a cinematic, Parisian-flavored video that, in a rare '80s reversal, feels less dated to me than the song it was promoting. C'est la vie, as they say.

Q: Was it possible to be less successful in the U.S. than Kylie Minogue? A: If you were fellow Australian soap star Jason Donovan, it was. While Britain went bonkers over their squeaky-clean duet "Especially For You" (the song being the biggest UK hit of 1989), America was instead treated to one last single from Kylie, "It's No Secret," which petered out at #37, but at least featured a video of Kylie running around the majestic mountains and windswept beaches of her homeland wearing a strapless rainbow top (with some sort of "aborigine" design on it?) that I imagine needed to be peeled off delicately, lest her breasts be accidentally ripped off with it.

Get Into Your What, Billy Ocean?

Here's an exchange that does not sound sketchy in any way whatsoever:

Billy Ocean: Hey (hey), you (you) ... get into my car!
Random Back-up Singer: Who me?
Billy Ocean: Yes you! Get into my car! Ohhhhhhh ... Aah! Hey!

What could possibly go wrong?

And so it is that the Summer of '88 can arguably lay claim to the "rapiest" pop song of all time. To be fair, we never find out just what occurs after Billy makes his questionable proposition. Perhaps the object of his affection climbs into his automobile, perhaps she simply ignores him, perhaps she calls the cops ... who can say? He's simply conjuring a hypothetical scenario here. We never discover if she actually gets into the titular car. Although the details are impressively vague, you have to admit he delivers a pretty tempting sales pitch. He'll be the sun shining on you? I'd take that. He'll be your non-stop lover, get it while you can? You'd have to be a fool to turn that down, an utter fool. He expresses, with confidence, that he is her "man," and having just met her five minutes ago, he certainly would know. Remember my (semi-retired) term Cosby Rock? I think "Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car" really might be Cosby Rock.

Let's back up a moment. Say you're the super-producer behind AC/DC, Def Leppard, the Cars, and other legendary '80s hard rock titans. What do you do next? Why, team up with Billy Ocean, of course! Yes, "Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car" was co-written and produced by the one and only Robert John "Mutt" Lange, though I'm guessing that, these days, he leaves this one off his resume. According to Wikipedia, the track was "based on a line in the Sherman Brothers' song (famously covered by Johnny Burnette as well as Ringo Starr) 'You're Sixteen.' " Of course, rockabilly heartthrob Johnny Burnette singing "You're sixteen, you're beautiful, and you're mine" doesn't quite give off the same Humbert Humbert alarm bells as a bearded, 33-year-old Ringo doing the same, but hey, no one tells Ringo Starr what to sing and what not to sing, OK? It seems like one particularly goofy revision of Ringo's served as the direct inspiration for Messrs. Ocean and Lange: Whereas Johnny Burnette crooned "You walked out of my dreams/Into my arms," a presumably inebriated Ringo Starr gave it the nonsensical twist "You walked out of my dreams/And into my car." And they say Ringo's solo career wasn't influential.

Now fast-forward a bit. You're a big time Hollywood studio executive, you've got a movie in the pipeline starring the two Coreys called License to Drive. You need a song for the soundtrack, but so far, your ideas just aren't cutting it. Suddenly you hear an advanced pressing of Billy Ocean's hot new single. Why, it's a match made in heaven! He's singing "Get into my car." License to drive. BOOM. You can finally afford that condo in Pacific Palisades.

All right, so the lyrics don't quite carry the same tone of playful jouissance these days as they probably did back in 1988, but honestly, has sexual assault ever sounded like such a blast? How about the little breakdown at the three minute mark, where Billy and his fellow band of merry would-be felons engage in a "What'd I Say"-style call and response bit ("I said open the door!" "Get in the back!" "Foot on the floor!" "Get on the track!" "Yeah." "Yeah!" "Yeah." "Yeah!" "Hey." "Hey!" "Hey - Let's go!"), followed by the inevitable sax solo? Or the psychedelic haze of vocal effects at 3:45 that precedes the equally inevitable Totally Unnecessary Key Change (TM)? What are you waiting for baby? Get into the dude's car already!

If anyone out there was doubting Billy Ocean's true PG intentions, one only need watch the video. Billy pulls up to a car wash, but there's just one catch: he's in a convertible! Do you know what happens if you drive a convertible into a car wash? Some crazy shit, that's what happens. True, he pulls the top down, but he appears to leave the windows open for some undisclosed reason. Once in the magical car wash, Billy's white Porsche transforms into several different makes and models of various cars in various colors. Suddenly ... cartoon water rises up over Billy's head! Not just any water, but cartoon water. He holds his nose for about five seconds, but then lets go and starts singing, as if he wasn't really underwater at all. It's like he's driving through an ocean: a Billy Ocean. Once the chorus arrives, he proceeds to serenade an orange fish. Then, at 1:26, the purple duck appears. Yes, Billy's best friend in this video is a purple duck lugging a green ghetto blaster around on his shoulder. You know the type, always causing trouble.

It gets weirder. At 2:31, the three spheres on top of the gas pumps become sentient and join in on backing vocals. Then Billy whisks his girl to the drive-in, where the man up on the screen is ... Billy Ocean? And now he's wearing a giant white shirt that's like a trench coat, except it's not? And the purple duck jams away on the sax. (Side question: they had drive-in movie theaters in England?) Then, during the Totally Unnecessary Key Change, Billy steps out of the screen ... and onto the stage! It's like he's getting out of our dreams, and into our car. Sadly, his purple duck compadre remains trapped inside the screen, but hey, he must have known the deal when he signed up for this gig.

Never Gonna Hear "Never Gonna Give You Up" The Same Way Again AKA I'll Have What That Bartender's Having

There once was a song. Those who heard this song were hard-pressed to name any aspect of the song that was remarkable in any way whatsoever: not the melody, not the lyrics, not the production. It was the most generic pop song in the history of popular songs. Naturally, given the tastes of the 1987/1988 record-buying public, this impressively generic song became a #1 hit in virtually every country in the Western world.

Sometimes, late at night, alone in the dark, I ask myself why. Why "Never Gonna Give You Up"? Why Rick Astley? Why do bad things happen to good people? Why do fools fall in love? Why do hot dogs come in packages of ten, but hot dog buns come in packages of eight? Some possible answers:

1. An invisible race of aliens secretly invaded planet Earth in 1987 and implanted "Never Gonna Give You Up" receptor chips into our feeble humanoid brains. Thus, when the song hit the airwaves, we were instinctively inclined to enjoy it, without fully being able to articulate why. 
2. Stock Aitken Waterman deliberately gave the rhythm track the same number of beats per minute as the human heart. Listening to "Never Gonna Give You Up" is like ... listening to life itself. 
3. Homo sapiens are nothing but a bunch of masochistic, self-loathing nihilists, and in late 1987/early 1988, we eagerly relished the opportunity to achieve this ultimate act of self-hatred. 

Valiant attempts, but still somehow unsatisfactory. Occasionally, a phenomenon comes along that simply cannot be explained, like the unicycle, or Pauly Shore. I'm afraid the initial popularity of "Never Gonna Give You Up" will remain one of the great unsolved mysteries of our age.

Question: Are there any actual instruments being played on this song? It's like scrolling through a news website and realizing that none of the actual stories on that site were even written by that site. I feel like I hear a string section, but is that really a string section? I feel like I hear horns, but are they really horns? Is this song just one giant illusion? Indeed, "Never Gonna Give You Up" could be considered Stock Aitken Waterman's most notorious display of studio magic - or should I say black studio magic? Best/worst production choices:

• The faint echo of Rick Astley's voice that can be heard over the instrumental intro at 0:08 and 0:16 - it's like a foreshadowing of the horror to come 
• The significantly heavier echo applied to the end of the second line of each verse ("So! do I-do-I-do-I," "Too shy, to say-it-say-it-say-it"). Please, somebody, help, let me out of here!-here-here-here... 
• The silky bridge, with its choir of female sirens cooing "Ooh ... give-you-up," punctuated by Rick's gruff, spasmodic "Nevah-gonna-give! Nevah-gonna-give!", followed by a repeat of the second verse with all the "instruments" stripped away, leaving only Rick and whatever the hell that thing is that's making all those throbbing noises 

"Never Gonna Give You Up" was one of those songs I used to hear on the radio all the time and I never once gave it a moment's thought. I don't believe I particularly cared for it much. I used to get it mixed up with Rick Astley's other big hit, "Together Forever," and I also used to get Rick Astley mixed up a little bit with Michael McDonald, if you can imagine that. They both sound more black than they really are. That said, at least Michael McDonald sort of looks the way he sounds; Rick Astley looks like he'd sound like, I dunno, Morrissey? The point is, soft rock stations couldn't get their fill of "Never Gonna Give You Up." They wanted to have Rick Astley's baby. Then one day, I forgot about the song, and I didn't really miss it.

Fast-forward to 2008. A friend suddenly tells me about this new internet meme revolving around some cheesy song from the '80s. He tells me he's not familiar with the song. He sends me a link to the video. I instantly chuckle, and boast my extreme familiarity with the piece. Hey, I was grooving to "Never Gonna Give You Up" before the internet even existed, you damn kids! Actually, I hated the song back in the day, but I'll take my pop music street cred wherever I can find it.

The moment I heard about Rickrolling, I understood exactly why it was humorous. "Never Gonna Give You Up" was the epitome of inane, flavorless late '80s pop. There was absolutely nothing interesting about it. Suddenly, the song's utter lack of artistic value was what made its employment as a running gag so surreal and, dare I say, appropriate. The song was stupid. The meme was stupid. Somehow, like the invisible finger that forms above your nose when you place your two index fingers together and let your eyes lose focus, two stupid ideas met in a new, hidden dimension, and formed a brilliant idea.

Here's the strangest part of all: since Rickrolling became a thing, I actually like the song now. Perhaps this is what Karl Marx meant by his remark about history repeating itself, first as tragedy, second as farce. Of course, as any true Rickrolling aficionado will tell you, half of the appeal of the meme is in the laughably dated, relentlessly clean-cut video, which, until 2008, I had never seen. Allow me, if I may, to perform a shot-by-shot analysis of the first 18 seconds of this music video:

1. Close-up of Astley's ginger-coated skull bobbing up and down behind the tip of a microphone and in front of what appears to be a massive stained glass window with an oddly pinkish tint to it, although the movement of Astley's head against the background seems to suggest low-budget usage of a green screen. 
2. Medium shot of Astley bobbing in the same manner as in Shot #1, again standing behind a (now more visible) microphone, and again in front of this supposed stained glass window, the medium shot revealing his outfit, which consists of a grey sport coat, a striped polo shirt, black belt, and khaki slacks. The shirt is tucked into his slacks, which seem to be pulled up unnervingly high - even for 1987. 
3. Unexpected close-up of Astley's nondescript shoe. 
4. Slightly more interesting close-up of Astley's hand. 
5. Return to the medium shot, featuring Astley bending his elbows and wiggling his arms, but not, apparently, in time with the music. 
6. Return to the close-up, mercifully sparing us his ill-advised elbow movements. 
7. We're back to the elbow-jutting in another medium shot. I spoke too soon. 
8. Close-up of Astley, now in an entirely new setting: it appears to be an ancient stone building with Renaissance-style arches. He's also wearing an entirely new wardrobe, consisting of a tan trench coat and a black turtleneck sweater. The enthusiasm of his smile is somewhat unsettling. One can also detect an occasional flash of light in the background. Is there ... a fireplace somewhere off camera? Did they film this in a lightning storm? During an air raid? What's going on back there? 
9. Wide shot of Astley in front of the same brick building, featuring the same eerie flashes of light, but, as with Shot #8, revealing no explanation of the source. 
10. Medium shot of Astley in front of the brick building that's almost as bland as he is. (Is the flickering light supposed to be from ... the reflection of water? Is he standing by a canal??) 
11. A medium shot of a blonde-haired woman with a yellow ribbon in her hair, wearing a sleeveless black top, dancing in front of the "stained glass window" seen earlier. Initially her back is to the camera, and then, without warning, she spins around and reveals her wholesome, chipper face to the world. 
12. Slightly wider shot of what appears to be a different blonde-haired woman with a yellow ribbon in her hair, as her black garment clearly has sleeves on it, while the other woman's does not. She performs some type of retro disco move with her left arm while dancing in front of the same pink-tinted "window" image. 
13. Now we come to a third setting, this time in broad daylight. Rick is wearing sunglasses and a long-sleeve button up light blue shirt, possibly tucked in to an appallingly high-waisted pair of slacks, possibly not, leaning against a fence. This must be "Outdoorsman Rick." 
14. Slightly wider shot of Outdoorsman Rick, the camera panning around his body as he shuffles his legs, claps, and punches an imaginary foe, again not in any apparent rhythm. And yes, the waist on his slacks is just as frighteningly high as it was on his first pair of slacks. 
15. Close-up of another blonde woman, standing outdoors and wearing sunglasses like Rick, but also wearing some sort of lightly tie-dyed sleeveless summer dress, twirling gaily in front of a building with white bricks. The camera gradually zooms out as she twirls. 
16. Close-up of the same woman twirling, although perhaps not capturing the same exact twirl as before. 

I ask you: has any video, within its first 18 seconds, ever crafted a mood quite as powerful? True, the piece arguably never surpasses the aesthetic precision of its majestic opening, but then again, how many videos ever could? Indeed, the next thirty seconds or so merely recycle bits of the already-revealed imagery (Stone Building Rick, Outdoorsman Rick), aside from a cryptic shot of a gyrating shadow (possibly Rick's?) at 0:30. Nothing new truly enters the picture until the 0:51 mark, where we are suddenly presented with a black bartender in a white shirt and red suspenders who pauses from wiping the counter to promptly turn his head and glare off towards the back of the room with an expression that seems to say, "Whoa man, what the hell's going on back there? Looks like they're having a good time." Sure enough, after a quick cut to another shot of Rick and the Dancing Blondes, the camera cuts back to our suspendered mixologist, who is now flipping a glass and bobbing his head in what I might describe as an "All right, I can get into this!" gesture. Ladies and gentlemen, that's not the only thing he's about to flip. This dude's just getting started.

At 1:18 he truly begins to break out of his shell as he spins and spins with more vigor than the Tazmanian Devil, then leaps into the air and ... does a jumping jack! Who knew Carl Lewis was in the "Never Gonna Give You Up" video? At 1:34 he starts to jog on an (I presume?) invisible treadmill, and then at 1:42, WHOA, look out, he does a backflip over the entire freaking bar! All I can say is, whatever they're paying this bartender, it's clearly not enough. When he pops up again at 2:07, he's changed out of his suffocating bartender wardrobe and is now sporting the athletic gear he clearly feels liberated in, as he bounces buoyantly against a chain-link fence. Then at 2:25, he does a full somersault under the Renaissance arches, pausing robotically upon completion, as if he were dancing to Herbie Hancock's "Rockit." But wait, he's still got one more moment of glory in him: at 2:46, he runs up the brick wall, tumbles backwards, and lands on his feet with a thousand-watt grin. All well and good, but what I'm wondering is: while he's busy prancing around and flying through the air and having a grand old time ... who the hell's manning the bar?

"I Want Your Sex," But Who Wants A Good Chuckle?

If, after the dissolution of Wham!, George Michael had intended the record-buying public to begin taking his music more seriously, I'm not sure "I Want Your Sex" was exactly the way to go.

I like "I Want Your Sex," but not because I think it's a particularly good song. I like it because ... well, because it is hilarious.

First of all, the title is hilarious. No one says, "I want your sex." Seriously, who says that? One might say, "I want sex," or "I want your body," but no one would say "I want your sex." I don't know if it's incorrect English, but I do know that it's something no one says. It would be like saying, "I want your aerobics," or "I want your finance." "Sex" is not a thing that belongs to a person. One does not "possess" sex.

Or perhaps what we have here ... is George Michael ... completely redefining ... what sex is.

Most people know "I Want Your Sex" from its inclusion on Faith, but the song actually made its first appearance on the soundtrack to Beverly Hills Cop II, which my family purchased in the summer of 1987, and which is how I initially became, well, "exposed" to the song's many charms. To be fair, I haven't revisited the soundtrack album since then, but from what I recall, the quality of the Beverly Hills Cop II soundtrack bore about the same relationship to the original Beverly Hills Cop soundtrack as the quality of the actual Beverly Hills Cop II movie did to its predecessor. Who can forget James Ingram's "Better Way," Corey Hart's "Hold On," or The Jets' "Cross My Broken Heart"? The Pointer Sisters were the only act to return for a second tour of duty, this time contributing "Be There," which probably wasn't as "there" as "Neutron Dance" was. I remember being extremely enamored with Bob Seger's "Shakedown," which became the #1 hit that probably even Bob Seger doesn't remember having, but I heard it again a few years ago and I can't say I entirely agree with the assessment of my seven-year-old self. I remember my brother and I deciding to perform "dance routines" to each song on the album in our tiny living room. Somehow or other, I got the short end of the stick and had to come up with a routine for "I Want Your Sex." Our father rolled his eyes as he viewed it and said, "I don't know if this is such a great idea." I managed to half-heartedly trudge my way through all four minutes and forty seconds of squeakiness.

I assume the sound at the start of the song is a synthesizer, and not, as I'm tempted to believe, two banana slugs copulating, but I could be mistaken. The squeaking noises continue throughout the piece, as if someone was standing in the corner continually squeezing mud between his hands, and recording it. The verse flirts with a decent melody, but I feel like that sense of musical decency goes out the window once the chorus shows up. The bridge is actually somewhat promising, and suggests that a very exciting, passionate, anthemic chorus is on the way:

I swear I won't tease you, won't tell you no lies
I don't need no bible, just look in my eyes
I've waiting so long, baby, now that we're friends
A man's got his patience, and here's where mine ends

And then suddenly, we hear a very bored, dispassionate George Michael, in a supremely unexciting lower register, speak-singing the words "I want your sex," followed by, I believe, a long string of farting noises. This is where his patience ends? You'd think he could have waited for something a little better, you know? To me, this song is about as sexy as a night out at Hooter's, but hey, maybe it works for you.

Right around the end of the second chorus, things truly start to get weird. Follow along with me if you can:

• 2:23: Just business as usual, until George pauses after "I want your," only to unleash an emphatic "sex ... sex! Ow!"
• 2:28: The squeak returns with a vengeance, and we're treated to a solo by what sounds like an ... "imitation Asian gong" synth setting?
• 2:49: A cluster of sped-up Georges attempt to sell the listener on the myriad benefits of sex, helpfully explaining that "it's natural" and "it's chemical," when suddenly they are interrupted by another, regular-speed George who apparently is finding the sped-up mini-Georges' approach much too subtle and simply grunts "Let's do it!"
• 2:54: The pitch-altered Georges continue, as if we weren't already convinced, adding "it's logical" and "habitual," and once again unaltered George chimes in with an impatient "Can we do it-uh?"
• 2:59: The chorus of Georges is clearly running out of selling points, pointing out that "it's sexual" (I think we knew this already), but then pivoting into a different pattern with "but most of all, sex is something that we should do," which is followed by an unexpectedly deep-voiced man who I assume just crawled up from the basement of whatever S&M castle we've somehow found ourselves trapped in, adding "Sex is something for me and you." Who would have thought!
• 3:07: Now we arrive at what might arguably be the "climax" of the interlude. The gathering of Georges, by this time appearing at a mixture of pitches, surmises that "Sex is natural, sex is good/Not everybody does it, but everybody should/Sex is natural, sex is fun," then a lone George pokes his head in to point out that "Sex is best when it's" ... and finally deep-voiced George finishes the thought with an emotionless "one-on-one." "I see," said the blind man.
• 3:47: The comparatively tranquil bongo jam that follows is broken up by, if I'm not mistaken, George dry heaving repeatedly in the left channel ("hu-ah!"), which is invariably followed by another George in the center channel chanting "sex," and all the while, lead vocalist George explains to the object of his affection that "I'm not your father/I'm not your brother/talk to your sister" and then he really kicks it into Whitney Houston territory with " I am a luv-ahh-ahh! Whoooo-hooo-hooo-euh!" which he finally punctuates with a James Brown-ish "Ow!" and the immortal "C-C-C-C-C-C-Come own-ah!"
• 4:23: After a little rap (a genre to which George was no stranger, of course), he really lays it all out with "Don't you think it's time you had sex! With! Meee-ayyy-uh!"
• 4:38: Finally, the piece comes to a fitting conclusion with a last "Mmmm have sex! With! Meee-ayyy-uh!" as the man praying to the porcelain goddess reappears to add another (completely necessary) "hu-ah!" while George ties a nice little ribbon around the whole enchilada with one more "C-C-C-C-C-C-Come own-ah!"

Naturally, George sat in the studio, listened to the playback, and concluded, "You know what? I think the world needs two more versions of this." "Rhythm Two: Brass In Love" manages to be more tasteful and yet, in my opinion, more boring. It's sort of what I imagine would've happened if George had asked Phil Collins to do a remix version. The addition of horns feels gimmicky. I mean, if he wanted to bring a Stax/R&B feel to the piece, he shouldn't have kept using the same crappy drum machine from "Part 1." "Rhythm Three: A Last Request" might actually be, from a purely musical standpoint, the most palatable version, with some decent keyboard work, some noirish trumpet, and the drum machine setting from Gregory Abbott's "Shake You Down," but again, I feel it lacks the comedic edge of "Part 1."



The video was rather "controversial" in its day but, watching it now, I kind of have to wonder, "For what?" Too much stubble? Naked feet being doused with water? Excessive use of red blindfold? This thing is 50 Shades of Tame. From Wikipedia: "The music video, directed by Andy Morahan, featured Michael's then-girlfriend Kathy Jeung to emphasize that he was in a monogamous relationship; at one point, he is shown using lipstick to write the words 'explore' and 'monogamy' on her back." Two questions: 1) His ... girlfriend? Just how serious were they? I mean, if he's not that interested in her, maybe we can trade? 2) "Monogamy"? I'll tell you the first thing that pops into my head when I hear this song: monogamy! It's so obvious! How could anyone miss it? Final thought: what do you think he did with that red lipstick once the cameras stopped rolling? Professor Higglediggle's take:

With his contribution to a reductive, Dionysian symbol of post-blockbuster disjunction (Beverly Hills Cop II), Michael sought to subvert the symbolic capital of monogamy through the interpretive framework of libidinal electro-funk. His declaration "I don't need no bible" serves to sever the act of lovemaking from its codified familial purpose, while his question "What do you consider pornography?" forces the listener to situate her/his (re)conception of the procreational drive in stark opposition to Puritan mythos. Michael's experimental usage of lipstick does much to undercut his circuitous effort to establish a sexualized element of play, however, subtly reinforcing the codified status of female marginalization at the hands of the cosmetics industry and highlighting his partner's lack of sexual agency.

Not If I Get The Rhythm First

And you thought being addicted to love was bad. How would you like to be assaulted in the middle of the night by the rhythm?:

At night
When you turn off all the lights
There's no place that you can hide
No no
The rhythm is gonna get'cha

In bed
Throw the covers on your head
And pretend like you are dead
But I know it
The rhythm is gonna get'cha

Oh fuck me. Not even safe in my own bed? What if I hire a bodyguard? How about if I learn karate? I mean, there's got to be some way to keep the rhythm from getting me, right? Maybe the rhythm would be open to a little negotiation perhaps, a cash settlement, one half of my stamp collection? Can I at least "stall" the rhythm with a game of chess like in The Seventh Seal? Does it have to truly, genuinely "get" me?

With "Rhythm Is Gonna Get You," Gloria Estefan & the Machine Sound Machine, as they were now being billed, managed to do what no one would have thought possible: they created a "Conga" sequel that was not obviously worse and was not a carbon copy. It still sizzled with that spicy Latin flavor, but it carried a touch more ... menace this time.

As the track commences, the first thing to "get" the listener isn't actually the rhythm, but a tribal warlord chanting "oh-ey oh-ey," echoed by his lusty minions, and one massive, solitary BOOM on a drum so large and so deep it sounds like the Mariana Trench farting. Other little percussive noises quickly pop up from all directions, congas and shakers and all sorts of crazy knick-knacks, while a third group of warriors from (I assume?) a neighboring tribe enter with their own ominous chant of "Yah-ey-oh." Just when all these disparate elements seem to be settling into a groove, there's a giant chord blast from Satan's keyboard, suddenly all the villagers scatter, and we get a brief interlude from what appears to be ... the aluminum cans in your recycling bin? After eight bars, the world's most piercing horn section enters - horns so sharp they could cut Julio Iglesias's balls in half.

Gloria finally calms the cannibals down with her perky entrance, but on the chorus, the Wild Things briefly return: she's doubled up on her third "rhythm is gonna get you" by what sounds like Sloth from The Goonies, then the warlords chime in with a panther-esque "Whoo!" followed by a potent "BLOMP!" from the keyboard of Hades. I tell you what's gonna "get'cha" all right: the Miami Sound Machine's endless arsenal of state-of-the-art studio gimmicks! During the outro, a fourth pack of natives shows up with a comparably less threatening, but seemingly more schoolyardish, chant of "na-na na-na-na na-na," and then everyone sort of gathers around the bonfire and sings their bit before one last comical horn riff grinds the heathen ceremony to a sweaty halt.

For the video, the Machine From Miami That Emits Sound seems to have picked up on the Amazonian rain forest vibe of the song, as Gloria is decked out in full ceremonial face paint a la Captain Willard at the end of Apocalypse Now. And her arms are covered in ... hay? When Gloria Estefan's arms are covered in hay, you know she means business. Meanwhile the rest of the band, including a suddenly more civilized and hay-less Gloria, perform onstage at Miami's most glamorous tiki lounge. At 1:15, she seems to spot her own Surfer Lance in the crowd? One final question: just how many keytarists can one band have? A-ha! Maybe that's the secret to keeping the rhythm from getting you! One must brandish the sacred keytar.

Stevie Nicks Goes Aerobic Rock: Stand Back And Make Some Room On The Dance Floor

"Humble" is not the first adjective that comes to mind when one thinks of Stevie Nicks, but after the release of Bella Donna, it would have been difficult to accuse her of sounding conceited if she had said to herself, "Who the hell needs Fleetwood Mac?" Her solo debut, commercially at least, ended up turning Stevie Nicks into the next Madonna. Or maybe the first Madonna. Somehow the rest of the Mac cajoled her into tagging along for Mirage, and yet, as the poets of yore understood too well, the wild heart still yearns to break free - free to slide back into the same exact solo album formula, that is. From AMG's William Ruhlmann:

Stevie Nicks was following both her debut solo album, Bella Donna (1981), which had topped the charts, sold over a million copies (now over four million), and spawned four Top 40 hits, and Fleetwood Mac's Mirage (1982), which had topped the charts, sold over a million copies (now over two million), and spawned three Top 40 hits (including her "Gypsy"), when she released her second solo album, The Wild Heart. She was the most successful American female pop singer of the time. Not surprisingly, she played it safe: The Wild Heart contained nothing that would disturb fans of her previous work and much that echoed it ... the songs were largely interchangeable with those on Bella Donna, even down to the obligatory duet with Tom Petty. Nicks seemed to know what she was up to -- one song was called "Nothing Ever Changes." As a result, The Wild Heart sold to the faithful ... and that was appropriate: if you loved Bella Donna, you would like The Wild Heart very much.

True enough, and yet, there was a new twist or two - like Stevie trying to actually sound like Madonna. A new generation of female pop stars was daring to challenge her supremacy, and it was time to protect her turf. Stand back, aerobo-bitches! I probably shouldn't even be referencing Madonna here, as there's another '80s superstar who played a much more relevant role in the creation of "Stand Back." From Wikipedia:

She wrote it on the day of her marriage to Kim Anderson on January 29, 1983. The newlyweds were driving up to San Ysidro Ranch in Santa Barbara when Prince's song "Little Red Corvette" came on the radio. Nicks started humming along to the melody, especially inspired by the lush synthesizers of the song, and "Stand Back" was born. They stopped and got a tape recorder and she recorded the demo in the honeymoon suite that night. Later, when Nicks went into the studio to record the song, she called Prince and told him the story of how she wrote the song to his melody. He came to the studio that night and played synthesizers on it, although his contribution is uncredited on the album. He and Nicks did agree however to split the publishing royalties on the song 50-50. Then, she says, "he just got up and left as if the whole thing happened in a dream."

So did she have, like, the Prince bat signal or something? "Prince, need ur help, come 2 the studio, it's urgent!" And so he buckled up his ass-chaps, hopped into the Purple-mobile, and laid down the funky licks that saved the day. And then, just like that, in a puff of lavender perfume ... he was gone! It turns out that Dave Chappelle's skits weren't comedy, but documentary. Of course, the real guest star might have been Toto's ever-present axeman Steve Lukather, whose piercing MOR riffs are surely what took the single to #5.

Too bad the Purple One didn't stick around to help with the video, which my co-blogger Herr Zrbo discussed briefly back in January, where he referred to it as being, with chilling accuracy, "on the shortlist for 'videos most indicative of their time'." If you're looking at this video and wondering why it looks so cheap and tacky, apparently there's a good reason for that:

Two videos were filmed for the single. The first, which was never aired and is referred to as the "Scarlett Version", was a lavish production directed by Brian Grant and features Nicks in a Gone with the Wind type scenario. Upon seeing the completed video, Nicks rejected it as, according to Grant, she felt she looked fat.

What. A. Diva. Oh. My. God. Stevie, come over here with me a second, let's have a chat. Listen to me very carefully. Would you rather release a well-made video where you look "fat," or a shoddily-made video where you look like ... I dunno, a hungover witch who wandered into a Jazzercise class by accident? In the words of Wikipedia, "As an alternative, a second video was made on a much lower budget than the original." You don't saaaaay. For better or ill, the "second" clip for "Stand Back" set the template for every '80s Stevie Nicks music video to follow. Invariably, they all feature the following elements, not necessarily in this order:

1. Stevie staring directly into the camera, standing behind a microphone. Like, in every video. Just look at all the screen captures. Uh, Stevie ... you do know that you don't need a microphone in a music video, right? You can just lip-sync. Maybe she didn't feel comfortable on the set without her "lucky microphone." Maybe it was like her security blanket.
2. Stevie's alarmingly massive hair blowing in the breeze, usually backlit in some grotesquely unflattering manner - a look which one YouTube commentator describes as Stevie in her "hot mess" phase
3. Brief shots of Stevie twirling in her shawl as the moonlight drifts through the glass panes of a gothic-looking ballroom
4. Dancers. Lots of dancers.

With "Stand Back," we get #3 at 0:07, #1 and #2 at 0:23, and finally, #4 at 0:56, when Stevie and her presumed lover twirl leftward and up pops ... a gang of wacky '80s breakdancers straight from a Nickelodeon after-school special! Their outfits all look outrageously dated, but none of them achieve quite the level of frisson as the one worn by the female dancer in the red beret, sleeveless flannel vest (?), short black skirt, nylons, and red tie (!). Stand back, or your eyes might be harmed irreparably by this outfit. You know when Yeats penned the line, "And what rough beast, its hour come round at last/Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?" I think he was referring to this outfit.

And then. And then! The dancers burst through a saloon door (is there going to be a gunfight?) to reveal Stevie standing on a ... giant neon treadmill? She's gone Tron! And then the director must have thought, "Hmmm, we need more shots of the dancers dry-humping each other in a black room with smoke and excessive backlighting. And jumping in mid-air in slow-motion." Finally, at 4:25, she unleashes a demonic "Why don't you taaaaaaaaake...," although in the video she steals a little of her back-up vocalist's glory on "...me home." But hey, at least she didn't look "fat," right?

The Wild Heart's second single, "If Anyone Falls," peaked at #14 and then, I assume, started falling down the charts. Let's see if the video hits all the marks on the checklist. We've got #3 at 0:22, #2 at 0:48, and #4 at 0:55, but ... what's this? She's staring directly at the camera ... without a microphone in front of her! Was Stevie ... evolving? Most random moment: Stevie and her merry band of witches riding a carousel at 3:21.



By the time of her third solo album, Rock A Little, Stevie was actually, contrary to the title, doing the rock a lot. According to Wikipedia, "The vocal style is distinctively huskier and nasal (many claim this was due to increasing cocaine abuse) than on previous recordings." Don't let the party stop! If you think "Talk To Me," which hit #4, sounds a bit like John Waite's "Missing You," that might be because the same guy co-wrote both songs. All right, let's see how the video measures up on the ol' checklist. We've got #1 and #2 at 0:31, and ... wait a minute ... she's back to standing in front of a mic again! Stevie, Stevie. You were making such progress, only to let it all slip away in a cloud of coked-out hubris. We finally get #4 at 1:48. Unfortunately, I don't quite see #3 here, although she does twirl around in a well-lit art gallery.



"I Can't Wait" couldn't wait to slide out of the charts after climbing no higher than #16, and might seem relatively insignificant in the Nicks oeuvre, but in retrospect, it marked the unheralded entrance of a certain Rick Nowels into the pop music scene. From the liner notes to Timespace: The Best of Stevie Nicks:

To understand this song, you sort of have to let yourself go a little crazy. Love is blind, it never works out, but you just have to have it. I think this was about the most exciting song that I had ever heard. My friend, Rick, whom I had known since I was 18 and he was 13, brought over this track with this incredible percussion thing, and gave it to me asking me if I would listen to it and consider writing a song for it. I listened to the song once, and pretended not to be that knocked out, but the second Rick left, I ran in my little recording studio and wrote 'I Can't Wait.' It took all night, and I think it is all about how electric I felt about this music. And that night, that SATURDAY night, Rick and I went into a BIG studio and recorded it. I sang it only once, and have never sung it since in the studio.

If Wikipedia is to be trusted, those are Stevie's caps, not mine. That must have been a BIG studio. And on a SATURDAY night, too. Not just Saturday, but SATURDAY. Nowels and Jimmy Iovine seem to be more fond of synthesized bells than even Stock Aitken Waterman. As for the checklist: I see #4 at 0:28, #1 and #2 at 0:47, but I don't really see a clear #3 here, although she does twirl around both on the Busby Berkeley staircase, and inside the medieval dungeon with a giant pane of glass, so it's daaaaamn close. Also, I think I see Mick Fleetwood at 1:57? From Wikipedia:

Nicks says that she did drugs on the set of all her videos of the era however, regarding the video for "I Can't Wait" she said in I Want My MTV: "I look at that video, I look at my eyes, and I say to myself, 'Could you have laid off the pot, the coke, and the tequila for three days, so you could have looked a little better? It just makes me want to go back into that video and stab myself."

I'm afraid it's much too late for that, Stevie. It's much too late.



Little could the world have known, however, that while the Stevie Nicks-Rick Nowels partnership was never destined for greatness, Rick Nowels's partnership with another late '80s pop diva with an equal, if not greater, fondness for a certain Colombian powder would turn out to be a match made in ... erm ... "heaven."