How Many Days In Paradise Are We Talking About Here? AKA David Crosby, Vegas Bad Luck Charm

But it's not just another day in paradise at all. Because there are homeless people! Oh man. Feel the burn. Irony so thick you could stick a fork in it.

In the long and lengthy history of sappy charity rock, perhaps the easiest target for critical scorn that has ever been produced - easier than "Ebony and Ivory," "We Are the World," even Elton's "Princess Diana" remake of "Candle in the Wind," for crying out loud - would be "Another Day In Paradise." You want to know why? I'll tell you why:

It's because PHIL FUCKING COLLINS IS TRYING TO TELL EVERYBODY HOW HORRIBLE THEY ARE FOR IGNORING HOMELESS PEOPLE, WHEN HE'S PROBABLY SPENT HIS ENTIRE LIFE DOING THE SAME EXACT FUCKING THING.

There, I said it. I feel better now. OK. Take a breath.

Here's how I'm guessing this went down: One festive evening, in between caviar dinners and red carpet ceremonies, Phil happened to notice some scraggly-looking ruffian living in a box and eating out of a leftover Chinese take-out container, and thought to himself, "Oh, this is terrible. Hasn't anybody noticed all these homeless people around? You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to write a song about it. And then I'm going to bring in David Crosby, patron saint of old hippies who love telling everybody how badly they should feel about stuff (even though he's probably just a couple of late royalty payments away from being homeless himself), to sing backing vocals." Cloying. Obnoxious. Sanctimonious.

And yet.

Do you know how many views the video for "Another Day in Paradise" has on YouTube? 370 million. Sweet Jesus. "In the Air Tonight" only has 219 million. Do you know why so many people, including your humble '80s blogger, enjoy listening to the hypocritical guilt-fest known as "Another Day in Paradise"? Because the man ... just had a gift.

That keyboard hook. Whoa nelly. It's gentle, but insistent. At this point Phil was farting out keyboard hooks like a man who'd eaten five "keyboard hook" burritos the night before. And the chorus - so hypnotic, so relaxing. Phil and David's harmonizing really lulls your ears into that sweet, arrogant, middle-class complacency the lyrics are apparently trying to warn you against. Reclining in your Cape Cod hammock, you slip into a sedate, comforting junkie nod as you think to yourself, "Yes, Phil, it is another day in paradise ... wait, what's this song about again?" It's like a soft, velvetty pillow of shame. Select instrumental highlights:

• Throughout the first half, the entirety of the track's percussion appears to be supplied by a drum machine (thwacking slightly louder during the keyboard hook than during either the verse or the chorus) until the 2:47 mark, when His Gated-Reverbed Majesty makes his grand entrance on the skins. Sometimes the best tricks ... are the oldest tricks.
• Phil lays off the drums during the third verse, giving ample room for a tasty flamenco guitar flourish to steal the spotlight at 3:45, only to come crashing back in on the final chorus, his anger at the cosmic injustice he's been forced to witness between limo rides clearly boiling over.
• I feel like the outro goes on just long enough; with Phil now inventively singing the chorus lyric over the previously unaccompanied keyboard hook, you really get a chance to wallow in your privileged indifference for a good extra minute or so.

But here's the funniest part. I don't merely admire the song on its musical merits alone. I think some twisted, confused portion of me actually likes the lyrics. They're just so ... unapologetically sarcastic. He's really throwing your apathy in your face, gleefully getting off while watching you squirm. And the details are spot-on - give or take a bit of dramatic embellishment. For instance, anyone else find it pretty convenient that the homeless lady in the first verse happens to speak in rhyme? Also, "Starts to whistle as he crosses the street"? How many businessmen whistled as they crossed the street ... in 1989? Plus, Phil left out the most important detail: what was the man whistling? I'm going to go with "The Colonel Bogey March."

At least Phil doesn't pretend to have a solution. It's not like the lyrics are, "If we all just worked together, we could end homelessness forever, la la la la." Instead, he's merely painting the scene, then offering a wry joke about how "wonderful" everything is. "No answers here, folks." In fact, on the bridge, he outright asks, "Oh Lord, is there nothing more that anybody can do?," before adding desperately, "Oh Lord, there must be something you can say." But God doesn't seem to be telling Phil Collins jack squat. Besides, I don't think "Another Day in Paradise" is asking the listener to "solve" homelessness anyway; it's just asking the listener to "think about it." And, you know what? For five minutes and twenty-three seconds of my precious existence, I think I can do that.

It's still the cheesiest piece of cheese that any Yuppie Rocker ever cheesed, of course. I like how the video features shocking "facts," rendered in big bold letters, such as "ONE BILLION PEOPLE HAVE INADEQUATE SHELTER." Define "inadequate." I mean, you should see some of the apartments I've lived in. I also like the shot of the homeless guy wearing a "Don't Worry Be Happy" beanie. Take that, Bobby McFerrin.

Surprisingly, at least according to Phil, the initial inspiration for the track stemmed from an incident far removed from the plight of the street dweller. From In The Air Tonight:

Common misconception: I can understand why people thought I was talking about "paradise," you know, like an ironic reference to heaven or something in relation to the whole homelessness issue, but actually, when I wrote the demo back in the mid-'80s, I was talking about Paradise, Nevada. See, when you think of "Las Vegas," what do you think of? You think of the Las Vegas Strip, right? But what most people don't realize is that the majority of the Las Vegas Strip technically resides in the unincorporated census-designated community of Paradise, Nevada, and that Las Vegas proper is to the north. For demographic purposes, it's probably best to think of Vegas as the Las Vegas Metropolitan Statistical Area.

Anyway. So it was about 1986, fresh off No Jacket Required, and I'd just gotten back to my room at Harrah's at 3:00am, returning from my favorite Vegas strip club, Cutie Pie's, when the phone rings. Crosby's in town. You know shit's about to get crazy.

So we meet over at Caesar's and head to the blackjack table. He's high on a mixture of ... I want to say PCP and Robitussin? Given that he'd just gotten out of Texas State Prison for drugs and weapons possession charges, you'd think he would've been taking it a bit easy, but then you don't know Croz. And of course I'd just injected a couple of kilos of horsie juice laced with some WD-40 (for that extra kick).

So we're in a pretty good mood. I get on a bit of a roll, and suddenly I'm dealt a 10 and a 6. "I think I'm gonna go for it."

Crosby looks at me, with a clarity belying his mental state. "You sure about that Phil? Think twice."

So I respond, just off the cuff, you know, "Cause it's another day for you and me in Paradise." And we both emit these enormous, Cheshire Cat grins. Anyway, I go for it. "Hit me!" I get a 7. I tell you, Crosby's energy is just unlucky all around, that's what I think. I guess I probably saw some homeless bloke standing on the corner as I stumbled back to Harrah's but ... didn't really feel that bad about it, honestly.

Runaway Belinda Interviews From The Runaway Horses Era

Like a novice equestrian riding an untamed stallion, any interviewer of Belinda Carlisle circa 1989/1990 might have found themselves treading a thin line between galloping majestically through the unspoiled countryside and being violently catapulted into the gooey mud. Maybe she'd stay the course, maybe she'd end up kicking the jockey in the balls - who could say?

I've always been familiar with USA Today as a newspaper (one which ... still exists?), but I've been unaware of its existence as any sort of television entity; until being asked to do this interview, my guess is that Belinda would have been equally ignorant. Regardless, just prior to the release of Runaway Horses in late 1989, here she finds herself reclining in the passenger seat of an old Cadillac across from a Universal City Nissan dealership, alongside an interviewer armed with a camcorder, a boom box, and hokey narration. I have to say, somehow this ends up being more substantial than it had any right to be. Highlights:

Interviewer: When you went out on the road with the Go-Go's, you had this clean-cut, wholesome image. Did that bother you at the time?

Belinda: Yeah, it was sort of, you know, I think people feel comfortable with labels, and they just happened to slap the "cute, bubbly, and effervescent" label on us, which was fine, it was really annoying, and uh ...

Interviewer: At the time, were you rebelling against that?

Belinda: Oh yeah, definitely. Definitely privately, not publicly, but privately we were definitely rebelling.

Details? Not safe for USA Today? Saving those up for the book, I suppose. The interviewer plays "Leave a Light On" from a tiny little boom box and asks Belinda if she likes it. "Oh yeah, I love it," she responds between giggles. "It's good. I better like it, I did it!"

Interviewer: Is it hard for you to listen to your own music?

Belinda: Yes it is. Especially after I just got through singing that song at least 200 times. Yeah, it is. You know, I love hearing it on the radio though, I remember the very first time I heard my voice on the radio, it was really ... thrilling and it still is, I have to admit when my song comes on I do turn it up.

Interviewer [in voiceover]: When she goes this long between performances, does the thought of a live audience make Belinda nervous?

Belinda: Even when I'm used to it, it freaks me out if I think about it, so I just try not to think about it, and I pretend that they're there to see somebody else. 'Cause it is kind of ... a couple times I've been on stage and I've sort of looked out and you could see profiles from way in the back going like this [waves arms] and you start thinking about, well they've actually paid money to see me, and then it starts, uh, playing tricks on your mind a little bit.

Impostor Syndrome, thy name is Belinda Carlisle.

Here we have a solid performance of "Summer Rain" from the Arsenio Hall Show (featuring at least a few live strings?), followed by a typically amusing interview. (Apologies for the audio that only plays on the left channel; there is a clip of simply the interview portion that features better audio, but I wanted include the performance as well, so, deal with it.) The surely neon-and-spandex-clad audience appears to approve of both the song and Belinda's majestically lengthy fake eyelashes, as I detect a few patented "Whoot! Whoot!" chants among the gathered throng.

I've forgotten how nice Arsenio's couches were. He really didn't skimp on the couches. I've also forgotten how perceptive and empathetic of an interviewer he could be. After Belinda confirms an upcoming Go-Go's reunion (to be discussed by yours truly in a future post?), Arsenio remarks, "You look good. And when I say 'good' I mean, not, yeah, you know..." The audience inevitably hollers. "I mean not in the sense of 'Why don't you come on back to my place later' ... I don't mean it like that, I mean, I'm looking into your eyes and I know you did have some problems and you've gotten 'em together and you look real healthy and happy and I'm happy for you." Belinda smiles, nods, and responds "Thank you, I am happy." Yeahhhh. According to Lips Unsealed, she was just keeping things together at this point and was merely a few months away from hitting an even rougher patch, but, you know ... it was probably wisest just to smile, nod, and say "Thank you, I am happy." The next exchange is a keeper:

Arsenio: Let's talk music. AMA's this past week?

Belinda: (giggles)

Arsenio: What'd you think, did you go?

Belinda: No. Uh-uh. I was in Vegas.

Arsenio: What do you think about, like, the direction of music, Milli Vanilli being the hottest thing in music? (laughs gleefully)

Belinda: (mangles her words but essentially says, "Mother always taught me, 'If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all.'") They're not my favorite. But I know they're not your favorite either.

Arsenio: I'm just amazed by it.

Belinda: I am too. I am too! What can I say?

Arsenio: I mean, some place, Tom Petty, and Paul McCartney, and great writers like Luther Vandross and Elton John, they're sittin' around and sayin' "What the hell is goin' on?!"

Well how 'bout them apples? I guess even at the time, before their terrible "secret" trickled out, many in the entertainment business were already rather unimpressed with Milli Vanilli. Catchy tunes though. Later, Belinda goes into detail about her process for picking her material, something she hardly ever talked about:

Arsenio: How do you choose your material, I mean, what do you look for? 'Cause I think, people sing your songs constantly.

Belinda: Well I know lyrically, you know, by looking at it, whether it's right for me or not and, um, I have a good sense of what I do, and uh, I just know really basically within 30 seconds whether the song is right for me or not, doesn't really take me that long to figure it out.

This might help explain her glorious demo of "Waiting For a Star to Fall," although it certainly lasted longer than 30 seconds. He asks her if she writes a lot, and she replies, without too much exaggeration, "I'm starting to write, I have a credit on the Graces album [one of Charlotte Caffey's projects] and I have a half-a-credit on my album, so I'm tryin'." When Arsenio repeats, "Half a credit," she responds, playfully, "That's better than no credit." He asks her which song she co-wrote, she answers "Shades of Michaelangelo," and when she hears crickets, Belinda raises her arms and shouts, "Yeah!" like a girl in school who just ran for class president, failed to receive a single vote, and is attempting to laugh it off.

Just when I thought I'd seen it all, here's Belinda on what appears to be a UK children's TV show called Going Live! The host begins by handing Belinda a Platinum award for Runaway Horses (or rather, forcing young Hayden and Genevieve to do the dirty work), which she pretends to appreciate but ultimately seems to understand she has no real use for. Then, upon being prompted, she shares the following story: "I was jogging in the park in Australia, and I love dogs, and I stopped to pet a great dane, and he liked me a lot and he attacked me in the park." She proceeds to raise her eyebrows with sardonic glee.

Next comes a segment in which children across the British Isles call in and ask Belinda questions, which she is supposed to be able to hear through a giant 1990-era cell phone, but her phone seems to malfunction and she can't make out a damn thing. Utilizing that quick British problem-solving know-how of his, the host simply repeats the questions for Belinda, but she is obviously wondering why the program doesn't just pipe the caller audio into large studio speakers like a normal TV program would. A technician speedily pops up and hands Belinda a new cell phone, but this doesn't necessarily make the cell phone gimmick seem any more justifiable. After a pair of softball questions from Claire Chisholm and Zoe Lawrence about fear of live performance and animal rights activism, respectively, Nicholas Payne asks what should be a softball question, but gives Belinda the chance to puncture the magical veneer of pop stardom:

Nicholas Payne: Why did you choose the ... musical career?

Belinda: Why did I? Umm ... well I sort of fell into it accidentally. I was with a bunch of friends one night at a party, four of the girls, and everybody we knew was in a band and they were terrible, so we thought, that we could be in a band and be terrible too.

Host: This is the Go-Go's.

Belinda: Yeah, uh-huh. But that was the great thing about the punk days, you know, you didn't really have to know how to play your instruments.

Host: Would you say that you've now changed, and maybe changed your singing and vocals?

Belinda: Oh I've since, about four or five years into my, you know, singing career, I started taking vocal lessons.

Host: Right, right, did they make any difference? I mean, did you think halfway through, "Oh this is a waste of time"?

Belinda: Oh it makes a big difference, I still go to vocal lessons, yeah, yeah.

Host: And what is that, stretching your ...

Belinda: It's learning how to sing properly and not singing through your throat, singing through your diaphragm, your stomach, and it's, umm, you know, they sort of stretch your vocal abilities out a little bit.

Host: Sounds very painful to me.

So there you go Nicholas, you could be a pop star too - with or without vocal lessons. James Gilbert then asks Belinda if she has ever been to Marseilles, given that the town is mentioned in the lyrics to "La Luna," and Belinda spends about thirty seconds uninformatively repeating that her time in Marseilles was "interesting," leading one to conclude that whatever did happen to Belinda in Marseilles was probably very interesting indeed, and probably NSF-Going Live! She and the host then show off the glorious package of Runaway Horses paraphernalia that lucky viewers could win if they correctly answer the question, "What is the term used to describe the height of a horse?"

The show finally switches to an awkward segment where the host and Belinda grab postcards out of a giant basket, read out questions and answers, and then announce the winners of various prizes, with Belinda essentially acting as Vannah White. She attempts to be a good sport (and she somehow knows how many colors there are in a rainbow!), but clearly has a look on her face that all but says, "When I finally get out of here, I'm going to have a talk with my agent about this."

Last but not least, here's another interview from, I presume, only a short while later during the same tour of Britain, and this poor UK TV station appears to have caught Belinda on a ... less-than-optimal day. If Belinda isn't high on coke here, she certainly appears to be high on something (in Lips Unsealed she mentions lugging around a tasty cocktail of Valium, Halcion, and Rohypnol at this time). Either she'd been singing herself hoarse the entire week prior, or she'd been drinking one pint of lighter fluid too many, but her speaking voice has been reduced to a craggy ball of razors. Notice, also, how her speech is extremely rushed and tense, with hardly any pauses. She barely looks at the interviewer, and she only laughs when she recounts the depressing details of her drug use. The answers all sound slightly rehearsed and canned. Basically, she looks kind of ... fucked up. Which makes this clip utterly mesmerizing and turns all the talk about her "past struggles with addiction" into something alternately sad and hilarious. It's as if the station had prepared a segment based on a bunch of marketing info they'd received from Belinda's record label, and then Belinda walked into the studio almost certainly under the influence of one chemical or another and completely undercut the narrative, but the anchors pretended not to notice and simply stuck to the script. It's gold, baby! Best segment:

Interviewer: Well how did you decide to stop then?

Belinda: I met my husband, and I knew that I couldn't carry on with a relationship with him, um, if I continued the way I was going. He had no idea that I was a drug addict when he got involved with me. And, um, he didn't give me any ultimatum, I just decided that, if I was to, you know, I wanted to marry him.

Interviewer: When did you tell him that you had this problem, when did he guess?

Belinda: No, I think he figured it out when he found all the coke underneath the sofa. (Laughs uncontrollably.) I think that's ... I think that's ... (can't seem to stop laughing) when he figured out, "I've gotten involved with a drug addict." Um, but, I mean, I could hide it pretty well. You know. I'll never forget that morning when he found ... (bursts into uncontrollable laughter again) ... he dumps it over the balcony and I was like, "Oh no! My drugs!" But um, I realized then that I had a choice, that I had to either get my act together or, you know, I wouldn't be where I am now.

And where, exactly, are you now, Belinda? Props for her skillful re-enactment of Morgan tossing her coke; I feel like she really took us into the moment. The zaniness continues:

Interviewer: So what did you do then, Belinda, what route did you go then to stop it?

Belinda: I had a friend that just got clean, and I called her and she took me to a meeting. I'm not a program person because I still drink occasionally, it was never a problem with me, um, you know, drugs were a problem with me. Um, so, for a while I was going to support groups, and now I'm in, um, sort of an offspring of a support group that deals with a different addiction which is food. And so now I'm working my steps through the drugs too. Um, but if it's not one thing it's the other.

Interviewer: Can I talk to you a bit about your music?

Oh that's right, her music. I'd forgotten about that. Once it's all over, the camera cuts back to the studio set, where the two unflappable anchors do their best to ignore what they'd seen and mostly focus on what they'd heard. "She's been very honest about all that." "But it's brilliant what she's been through, to come out of it like that, and to have a wonderful career." Oh yes, to "come out of it" like that. Totally the impression I got.

Runaway Horses: When An Album Gallops Across Europe, But Trots Across America

Question: Would you trade American stardom for European stardom? Sub-question: If you had no choice in the matter, could you get used to it? It sounds to me like Belinda Carlisle never quite did.

Although she couldn't have actually known it yet, with Heaven on Earth and its accompanying worldwide #1 single, Belinda had reached the peak of her solo success. But if she didn't know it yet, she could certainly sense it. A pop music career is not a math equation. Just because your first album goes Gold, and your second album goes Platinum, doesn't mean that your third album will go Double Platinum. But it wouldn't be out of the question if it did, would it? From Lips Unsealed:

Though a number of major producers inquired about working with me, I teamed up with Rick Nowels again. For a second time I was in the studio trying not to think about the pressure and the high expectations. Yet the industry's reigning A&R guru John Kalodner laid it right out there by saying, "If Belinda gets this album right, she's going to be the biggest star in the world." I tried not to think about it, but I knew the opportunity was there.

"Belinda, baby, the world is your oyster! You could be the toppermost of the poppermost!" Uhh ... bigger than MJ? Based on what, exactly? Her wall-humping prowess? Well, either Belinda failed to "[get the] album right," or John Kalodner was talking out of his A&R anus, but if squint a little, you can kind of see where he was coming from. Belinda was just coming off an album that had produced three US and UK Top 10 hits, she had the looks, she had the pipes, she had the looks (on the Runaway Horses album cover, as a sweater delicately slides down her comely shoulder, the camera is potentially catching Belinda either in mid-orgasm or mid-fart - it's hard to tell and they both feel good anyway) ... the airwaves were hers for the taking. What she didn't have, of course, was ambition, but hey, that hadn't hurt her yet! At any rate, let's see how accurate Mr. Kalodner's prediction became:

Overall, we worked on the album as if money didn't matter. We took a year and spent close to $1 million. That may have sounded great in the press, but now when I hear something like that I know, because it was the case with my album, that it signals trouble. We second-guessed ourselves right and left and lost touch with the basics and ended up with an expensive album, not the great one we had hoped to make.

In September, "Leave a Light On" came out and was a hit everywhere in the world except the U.S., where it failed to crack the top 10, an indication that times and the music-buying public's taste had changed. When Runaway Horses hit the stores a month later, it opened well overseas but struggled here at home, needing six months to creep its way to a very disappointing peak of 37.

(Sad trombone.) #37? Daaaaaamn. That sure puts other notorious commercial "disappointments" like Tusk (which peaked at #4) or The Final Cut (which peaked at #6) in perspective. Even Queen's Hot Space peaked at #24. But leave it to the master of self-loathing to throw more cold water onto the fire than necessary. In Belinda's telling, "Leave a Light On" was "a hit everywhere in the world except the U.S.," but what she means is that it was a huge hit everywhere in the world except the U.S., where it was merely a moderately-sized hit, peaking at #11 - which ain't bad at all! Talk about changing the goalposts. And sometimes, an album's peak chart position doesn't tell the whole story anyway, because what Dottie Danger fails to mention is that, in the U.S., Runaway Horses still went Gold! In other words, plenty of people did ultimately purchase the album; they just took their sweet time in doing so. A Gold album is nothing to sneeze at. Talk Show didn't even go Gold. Besides, here's how I know the album found its way onto numerous American stereos: a couple of years ago I met a colleague on a theater project who claimed to have repeatedly performed aerobics as a youth while listening to Runaway Horses. I tell you, nothing gets the blood pumping like the red-headed roar of the Queen of Yuppie Rock. It's also classic how much she downplays the success of the album in Europe, merely stating that it "opened well overseas." The album peaked at #4 in the UK, #4 in Sweden, and #6 in Australia, essentially duplicating the success of Heaven on Earth. Runaway Horses was a blockbuster smash - just not in the country she was born in. But on the other hand, I know what she's saying. Her management and her record label were whispering in her ear as if the album was going to be the next Rhythm Nation 1814 or Like a Prayer, not R.E.M.'s Murmur. I mean fuck, in 1990, even Christmas albums went Gold. Belinda was not about to become Mariah Carey here.

Although I put on a positive face for the press, I was deeply hurt by the album's failure to live up to expectations. In many ways, it was my favorite collection of songs. Morgan counseled me to work at the things I could influence and let go of everything else. I tried. Some days I managed. Other days I was filled with anxiety and struggled with all of my issues.

Yeah, well, par for the course. It's also interesting that in one paragraph she says that she "second-guessed" herself and ended up making an "expensive" album and not a "great" album, and then in another paragraph calls the album "my favorite collection of songs," but Belinda is nothing if not a riddle of contradictions. Although I only got around to listening to the entire album about a year ago, frankly, I think it's a stronger overall album than Heaven on Earth! AMG gives it three stars and its predecessor four stars, but I would probably switch that rating around. No, it doesn't have that one single song that blows you away like "Heaven is A Place on Earth," but overall I find it more consistent, more adventurous, more ... not depressing exactly, but more tempestuous, mercurial. Runaway Horses, despite the thousand layers of studio gloss on it that Belinda apparently claims to regret, feels to me more like the work of the "real" Belinda. Sure, it's long way from "Skidmarks on My Heart," but let's just say that if your stock shares just plummeted and you're in the mood for a late night cruise through wine country, this is the album that begs to be blasted on your Mercedes stereo.

"Leave a Light On," "Summer Rain," and "La Luna" I already tackled, but get a load of these seven other goodies. The title track isn't quite a power ballad - it's more like an "energy saver" ballad, but as Belinda album cuts go, I say it's a keeper, with a chorus that inspires me to hoist my solar-powered flashlight high into the air. Even the key change, if predictable, still feels appropriate. "Runaway Horses" actually made some noise in the UK, peaking at #40. Let's just say these horses didn't exactly win the Kentucky Derby here. Besides, if you're riding "runaway horses," don't those horses actually belong to somebody? Wouldn't you need to give them back? The relatively uneventful video features Belinda in a wholesome peasant-style dress, leaning against a wall in the requisite abandoned house with crystal chandelier, as the shadows of horses prance around the room and sinister merry-go-round horses silently wait to pounce. A golden opportunity for further wall-humping, clearly wasted.



"Vision of You" hit #41 in the UK, but whoa, Darby Crash would not have been into this one. Get a load of this chorus: "Nobody's touch feels like your touch/Nobody gets to me that much/Nobody's kiss gets me inside/And I have no place to hide/Tell me what can I do/I have a vision of you." Generic, thy name is "Vision of You." I feel like even Streisand would have balked at these lyrics. It's a little too cliched and sedate for me, but judging by the YouTube comments (always an accurate barometer of public opinion), it has plenty of admirers. Let me just say that this is the video I posted back when I wanted to demonstrate how counter-intuitive it was that the singer of songs like "Vision of You" claimed Iggy Pop as her musical idol. Of course, Iggy Pop didn't look quite as good in a tight sequin dress (though I'm sure he tried).



"(We Want) The Same Thing" could be considered the album's big "rocker," Belinda's husky, lower-register delivery on the verses coming as close as this album gets to sassy, winking camp ("Here is my case/We've got no time to waste/'Cause we want the same thing"? "We're fighting a war/But we don't know what for/'Cause we want the same thing"??), but the chorus is sparkly and shiny and smothered in a thick wall of female vocals and bells and keyboards and it kind of sounds like a jingle for pantyhose but ... it's catchy. Good Lord, is it catchy. For those taking note, the single mix was even more violent and unruly, sporting opening chants of "Hey! Hey!," extra vocal overdubs, and more club-friendly percussive thumping. This one really caught the British public by storm, peaking at #6. Guess that remix did the trick?



So that's six singles that charted at least somewhere in the Western world, but I think where Runaway Horses has Heaven on Earth beat is in the relative strength of the leftover album tracks. And I mean "relative," because don't expect "Never Going Back Again" and "Oh Daddy" here. "Deep Deep Ocean" is like the lethargic twin sibling of "Leave a Light On," featuring the album's other George Harrison solo, and yet, despite being just a rat in a cage, listen to Belinda's vocals of rage! "Valentine" and "Whatever It Takes" is where the album and/or Rick Nowels start to lose me, but if you're going to lose the listener, you might as well do it around tracks 8 and 9, amirite? There's an octave jump on "Valentine" that I'm not entirely sure Belinda handles successfully, but did I ever co-write "You Get What You Give"? No, I did not. If Rick said it worked, then I guess it worked. There's also a synth solo that sounds like it left the apartment drunk one night back in 1985 and got lost for four years on its way back to the studio. I would have made a joke about "Whatever It Takes" resembling a bland Bryan Adams track, except the song literally features backing vocals from Bryan Adams.

Upon learning that the closing track, "Shades of Michaelangelo," features lyrics composed by none other than the artist herself (with music by her former colleague Charlotte Caffey), I was tempted to chuckle surreptitiously into my sleeve (so that Belinda wouldn't see my snark), but if I check my attitude at the door, I have to admit that the song is surprisingly soothing, spirited, and hummable. I'd say it kicks the crap out of the three cuts that proceeded it, at least. Maybe B.C. should have gotten off her ass and written more of her own lyrics - not because she was great at it, exactly, but because it apparently gave Charlotte the impetus to compose some excellent musical accompaniment:

A still life portrait of you by my window
Touched by an innocence now fading away

Into a quiet storm of the tears of the angels
Falling around me as I'm watching the days
I frame colors of passion against a fading sky

With a stroke of love on the canvas of my soul
I'm painting a perfect world with shades of Michaelangelo
It's a promise made to every heart that knows
We can live in a perfect world, with shades of Michaelangelo

I hear songs of children echo in the sky
I hear songs of children, a tomorrow so bright

But could she actually spell "Michaelangelo" correctly? Sure, these lyrics might be overly earnest and hokey, but are they any worse than the lyrics for, say, "Vision of You"? And while I feel like her singing on some of the album's tracks veers into wayward vibrato territory, on "Shades of Michaelangelo" she sounds clear and sweet and Go-Go-licious; I'm thinking that either she felt more at ease with her own lyrics, or that Charlotte had a more intuitive grasp of Belinda's proper vocal range than Rick did. Here's how she described the inspiration behind the track in an interview on The Arsenio Hall Show: "It's an environmental-type song, it's just how ... I look out my window, I have a garden and a hill, and just wondering whether it's gonna be there 50 years from now, and then I was at the Vatican in Rome, and looking at all the great masterpieces by Michaelangelo, and thought, 'Oh wouldn't that be perfect, to live in a picture just like that.'" Deeeeeep. Actually, that doesn't make any sense, but never mind. I watched Belinda suffer a dull, aching pain, and now she decided to show me the same. Wait, that's "Wild Horses," not Runaway Horses. You get the idea.



Anyway, it's funny how the business works. Belinda releases an album that, in my opinion, is stronger overall than Heaven on Earth, but it essentially kills the momentum of her American solo career. Let me put on my best Seinfeld voice and ask, "What was the deal?" I'm not saying it was the greatest album on God's green earth, but it's not like she married her 13-year-old cousin or something. Here's my best theory. Initially, with her first two albums, American record buyers were wondering if Belinda could pull off a solo career, and then when she answered that question in the affirmative, most of the suspense was gone, and suddenly she was just another adult contemporary singer (albeit one with a nutty punk background). Her songs weren't "risky" or "shocking" like Madonna's or Janet's. Whereas in Europe, the Heaven on Earth Belinda was the Belinda they were introduced to, and since Runaway Horses was mostly more of the same, they ate it right up. I guess my point is this: Belinda released three more solo albums in the '90s, and none of them did squat in the U.S., although, in my humble opinion, her music really never got noticeably worse. It's not like she pulled a Queen and switched from anthemic hard rock to sleazy synth-pop. If people liked the shit she had been doing in the '80s, they should have liked the shit she did in the '90s. They kept liking it in Britain! I guess predicting the pop charts is a bit like predicting a runaway horse. Sometimes that horse just leaves the stable, and no matter how much hay you place in the barn, it never comes back.

"I Wish It Would Rain Down": Can I Get A Yuppie Rock "Amen"? AKA Phil's Rehab Buddy Spins A Far-Fetched Yarn ... But Boy, Can He Play A Mean Guitar

Ah, the gospel choir. Like I've said before, the oldest trick in the book. It's shameless. It's obvious. It's tactless. But you know what? If the old, time-honored "gospel choir" trick could work for Foreigner, if it could work for Madonna, then you bet your sweet bald cranium it could work for Phil Collins. After all, Phil's music was baptized in the fires of the African-American experience. Somewhere amidst the toil and hardship of the lash and the chain, Yuppie Rock was born.

I remember once reading a review of ... But Seriously where the reviewer tossed "I Wish It Would Rain Down" something resembling, shall we say, a left-handed compliment, essentially stating that the song got a lot of mileage out of one chord change in the chorus. Here is why that reviewer will never be an '80s Adult Contemporary superstar and why Phil Collins has more intuitive musical magical dust in his pinkie finger than anyone who is reading, or will ever read, this blog post. Because sometimes ... one chord change is all you need. Phil understands this. Phil does not question this. Phil does not listen to nitpicky rock critics who ask for more than one chord change in the chorus, because he knows what moves people. Besides, it's not simply the one chord change; it's the choir shifting from "Ooooh" to "Rain downnn" right when the change occurs. Let me ask you something: is there more than one chord change in a rain storm? Is there more than one chord change in a breaking heart? The defense rests, your honor.

On this (presumed) homage to The Temptations' "I Wish It Would Rain," Phil sounds like one fairly subdued divorcée until he gets to the bridge, where he almost out forces the last 68 remaining strands of hair out of his scalp with arguably the most intense middle-aged wailing this side of "Against All Odds." "Well it's eating through, it's eating me through to me nowwwww, yeah-heah..." What's eating through? Acid rain? No wonder he wishes it would rain down - he probably wants all the normal rain to rinse the chemicals out of his eyes. "Cause I-I-I know, I-I-I know, I never meant to cause you no pain" - clearly pain is being caused here by someone, but it's Phil who sounds like the unlucky recipient. As the choir extends its ascending arms to the sky on the final "Let it rain," I imagine the final droplets of precipitation giving way to ethereal moonlight, the quite dated bass gurgle at 5:18 conjuring up the impression of a forceful pile of mud and sludge finally making its way into the nearest sewage drain.



Oh yeah, and Eric Clapton plays lead guitar. Maybe in 1989 this was viewed as some sort of exciting guest appearance ("Slowhand himself! Fresh from the glory of The Color of Money soundtrack!"), but I feel like making a big deal out of Eric Clapton guesting on a Phil Collins song would sort of be like making a big deal out of Willie Nelson guesting on a Waylon Jennings song. Whatever. I just kind of figured they hung out all the time and had known each other for years and lived five mansions down the road from each other, so what was the big deal? And frankly, I do not personally possess deep knowledge of guitar-playing technique, but I have never quite figured out what makes Clapton's guitar playing particularly distinctive. If I hadn't read that Clapton plays guitar on "I Wish It Would Rain Down," I don't think I would have recognized that it is indeed Clapton, as opposed to some other highly skilled electric guitar player from the same generation. Could someone tell me the difference between Clapton's playing and, I don't know, Peter Frampton's, or Steve Lukather's, or Rick Derringer's? On the other hand, play me a song with a guest appearance from, say, George Harrison, or David Gilmour, or Mark Knopfler, and I could tell you immediately, without even glancing at the liner notes or my trusty Wikipedia, who is playing the guitar. I'm not knocking Clapton, or his guitar-playing prowess; I'm just saying my ignorant ears can't pick up on what makes his style unique. I like Clapton because he's written or co-written many songs I enjoy, and has collaborated with many other musicians in order to create recordings I find pleasurable. If his songs were terrible but his guitar playing was excellent, I don't think I would give a rat's ass about the guy. On that note ... I like what he does here!

The video features a prickly casting director (I presume the actor was chosen to throw Phil's level of baldness into relief?) suddenly deprived of a singer for one of his show's main numbers, and in desperate need of a last-minute replacement. Clapton (sporting a Gavin Newsom-esque level of hair gel) suggests, "How about Bill here, he's got a good voice ... he used to be the drummer in a really good band, and when the singer left, he took over." Yeah sure, Mr. Greasy, and I've got a bridge I'd like to sell you. Suddenly "Bill Collins" imagines he is the toast of the theater world, taking the nation by storm via an old-fashioned montage, complete with shots of spinning newspapers, railroad tracks, and the classic "line moving westward across a giant map." Phil rockets to movie stardom, landing roles alongside Bogart, Cagney, Marilyn, and Groucho, but alas ... 'twas all just a dream.



It turns out that not only did Clapton crank out some major riffage on "I Wish It Would Rain Down," but he also inadvertently inspired the title. From In The Air Tonight:

So after three weeks of detox, my rehab counselor, by court order, forced me to attend a support group. Fucking hell. Last thing I needed was a bunch of twitchy little street people giving me advice about "recovery," you know? Anyway, I wore a wig, some fake sideburns, and a fake mustache, and made sure to get there a few minutes late, so I could sneak into the back row. Some Latvian woman was sitting at the front, babbling on and on about how her family had "disowned" her and a bunch of boring drug addict crap like that. Suddenly, who do I see about two rows in front of me, but Eric Clapton! Christ almighty. I knew about his troubles with the bottle, but man, I thought that had been years ago. I sure as shit wasn't going to be caught dead at any horse tranquilizer support group in ten years, you feel me? I tiptoed past some other strung-out hobo types and sat down right next to him.

"Umm, hello ... do I?..."

"Eric!" I whispered.

"I'm sorry, what do you ..."

"Eric! It's me! Phil! Phil Collins!"

The shock gradually traveled across his weathered yet sexy face. "Phil? But why ... what ... what's with the Groucho Marx get-up?"

"Shhhh! Don't let anyone know it's me. This is embarrassing."

"Oh come on Phil. We all know about the horse tranquilizer thing."

"You do?"

"The truth is, everyone seemed to know you had a problem ... except you."

I sagged forward with shame.

Eric leaned in close. "Listen man, I've been down that road. You want to hear some embarrassing stories, boy, have I got some doozies."

"Like what?"

"OK, so one night after a show in San Antonio - I was checking out that Stevie Ray Vaughan kid, not too shabby - I downed a couple of bottles of Jack Daniels and wandered out into the parking lot."

"'Hey Crapton!' Three rednecks in Stetson hats were leaning against a white Ford pick-up."

"'What's it to you?'"

"'Why'd you do that weak-ass cover of that Bob Marley song?'"

"A bad night was already getting worse, but let's just say that cooler heads didn't prevail. I replied, 'Why do you let your weak-ass redneck buddies fuck you in the ass?'"

"Before I knew it, they knocked me out cold, stuffed me in a burlap sack, and tossed me into the back of the truck. I woke up with a ball gag stuck in my mouth. 'This is finally it,' I thought to myself. 'The greatest British guitarist of his generation, about to be Grade-A Texas barbecue.' They shouted back insults as the truck skidded over the potholes: 'Hey lay down Sally ... in back of our truck!' 'Looks like we "got you on your knees," eh Layla?' 'After midnight, we're gonna let it all hang down, all right ... and burn this fucker alive!'"

"So ... they threw me in a ditch, poured lighter fluid all over my jacket, tossed a lit match onto my back, and sped off into the dusty southwestern night. As the flames crawled over my skin, I began humming my old song, 'Let It Rain," but it began morphing into something else. Suddenly I remember thinking 'God, I wish it would rain down ... you know I wish it would rain down on me now.' Twisting and turning in the dry Texas evening, my flesh crackling from the heat, I swear Phil, I even heard a gospel choir joining in on my desperate prayer."

"Well what happened?"

"It certainly didn't fucking rain, I can tell you that. But I guess someone saw the orange glow from a road in the distance, came by, and doused me with a gallon of water. He carried me back to his jeep. Turns out he was a big fan. Once he realized who I was, well, you know, he pulled out copies of John Mayall's Bluesbreakers and Five Live Yardbirds and Blind Faith and asked if I could sign them. Since I couldn't really hold a pen, I just signed them with the charcoal-like flakes of skin that were now coating my fingers. Anyway, the point is Phil, you don't ever need to feel embarrassed about where your addictions have taken you."

I didn't want to say anything, but personally I thought he'd just made the whole story up. Here's a pledge you can take all the way to the bank: Every single story you've heard from me in this book ... is the God's honest truth.

"La Luna": Belinda Goes Latin AKA My New Nickname For Belinda Carlisle: Lazy Madonna

Want a surefire way to make me chuckle? Just compare Belinda Carlisle's career to Madonna's. Somehow, I never fail to find amusement in this comparison, and not because it's hardly a fair comparison at all. Pop music is not a contest, but if it were, you might say that Madonna got to the finish line so far ahead of Belinda, she had time to cook breakfast, eat it, and clean the fucking dishes before Belinda even appeared over the horizon. Doesn't matter. I can't help but root for the underdog. Madonna Madonna Madonna, everybody's always blabbing about Madonna, but call me the captain of Team Carlisle.

The funny thing is, as my completely healthy and reasonable fascination with the career of this erstwhile Go-Go slowly gathered momentum in the fashion of the giant boulder that menaces Indiana Jones at the start of Raiders of the Lost Ark, I began to notice something: Madonna and Belinda Carlisle's careers have continuously intersected in kooky, unexpected ways. I'm not talking about anything blatant or deliberate. Nothing that's entered the realm of common knowledge. I'm talking about a series of little dinky connections, the kind that only true '80s pop aficionados could spot. For example:

1. Mary Lambert directed the video for the Go-Go's' "Turn to You"; Lambert directed the videos for Madonna's "Borderline," "Like a Virgin," "Material Girl," "La Isla Bonita," and "Like a Prayer"
2. Donna De Lory briefly sang back-up for Belinda circa 1987; De Lory sang back-up for Madonna from 1987 to 2006 and was a prominent member of her touring "entourage," if you will
3. Rick Nowels produced and co-wrote almost all of Belinda's solo material; Nowels co-wrote three songs with Madonna on her Ray of Light album
4. Tony Ward starred in the video for "I Get Weak"; Ward starred in the videos for "Cherish," "Justify My Love," and "Erotica"
5. Sandra Bernhard famously hung out with Madonna in the late '80s; Bernhard has less-famously hung out with Belinda for decades
6. Madonna released two songs on the VisionQuest soundtrack; as I discovered years ago, Belinda sang backing vocals on a throwaway Don Henley track that also appeared on the VisionQuest soundtrack

I'm sure I could come up with a few more connections if I tried, but hey, I've got to go to work tomorrow. What I find truly amusing about all this is that, as far as I'm aware, their paths have always managed to crisscross without ever truly, officially colliding. Take the 1984 MTV Video Music Awards, where Madonna humped the stage in a wedding dress and gave, to use a phrase I tend to avoid, an "iconic" performance, while Belinda merely stumbled out onto the stage in a blurry daze with Kathy Valentine to present an award to Iggy Pop. The orbits of these two planets have even hovered toward each other as recently as the 2016 Billboard Music Awards, where Belinda fronted her longtime band in their 2,738th rendition of "We Got the Beat," while Madonna, as I understand it, showed up later in the program to pay tribute to Prince (who, if you can believe it, was briefly her lover?).

Here's how you know Madonna's and Belinda Carlisle's destinies are truly intertwined: Madonna was born the day before Belinda was. Read that sentence again carefully. I don't just mean that Madonna's birthday is one day on the calendar ahead of Belinda's. Oh no. Madonna was literally born the day before Belinda was. Madonna Ciccone was born on August 16, 1958. Belinda Carlisle was born on August 17, 1958. They are almost the same exact age. Do you know what that means? Do you know what that means?

ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

Kinda weird though. Right?

All these shared colleagues and communal moments, and yet, I don't believe the two of them have ever actually met each other. If they have, Belinda has never mentioned it, although she's frequently expressed genuine admiration for her contemporary. Judging from an infamous scene in Truth or Dare, however, the same might not be said of Madonna. Once upon a time, the clip was on YouTube, but if I recall correctly, it features Madonna sitting in her dressing room, looking snotty and bored, while the aforementioned Donna De Lory sings a snippet of "Heaven is a Place on Earth" (a song that, as Belinda's backing vocalist, she would have known quite well), as a female companion continuously pounds her back, thus generating an exaggerated approximation of Belinda's prominent vibrato. As De Lory does this, Madonna mutters something like "These girls annoy me." You know what probably annoyed Madonna? The fact that, no matter how many more records she sold, no matter how much more seriously rock critics took her music, no matter how many more pretentious journalistic think-pieces she inspired, she would never approach the effortless physical majesty that was late '80s Belinda Carlisle. And Madonna wasn't the type to let that kind of superficial shit roll off her back.

Anyway. What I'm trying to say is this: the comparison had been bubbling around in my brain for a while, but I couldn't quite condense it into a simple, marketable phrase. Then one day, it came to me:

Lazy Madonna.

BOOM. That's why they pay me the big bucks, people. Belinda Carlisle's career is exactly what Madonna's career might have looked like ... if Madonna had been much, much lazier. Which is not to suggest that Belinda has been lazy. She has achieved more in her lifetime than I ever will. I mean this in the most flattering way possible. Belinda's laziness is part of her charm. Who can relate to Madonna? She's like a giant amorphous blob of ego. Belinda is all too mortal, all too human, but therein lies the beauty of life itself.

Belinda is like the In-N-Out to Madonna's McDonald's. In-N-Out is a successful franchise. Many who eat there tend to prefer it to McDonald's. But would anyone dare to suggest that In-N-Out has had a bigger impact on the fast food industry than McDonald's? Or, in baseball terms, Belinda is like the Kenny Lofton to Madonna's Barry Bonds. Lofton was a fun player, made the All-Star team, had some priceless playoff moments. Most MLB players would kill to have had the kind of career that Kenny Lofton had. Many fans might be personally more fond of Lofton than they are of Bonds. But Bonds was simply on another level. They were not equals.

I used to feel ashamed of myself for daring to think of Belinda as a performer even remotely comparable to Madonna. One day I took a peek at the All Music Guide, to see if they had any light to shed on the matter. I looked up Madonna and clicked on the "Similar Artists" tab. And there, at the very end of a long list of artists, I mean the absolute last name listed, was Belinda Carlisle. I had to smile wryly to myself. It's like someone at AMG was thinking, "Yeahhhh, I guess, she's sorta kinda like Madonna, maybe if you're generous." She just barely squeaked in. (Curiously, on the same page now, Belinda is the tenth name listed, out of roughly fifty. I think my blog series might have raised her standing?)

I say all this as a prelude to a discussion of Belinda's 1989 single "La Luna." If Belinda Carlisle is Lazy Madonna, then "La Luna" is Belinda Carlisle's "La Isla Bonita." It is Rick Nowels deciding that, hey, if Madonna can sprinkle a little pico de gallo onto her otherwise Anglocentric pop confections, then damn it, so can Belinda. Behold as Belinda tangos through a soundscape of spidery flamenco guitar, prickly castanets, and feisty ... I want to say ... chopping blocks? (I demur to anyone else who can more accurately describe the percussion sound that drives the chorus.)

I can just see Rick and Ellen now. "How do we make our cheesy Belinda ballad a little more ... cosmopolitan, a little more ... Mediterranean?" A song called "The Moon"? Borrrr-ing. Ah, but a song called ... "La Luna" ... now's that exotic, that's mysterious. It's like "The Moon" ... but in Spanish. Muy bueno, mis amigos. Especially effective is the quick name-drop of Marseille, which, to any of my fellow Count of Monte Cristo fans out there, should instantly evoke tales of vengeful lust and passionate intrigue.

Belinda hams it up nice and convincingly on the verses, although during the pre-chorus she seems to hit the lower limits of her register, as if she is dipping her throat in the moonlit sea, only to soar abruptly upward on the chorus toward the celestial body in question, the droplets flowing from her fiery locks. By the time the chorus arrives, the castanets, chamber maids (fine, back-up vocalists), and acoustic minstrels seemingly link arms and form a circle in the village square, and frankly, I half expect someone to shout out "Olé!" Suddenly after the second chorus, the flamenco guitarist finds himself in a dank, cobblestone-littered alley, face-to-face with a sexy, menacing violinist. The duel is on! Her eyelids flicker in the moonlight, luring him onward, onward! Then after the bridge, our fiddling she-devil clones herself and surrounds poor Belinda with the sweet sounds of her strings. What can save her? What else: a key change! Amusingly, "La Luna" may sport the best Stephane Grappelli-style violin fade-out this side of Bob Dylan's Desire (heard in full on the album mix).

"La Isla Bonita" hit #4 in the US and #1 in the UK. So if, as I propose, Belinda is Lazy Madonna, then how did "La Luna" do? Fittingly, it didn't do squat over here, and managed to peak in Britain at a whopping ... #38. Ay Carumba. To say that it deserved better is to say that a starving orphan deserves better, but that's OK. "La Luna" is here any time people want a taste of its sultry carnal magic.



The video finds our former Dottie Danger wearing the Contact Lenses of Death. I mean come on, Belinda's eyes were naturally beautiful, but I'm pretty sure they weren't that beautiful. They didn't leap out of her skull with the incandescent radiance of glistening jewels. Those have got to be lenses people. It's like her eyes have been dipped in a fairy godmother's kiss. They're not even blue, they're some kind of hyper-blue. At any rate, Belinda spends most of the video stretching, posing, and flipping that wavy red hair in her luxurious bed, having apparently become Marie Antoinette, clutching a strategically-placed sheet to her chest, trying not to accidentally freeze her entire kingdom with her eyes. Is it just me, or does this castle possess some surprisingly bright candles? Interspersed are images of Belinda's court arriving at what appears the be the erotic costume ball from Eyes Wide Shut (the violinist apparently being played by Rumpelstiltskin), as well as oddly anachronistic shots of modern day Belinda strolling around an unspecified European city, looking decidedly un-sorceress-like, and some studly piece of Eurotrash who could go toe-to-toe with George Michael in a stubble contest. Dios mio! Favorite YouTube comments:

i"m sure those eyes have killed many times... innocently or not

She is so god damn beautiful in this video clip with such an angel's voice. PS: Stephanie don't break up with me over this comment pls

They must have airbrushed out the angel's wings on Belinda's back.

I think Belinda Carlyle would look great covered in gooey custard.

She looks like she's trying to shoo away flies with her hair at the start.

HER FACIAL BONE STRUCTURE IS AN AESTHETIC FEIST

Given that Belinda is sitting down for 90% of this vid, she sells it 100%.

I'd eat raisins out of that juicy fart box of hers, and I fucking hate raisins!

"Praying For Time," Settling For A Blank Screen Instead

SERIOUS. This song is so SERIOUS. You've heard of Curious George? Well how about Serious George? And if people didn't like Serious George? Then you know what? Maybe George didn't feel like being their kind of pop star. He didn't need no Man in the Yellow Hat buying his damn music.

My family didn't have MTV in our cable package back in 1990, but somehow I must have caught the "Praying for Time" video on another, less expensive channel. Apparently it was a video so arresting, even those lowly network channels knew they had to broadcast it at some point. You know the video for "One More Try," where George is just standing there in a gothic-looking apartment for six minutes and virtually nothing happens, but it's mesmerizing anyway? The video for "Praying for Time" is like the video for "One More Try," except without the video. Forget George Michael (if you were hoping to catch a glimpse of The Bearded One, pull up a chair 'cause it might be a while); there isn't even any other nice stuff to look at. The entire video consists of the lyrics appearing and disappearing on a black screen. That's it. That's all she wrote. No if's, and's or but's. They say that if you stare long enough at this video, you'll begin to see stubble. Now, plenty of alternative acts, such as The Replacements and the Pixies, had turned their music videos into metaphorical middle fingers, but none of those acts were multi-platinum superstars, were they? With the video for "Praying for Time," George was all but saying to the record-listening public, "You want a video? Here's your fuckin' video."

Ten-year-old me thought this was the most brilliant concept anyone had ever conceived of in the history of popular entertainment.

Perhaps I'm mistaken, but I feel like, by this time, videos had steadily been growing more and more opulent, more and more expensive, more and more indulgent. By 1990, videos were such a "thing." Hell, if I recall correctly, MTV was airing "making of" documentaries about the making of music videos! Suddenly, along came a video that was so bare-bones, so basic, calling it a video was like calling a Hot Pocket a meal, or calling Monaco a country. The media and the gossip columnists and the hoi-polloi were all sitting around, as they did with every other mega-star of the era, wondering what could George Michael possibly be coming up with next? And he gave them ... the total opposite of that. With one simple gesture, he was essentially expressing to the unthinking masses, "Who gives a crap about 'the next George Michael video'? I've had it with all this 'blowing your mind with my next video' shit. Just listen to the fucking song, fer Chrissakes." A gesture which, ironically, blew my mind.

You see, the "Praying for Time" video was, in my tiny pop music world, that rarest of creatures: something I had never seen a recording artist do before. I was also, at that age, entirely unfamiliar with, say, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, Metal Machine Music, or Tusk. Every pop singer I'd ever encountered seemed to be desperately trying to give the people exactly what they wanted. As far as I was concerned, this video, and the "content" of the lyrics, meant one of two things: instant career suicide, or a complete reinvention that would take George's success to an entirely new level. It didn't end up being either of those things, but career context aside, I've always thought this was some good shit. "Praying for Time" is serious, all right - seriously awesome.



Now that I have listened (without prejudice) to pre-1980s pop music, I realize that, with its methodical acoustic chug, "Praying for Time" reeks of that solo John Lennon, "Instant Karma!"/"Mind Games"/"Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" vibe. George apparently gave the engineer one solitary instruction: "TREBLE. NEEDZ MOAR TREBLE." Seriously, you could blast this sucker in the next room and I wouldn't even feel it through the walls, that's how little bass there is. And ECHO. An entire Lennon solo album's worth of echo - on one song. George wanted to make it SNAP in your ears, like an infant's wail.

If I were in a less generous mood, I might suggest that the lyrics of "Praying for Time" betray the songwriter's unfamiliarity with a more philosophical or political style of writing. Sure, "One More Try" and "Kissing a Fool" successfully took his post-Wham! music in a more "adult" direction, but if "Praying for Time" had a subtitle, it would be "I Am An Important Artist Now." In places he seems a bit in over his head. "I guess somewhere along the way/He must have let us all out to play"? Let us all out to play? That sounds kind of ... awesome! I love playing! I think what George was trying to say was that, in the words of Trent Reznor, "God is dead/And no one cares/And if there is a hell/I'll see you there," but the lyric makes God sound like the universe's best PE teacher. "Your television takes a stand"? Pretty sure my television doesn't have any thoughts on AIDS or Apartheid, last time I checked. "And what was over there ... is over here"? Holy shit, stuff is there, then it's here, and I just can't handle how stuff keeps moving from there to here! (The surface banality of the lyric is arguably rendered comical by the massive chord change beneath the word "here"). Throughout the song I can practically hear George thinking, "OK, so how can I make this deep?" What rhymes with "yours"? How about "door"? Does "scream from behind your door" sound dramatic, even though it's kind of generic? Like his heroes Stevie Wonder and Bernie Taupin before him, I think he just shrugged and thought, "Eh, close enough." It's the kind of song that, if sung on the school playground, would have been easy to make raspberry noises at.

Yet given George's untimely passing, I think the song plays a bit differently now than it did in 1990, or even in 2015. Before, one was tempted to chuckle at our dear Georgios Kyriacos's sudden attempt to become Billy Bragg. But now, he sounds like an omniscient prophet of doom, howling from beyond the grave, damning us mere mortals for the foolishness of our ways. Now the lyrics come off as poignant, pointed, bitter, and uncompromising. "Charity is a coat you wear twice a year"? See, that's why I never give to charity at all: because at least no one can accuse me of pretending to care for appearance's sake. Frankly, it's hard not to love a US chart-topping single that suggests God has disowned all of humanity, as if he were the strict cantor father in The Jazz Singer ("I have no son!"). The YouTube comments section is littered with a thousand variations of "George was so ahead of his time," "This song could have been written today," and "Sadly this is still relevant." "Praying For Time" is like George Michael's own "Imagine": good before, but even better now that he's dead.

I think the chorus is what keeps the song from becoming a preachy diatribe from some rich pop star who has suddenly realized that he "cares." George doesn't pretend to have any answers other than to, in the words of Kurt Vonnegut, "behave decently in an indecent world." "It's hard to love," he sings, but that doesn't mean you should cease doing it. God may have stopped keeping score, but to George, that isn't permission to suddenly become an eager member of the "What's mine is mine and not yours" crowd. God may have stopped keeping score, you rich Yuppie tightwad, but George Michael certainly hasn't. "Wounded skies above": now there's an image for you. Notice how George doesn't himself say that "it's much, much too late," but that the wounded skies above are saying it, which suggests that he personally might disagree with the skies and that he still believes the human race can be saved. It takes some guts to disagree with the wounded sky, you know what I'm saying? I'm inclined to interpret the final line as George proposing a legal loophole to God's judgment, like the knight in The Seventh Seal trying to cheat death via a board game. "Hmm, so if the skies are saying that it's too late, maybe what we should be praying for isn't 'peace' or 'wisdom' or 'love' or any of that crap, but 'time.'" Whoa. Professor Higglediggle writes:

"Praying For Time" resituates the temporal intransigence of the cosmos in a post-Nietzschean framework, proposing the elasticity of human experience without undermining the value of what Heidegger referred to as "Dasien," or the "being for whom being is a question." Michael's declaration that "God's stopped keeping score" suggests an embrace of Schopenhauer's philosophical pessimism, but this tendency is immediately countered by the concept of "play," which (re)purposes Sartre's notion of man as "being condemned to be free" as a jest by a parental agent whose indifference renders the universe absurd, a concept promulgated by the track's music video which, in the words of Camus, illustrates "the confrontation between human need and the unreasonable silence of the world" with its intermittent flashes of language divorced from further visual embellishment, forcing the viewer to negate any inherent meaning and create his/her own ethical values in response to the confrontational void.

"Summer Rain," Yuppie Pain AKA Belinda Goes Buckmaster

A sullen widow cries in the dark. A train whistle howls in the distance. An unrelenting torrent of droplets pelts the glass pane. Humanity gazes achingly into the fevered belly of its own corroded soul. The Midwestern sky dramatically severs itself in two as the American Dream groans with Rockwellian rage. I bring you ... Belinda Carlisle's "Summer Rain."

During that first fateful listen to Belinda's Her Greatest Hits in December of 2010, I must admit that I was not terribly impressed with the material I had not heard on the radio before, which was about ... 70% of the work before me? That said, "Summer Rain," at least, struck me as "pleasant." "Hey, if you've gotta fill out your greatest hits collection with a bunch of random album tracks, you could do a hell of a lot worse," is roughly what I thought, in between clicks of Mahjong Titans. Turns out that, despite my never having heard it before, "Summer Rain" had actually been a hit - not a huge hit, mind you, but a respectable one: it peaked at #30 in the US and #23 in the UK. In fact, it is, to date, her very last US Top 40 hit, Go-Go or solo (to be fair, she's still around and, hey, maybe a remix of one of those tracks from her Kundalini yoga album sung in Gurmuhki - I am not making this up - could always catch on out of nowhere). Amusingly enough, the single did best in Australia, peaking at #6; supposedly, there is an Australian "Summer Rain" dance that the audience performs whenever Belinda sings this Down Under (which I imagine is more impressive than the dance she performs in the video).

But, as with "Leave a Light On," it was a tiny detail I spotted on the song's Wikipedia page that made me do a Jim Carrey-style double-take and re-evaluate my initial indifference. Hold on, did I just read that the string arrangement was done by ... Paul Buckmaster?

You mean the Paul Buckmaster?

The same Paul Buckmaster who devised the string arrangements for David Bowie's "Space Oddity"? The Rolling Stones' "Moonlight Mile"? Harry Nilsson's "Without You"? Carly Simon's "You're So Vain"? You mean the same Paul Buckmaster who crafted all those haunting string arrangements on my cherished early '70s Elton John albums? You know, the self-titled album, Tumbleweed Connection, Madman Across the Water, etc.? We're talking "Your Song," "Burn Down the Mission," "Levon," "Have Mercy On the Criminal." That Paul Buckmaster?



Let's get something straight here. Landing Paul Buckmaster would not have been like landing some random record industry professional to write your string arrangements for you. Landing Paul Buckmaster would have been like landing George Harrison to play your guitar solo for you. Buckmaster string arrangements were distinctive pieces of work. Buckmaster string arrangements were vigorous, brooding, forceful, bold, violent. Buckmaster string arrangements rocked you like a guitar riff rocked you. Buckmaster string arrangements grabbed you by the lapel and said, "Did you just say that string arrangements are only meant to be heard in the background?" Buckmaster's string arrangements were prominent.

Now, I don't know if it was Rick Nowels, or Rick Nowels's buddy, or someone further on up the MCA chain who got Paul Buckmaster to do the string arrangement for "Summer Rain," but I do know this: Belinda knew what she was getting. How do I know this? In Lips Unsealed, she goes out of her way to state that Elton John was one of her musical heroes (I swear to God, we have the exact same taste in music). And sure, lots people are casual Elton John fans who wouldn't know Paul Buckmaster from Grandmaster Flash, but, come on, she knew. Just check out this recently-posted cover of "I Need You To Turn To," a deep cut from Elton's self-titled 1970 breakthrough album, and tell me that she wasn't stoked back in 1989 that she snagged Paul Buckmaster to do the string arrangement on "Summer Rain." Yeah. She knew.

So after seeing that little factoid on Wikipedia, I thought to myself, "All right, guess I need to listen to this shit again." And ... you can see where this is going. The Buckmaster/Elton John connection got my initial attention, but I quickly realized that what I had on my hands here was another sleeper Belinda gem. Sure, it might have received some airplay in 1990, but it hasn't received any airplay since - and I'm not entirely sure why that is, because I'd rather hear "Summer Rain" in the department store than the umpteenth airing of "(Everything I Do) I Do It For You." I'd put "Summer Rain" up there with anything else Belinda ever did, and coming from me, by God, that is saying something. So would she; Belinda has gone on record as stating that "Summer Rain" is probably her personal favorite of all her solo tracks. "Summer Rain" dares to give Yuppie Rock a good name.

Because "Summer Rain" is bleaker than Leonard Cohen's worst nightmares. From Wikipedia: "The song is about a man who goes away to war and leaves his wife, saying that nothing will change—they will be together forever and always ... The song is set in the present as his widow sings it, remembering the last time she saw him." She's singing the song to her DEAD LOVER. This is some poetic melancholy shit people. And here I was, just assuming it was another bland love song with a string arrangement that was not done by Paul Buckmaster. Never judge a book by its cover:

Whispering our goodbyes, waiting for a train
I was dancing with my baby in the summer rain
I can hear him saying "nothing will change"
Come dance with me baby, in the summer rain

I remember the rain on our skin
And his kisses hotter than the Santa Ana winds
Whispering our goodbyes, waiting for a train
I was dancing with my baby in the summer rain

I remember laughing 'till we almost cried
There at station that night
I remember looking in his eyes

Oh my love, it's you and that I dream of
Oh my love, since that day
Somewhere in my heart I'm always
Dancing with you in the summer rain

Doesn't matter what I do now
Doesn't matter what I say
Somewhere in my heart I'm always
Dancing with you in the summer rain

You see, "Summer Rain" is a bit more ... narrative-driven than B.C.'s usual fare. To paraphrase Linda Rondstadt and Aaron Neville, I don't know much about songwriters Robbie Seidman and Maria Vidal, but I know I love them, since they provided a refreshing change of pace from the usual Nowels-Shipley Hallmark-fest ("Love Never Dies," "Vision of You," etc.). Do the lyrics explicitly mention her lover's death? Do the lyrics of "American Pie" explicitly mention Buddy Holly? It's called subtlety, people. The most blatant hint is the line "It was the last time that I saw him, in the summer rain." Maybe he just skipped town after he got back from duty. Look, who am I to question Wikipedia? I also hope that Seidman and Vidal were not intending the story to take place in Southern California, despite the reference to the Santa Ana winds, as any native Californian knows that it does not rain in the summer. Period. Sure, about once every three to four years there will be a freak summer thunderstorm, but it's on the rare side. In fact, if it actually did rain in California in the summer, I might be finishing this blog post from my home computer and not my work computer instead (thank you, PG&E). And one more thing: Southern California is not a region littered with trains. I imagine Belinda and her doomed soldier to be waving their tearful goodbyes somewhere in the South, or the Midwest. I expect the geographical references in my forgotten Belinda Carlisle Yuppie Rock hits to be accurate, damn it.

So yes, I came for the string arrangement (which, like all Buckmaster arrangements, caresses the track in its dionysian grip, and which can be heard more extensively on the album mix), but I stayed for the melodrama. A couple of nice touches: 1) the verses are powered along by what sounds like a marimba (how many Belinda songs can claim that?); 2) the low, buzzing drone of guitar right before the second and third chorus, like a hive of cicadas lurking in the humid evening gloom. The overall air of restraint arguably makes the grimness of the lyrics all the more effective, as if Belinda is too catatonic to vent her grief properly. She's too dead inside to aim for true catharsis.



I feel ambivalent about Belinda letting her inner country singer loose on her delivery of the word "dayy-aynce," but nothing gets me going like the sight of Belinda in a long black short-sleeved dress (with just the right hint of cleavage) "dayy-ayncing" in an old rustic barn while CGI clouds zoom eerily past the window. I believe this was her "early 1990" look: hair still red, but straightened out and clipped just above her shoulders, with a dose of (fake?) black eyelashes. And if you were expecting me to complain about the sight of Belinda drenched by rain, you are going to be mistaken. What else? The director really went for that 4th of July/Main Street U.S.A. aesthetic, complete with sepia-tinted shots of brass band and an impressively WASPy fake family standing next to Belinda on the ol' family porch, waving cluelessly in slow motion (your son is never coming back, you fools!). My favorite shots are the ones of Belinda in a long black trenchcoat (0:04, 1:31, 2:45, 3:10, 3:27), strolling dejectedly along the seaside. Let's call this her "sexy grieving widow" look. And how about all those sexy shots of fighter planes, gravestones, sonar screens, and radar dishes? After putting it off for several years, I just recently re-watched The Deer Hunter, and, honestly, throw in a couple of shots of sadistic Vietcong guards forcing Belinda's hubby to play Russian roulette in a bamboo cage, and this video would pretty much amount to the same thing.

There seems to be an amusing tug of war in the YouTube comments between those praising Belinda for her "classiness" as opposed to the female stars of today, and those pointing out that Belinda might have been even more fucked up than the skankiest pop whores of 2019, but just knew how to hide it better. Why argue when the correct answer is "all of the above"?

Wearing a long black dress, still looks hotter than most of the pop singers today.

a video from a time when women didnt need to dress like whores to sell their music.

Oh the memories... One of Belinda's most beautiful love songs! She looks so Beautiful and classic, reminds me of a younger Priscilla Presley. I think she looked great as a Blonde, but have always loved that fierce Auburn on her!

I would dance with Belinda in the Summer Rain, sunshine, or in the snow if I had to!

heres the difference between now and then.....belinda was hot and sexy but her career didnt depend on it because she was a real musician. she could sing, she could write songs and as a guy i genuinely liked her music. the same cant be said for 99 percent of todays female pop stars. the 80s had a balance between sexuality and innocence where i not only wanted to fuck her but wouldnt mind waking up next to her every day, where todays women, my urge is to fuck them then send them packing.

eh? sorry to contradict but this was the era when madonna was masterbating on stage wearing JPG conical bras!

She was very luck to get off so easily with the American public. Belinda and crew did more coke and partied more than Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan or any of the other divas out there today. Of course Belinda had talent. :D

no one, no female singer, that I can think of, can ope their throat and just let it out like Belinda Carlisle!!!!! One in a million, baby!

Such a perfect pop song. Runaway Horses deserves a Pitchfork review getting a 10 and hipsters discovering the greatest pop album of the late 80s!

Why is she sniffing her armpit?

she's not - ever seen flamenco dancers? B smell like summer rain if you are wondering - she's perfect and extraordinary.

Belinda '88 Interview Highlights AKA Who Knew Identity Crisis Could Be This Much Fun?

While late '80s corporate gloss may have dulled Belinda's musical rough edges, it certainly didn't dull her cagey, self-loathing interviewing habits. Here, for example, is a clip from an unknown Australian program with a suave male interviewer wearing a "peace sign" t-shirt who actually seems to have been following Belinda's career and isn't merely babbling on and on about how great she looks, although I wouldn't have blamed him if he had done so (personally, my first question to Belinda would have been "How was the Polynesian wedding you've apparently just returned from?"). The most amusing moment is when he assumes that she left the Go-Go's in order to establish her artistic independence, and she gazes up at the ceiling awkwardly for several seconds before clarifying that, actually, she left the Go-Go's because ... the Go-Go's imploded and she didn't have anything else better to do:

Interviewer: You've had a fairly successful solo career already, are you doing the things that you wanted to do? I mean, you left the Go-Go's to become a solo artist, are you, you know, are you getting those thoughts and ideas down?
Belinda: Well I left the Go-Go's because we weren't getting along and -
Interviewer: Oh.
Belinda: - and I knew (giggles) and I knew that, um, I'd eventually be able to have a solo career and um, I feel very fortunate to have come from a successful band and have success on my own now.

Yes, Belinda, are you getting those crucial "thoughts and ideas" down? Thoughts like "Why is Madonna thinner than me?" or "Am I lying if I say that I don't have a drug problem if I'm at least not doing coke?" (Fortunately, the day would come when Belinda would get those magical thoughts and ideas down, but surprisingly, the medium of song was not the form those thoughts and ideas would take.)



Here's Belinda at a press conference giving a fresh spin on the old tale of how she met Morgan. This particular telling seems to be equal parts candid and loopy:



Money quote: "We met and he walked away and I thought, 'He's not interested,' but ... uh ... in actuality it turned out that he was just sort of shy but I thought that he thought that I was, you know, better looking in pictures."

Like Dracula, '80s Belinda always looks mildly uncomfortable whenever she's being interviewed in daylight. Here she is squinting her way through what feels like more of an interrogation than an interview, in sunglasses and an oversized white t-shirt. I don't know what question she's just been asked in this clip, but based on her answer, I'm assuming it was something like "Why is your music so disposable?" Her hilariously defensive reply:

"There are some pop acts and pop artists that are great at ... uh ... giving messages and providing messages for people, and I wish I could do that but it just seems more natural for me to provide an escape, and ... um ... to uh sort of ... you know it's not mindless music but it's escape-type music and that's just as important sometimes as, you know ... being political, or, uh, listening to message-type music."

Translation: You got a problem with my music? Well kiss my ass. The thing is ... she's right! I cannot begin to tally the amount of hours Belinda's music has helped me escape the gnawing dread of modern existence. In another portion of that same interview, she reveals that even she is not that into hearing herself on the radio twenty-four hours a day:

"I think that I've been on the radio for almost a year now, and that's a long time. I can afford to take a little bit of a break. I don't want people to get real sick of me ... I know how it feels as a fan to hear, like, the same voices on the radio ... it keeps a career healthy to give people a little bit of a break from you."

Well, Belinda certainly wouldn't have needed to worry about becoming overexposed on U.S. Top 40 radio for very much longer. Hi-Yo! But seriously, can we go ahead and give this woman a "Pop Star Humility" award? It's like she's flipped the script. You're supposed to say, "I want to be the biggest star in the world!" Instead, she's saying, "Eh."

There's something about the Swedes - I don't know what it is, but they always manage to add an extra bit of zaniness to Belinda interviews. Smack in the middle of a discussion of Belinda's drug problems, a fire alarm goes off. The message: Belinda's drug problems were a four-alarm fire. I love the tone of her answer, and the look on her face, when the spiky-haired Swedish interviewer asks, "What do you have to say about drugs today?": She pinches her nose slightly, as if someone has handed her a plate of moldy cheese, and blurts out "Just don't even start!" Well there you go, folks. Belinda Carlisle's 12-step plan for dealing with drug addiction: Don't even start! Boom, easy, done.



This segment from People Magazine practically writes itself. "When Belinda Carlisle sings that heaven is a place on earth, you get the feeling that she really means it. This is a woman who's found heaven. The darling of college campuses across the nation, a fraternity house favorite has emerged as the Princess of Pop." First of all: "college campuses"? Would the interviewer put the bong down? I am not aware of Belinda having achieved any particularly high levels of popularity on college campuses. Was the host getting Belinda mixed up with ... 10,000 Maniacs? Second: "Princess of Pop?" No, no, no. The correct title is "Queen of Yuppie Rock." Who was writing this copy? The interviewer's lack of concern for anything other than the juiciest details of Belinda's struggles is admirably apparent; her facial expression as she asks "How did you justify your drug use?" suggests a hint of arousal. After Belinda rattles off a list of all her favorite support groups with breezy nonchalance ("Narcotics Anonymous, Alcoholics Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous, Cocaine Anonymous"), the host explains via voiceover, "She herself had become almost totally anonymous, but now she's regained her own identity and her self-confidence." Smooth segue! I've rarely seen Belinda rocking the ponytail look as she does here, but dear me it's cute - particularly when she pairs it with ... hold on a second, are those skull earrings? You can't make this shit up.



So as 1988 turned to 1989, even the ever-skeptical Belinda had to admit that she'd finally done it. She'd managed to step out of the shadow of her former group to become an equally popular star in her own right, if not more popular (certainly globally). Well, how did it feel? Did she bask in the triumph? Did she stick out her tongue and tell all those naysayers "Neener neener neener"? Did she bathe in the blood of her victims? Not exactly. From Lips Unsealed [note: although she refers to herself by her stepfather's last name in the passage below, her birth name is indeed Carlisle]:

As I kicked off the "Good Heavens" tour, I asked Morgan if it was real or if I was dreaming. It seemed like a mistake. I figured it had to be. He didn't know how to deal with that kind of mind-set other than to tell me to realize that these things were not accidents; I had worked hard for years.

His comment caused me to flash back to a time when I was on tour in the early days of the Go-Go's, just as the band was first taking off. It all seemed too fantastic; I had a moment right before we went onstage when I wondered where I was going to be ten years later. Now I knew. A couple of days into the tour, I had another similar sort of moment. I was standing behind the curtain, atop a small platform, getting set to descend the three stairs as the spotlight hit me, and yet instead of breathing, focusing, and doing all the things I normally did in the seconds before the show started, I was thinking about how weird it was that I was doing this.

Me? Belinda Kurczeski from the Valley? What was I doing here?

I felt an odd and slightly unnerving disconnect between what I was doing and ... and me ... whoever that was.

Who are you, Belinda Carlisle? Who are you???