"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!"

Martika's Desperate Cry In The Dark AKA Drugs Are Bad Mmmkay?

Madonna. Bono. Prince. Cher. Singers for whom only one name is necessary. The surname is a vestigial remnant, a useless footnote from a childhood history no longer relevant to the adoring masses. For these singers, only one name is needed because there could be only one.

And so I give you:

Martika.

In retrospect, Martika's ambitious attempt at singular nomenclature would put her more in the category of a Limahl than, say, a Sting, but sometimes, hey, you've just got to aim for the stars.

Remember that show Kids Incorporated? Neither do I, but apparently it served as a launching pad for the careers of such cultural behemoths as Jennifer Love Hewitt, Stacy Ferguson (AKA Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas), and one Marta Merrero (AKA Martika from ... Martika). By the time she turned 19, Martika set her sights on a recording career, and she had also apparently seen her fair share of the ugly side of '80s children's television programming. Per Wikipedia:

Martika wrote the song about a friend who was battling a cocaine addiction. "I was a little hesitant because I had only written two songs before and they were light songs. I came up to [producer] Michael [Jay] and said I wanted to write about drugs. It was the first time I got the nerve to write about something that was scary for me to talk about, so I did."

You let it all out there, girl! See, it was bold trailblazers like Martika who paved the way for the Liz Phairs and Alanis Morissettes and Courtney Loves of '90s rock. Although none of her lyrical intentions ever registered with me, and I doubt I'm the only one. Laugh if you will at her D.A.R.E.-level naivete, but it's that naked vulnerability that gives "Toy Soldiers" its power. I listen to "Toy Soldiers" and I don't hear a singer who is trying to be "cool," trying to "pose," or trying to sell me some horseshit about life being a bed of roses. No, I hear a singer who's a little bit terrified of the big bad world around her, but isn't going to let her fear prevent her from trying to be a kind, thoughtful, empathetic human being. I also hear an enormously cheesy power ballad, but Martika goes for the gold and doesn't blink.

Actually, you know what "Toy Soldiers" sounds like? "Toy Soldiers" sounds like the best Belinda Carlisle solo hit that Belinda never made. So this is Belinda's ultimate artistic legacy: the recorded works of Martika. Seriously, Martika pulls off the same tricky mixture of sweetness and angst, although her voice doesn't quite flap in the wind like Belinda's does. No, Martika's voice is more like a plastic soccer goal post: sturdy, and yet somewhat replaceable. Now that I think about it, she sounds a bit like Suzanne Vega (Anyone else expect her to break out with "I am sitting in the morning/At the diner on the corner"?). Except for the parts where Martika throws a little growl into the proceedings, like in her delivery of "How could I be so fine with this addiction?" at 1:43 - she's been secretly hiding Bonnie Tyler inside her chest and can barely keep her down! And could Suzanne Vega hit those eerie high notes in the outro? "All fall down! All fall down!" It's like Daryl Hall at chipmunk speed.

Then there's the backing track, which I might describe as a main course of "Time After Time" with a side dish of "Theme from Chariots of Fire," and perhaps a dessert of ... "Take My Breath Away"? Martika comes floating in on a neon wave of processed guitars and churning metronomes, and flutters away on a cloud of PG-13 hair metal solos. Just think: even in two short years (1991), there is no way in hell a ballad that sounded like this could have hit #1, but in 1989, the production here probably didn't even merit a double-take.



The video features everything from an ersatz "rippling water" effect and black-and-white footage straight out of a Guess ad, to shots of Martika's leather jacket-clad "boyfriend" handing over cash (for drugs?) near a payphone (at 3:48) and Martika and said boyfriend arguing violently in a stairwell (at 3:52). "If you don't get off that stuff for good, then it's over for us!" I'm also pleased to note that Martika has taken lessons from the Belinda Carlisle School of Music Video Choreography, which consists of crossing and uncrossing your arms, jerking your head backwards, clenching your fists, and spinning around copiously. In the second-to-last shot, our heroine, dressed in black, places a flower on a grave. Did her boyfriend ... OD? Is she paying respects to her treasured aunt Esmerelda? Is Martika standing at the grave ... of her own hit-making career? You see, for toy soldiers like Martika, victory is elusive, but the battle over ill-defined music video symbolism ... wages on.

One Blog Post, Believing In Just "Two Hearts" AKA Phil's Medical Bills (And Drug Debt) Finally Lead To The Big Screen

You know, if Prince and Madonna could make it in the movies, then why not Phil Collins?

Stranger things have happened. I mean, look at Mark Wahlberg. Maybe Phil had a little Boogie Nights in him yet? Alas, it looks like Buster was a one-time deal and that Phil would just have to keep his genitals in his pants.

Now, if I told you that, once upon a time, Phil Collins had starred in a movie, and then I added that he never starred in another movie again, you would naturally assume that he gave a terrible performance in said movie, right? Full disclosure: I have never seen, nor do I plan to see, Buster. But those who have seen it say ... he did a fairly decent job. Well take a look at him now. Roger Ebert wrote that Collins played the role "with surprising effectiveness." Amusingly, the critical consensus is that, while the film has its flaws, Phil Collins's acting ... isn't actually one of them. Land of confusion indeed. Being American, I am not familiar with the 1963 Great Train Robbery upon which the film is based, but reading about it on Wikipedia makes me nostalgic for the days when trains actually carried cargo worthy of being robbed. Supposedly, the comedic tone of the film doesn't quite mesh with the amoral actions it depicts. Raise your hand if you predicted that a Phil Collins movie would be criticized for being too "dark." Apparently Prince Charles and Princess Diana were planning to attend the premiere, but Phil discouraged them from doing so as he wanted to keep them immune from the "controversy" surrounding the film's alleged "glorification" of violence. Dear God. Imagine the fallout from members of the royal family attending a Phil Collins train heist movie. The scandal! The outrage! The whole thing could have ended in divorce!

So with the early '60s serving as sonic inspiration, Phil cooked up one hell of a snappy soundtrack single. You might be listening to "Two Hearts" and thinking to yourself, "How the hell did Phil Collins completely nail that Motown sound?" Well, I'll tell you how he did it. He did it by co-writing the song with Lamont Dozier.

You know, Lamont Dozier? As in "Holland-Dozier-Holland"?

The songwriting team consisting of brothers Brian and Eddie Holland and Lamont Dozier was essentially responsible for writing every other Motown hit between 1963 and 1967 (another 25% were probably written by Smokey Robinson, and the remaining 25% were written by about twenty different people). They were a three-pronged hook machine, imbuing their vibraphone-laden choruses with ... I want to say a "jazzy" quality? We're talking "Heat Wave," "Baby Love," "I Can't Help Myself," "How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)," "(Reach Out) I'll Be There" ... frankly, I have better things to do than name all the hits they wrote (like write a blog post about a Phil Collins soundtrack single, for instance). In fact, Phil had already covered one of those hits ("You Can't Hurry Love") and scored his own giant hit with it. How, precisely, he came into contact with Dozier is information that Wikipedia does not provide, but if it was a collaboration that did not generate the headline-grabbing pizzazz of "Phil Collins/Phillip Bailey," it was equally fruitful. Aside from the substitution of what sounds like a keyboard with a "vibraphone" setting for an actual vibraphone, "Two Hearts" generally keeps the '80s at bay. The strings swoop and soar in a decidedly non-'80s-like manner, the backing vocals add just the right amount of tension during the pre-chorus, and honestly, the bridge has to be the bridge to end all bridges! That "Collins/Dozier" songwriting credit on the back of the 45 is one of those tiny and yet heavily revealing details that makes an '80s pop scholar such as myself tilt his head back and say, "Ahhhhh ... so that explains it." Not that Phil hadn't already demonstrated a gift for concise, soulful, elegant pop on his own, but come on: having the D in "HDH" along for the ride didn't hurt.

Having never paid close attention to the lyrics of "Two Hearts" (because ... I have a life?), I initially assumed that they portrayed the more melancholy side of romance, given the minor key nature of the music. Then one day I realized that the sentiment of the song is relentlessly upbeat, the singer essentially stating that he and his lover are practically joined via their aortas for all of eternity. (Confession: until about, oh, an hour ago, I always thought the chorus was "Two hearts/Living in just one mind," which doesn't make any sense, because organs live in the body, not the mind, right? But I think the actual lyric is "Two hearts/Believing in just one mind," which doesn't make any sense either, but at least it feels slightly more poetic. Since when is a mind something you "believe" in? Whatever, I give up.) Given the aching sweep of the melody, I feel like the Hallmark-level nature of the lyrics are a kind of a letdown. My ears tell me that this should be a sad song, not a happy one. The words don't quite do justice to the tune. Basically, I think Phil phoned it in. Maybe he thought, 'Well, this is supposed to be a classic '60s-style radio hit, not another scathing divorce lament. I better make it lovey-dovey." Yes, I know, I'm complaining about the superficiality of the lyrics in a Phil Collins song. But with a series of hooks this ingratiating, it could have been something even more special! As it is, I would call it a perfect "sounding" single that I like to pretend doesn't have lyrics. It's two mismatched moods living in just one Phil Collins song.

Less heralded is Buster's other Collins/Dozier collaboration, "Loco In Acapulco," performed by the (then still active!) Four Tops. Phil also recorded a curiously minimalist cover of Wayne Fontana's "Groovy Kind of Love" for the film, although the original came out in 1966 so he really seemed to be fudging the historical timeline there. Jeez Phil! And somehow even that went to #1 in the US.

Once again, Phil treated the music video for a Motown homage as another excuse to live out his early rock & roll TV variety show fantasies. Here he stars as not only the blasé projectionist, but as the singer, bassist, keyboardist, and drummer of new British beat group the Four Pound Notes ("Yeah, well, there used to be, uh ... five of us Tony"). I feel it is my sacred blogger duty to mention that Phil had already done this "playing every member of the band" bit twice before (in the videos for "I Missed Again" and "You Can't Hurry Love"), but it is also my sacred blogger duty to mention that ... even the third time around, it's still amusing! As keyboardist, Phil seems to be going for the Stephen Stills look, while as bassist, he seems to be going more for the, let's say, Peter Asher (of Peter and Gordon) look. Meanwhile, the drummer is apparently a hardcore jazz guy (and, given the sunglasses, I'm guessing a junkie), slumming it for a quick buck.



I know I grumbled about the lightweight nature of the lyrics, but if Phil is to be believed at least, perhaps I should take that back. From In The Air Tonight:

There'd been signs for years, obviously, but by the time they found me lying unconscious on the floor of a gay bar in Oaxaca wearing a French maid's outfit, I knew things had really gotten out of control. They say that, for 148 seconds at least, I was legally dead. But anyway, after a couple of jolts from the defribrillator, they tossed me on a cot and rushed me on a chopper straight to Cedars Sinai.

The doctor came in wearing a cheap toupee and the sort of solemn countenance that not even Keith Richards could fail to be unnerved by. "Mr. Collins, I'm afraid ... there's only one way to say this ... you've got heart problems."

"What do you mean?"

"Look, it's really none of my business, but ... let's just say I didn't spend six years at UCLA Medical School for nothing. I know the x-rays of a horse tranquilizer addict when I see one, OK?"

I let out a heavy sigh. "Look, Doc, I know, I've got a problem, but I just need to get through this one more solo tour, and then I'll go clean, I swear!"

"Damn it, Collins, don't you get it? You don't turn things around this very minute, you're gonna be just another dead balding drummer with a Rolodex full of ex-wives! This is your wake-up call, man!" The doctor literally grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me vigorously with his arms. "You've got to get ... yourself ... together!"

My head slumped toward the floor. "OK, OK. Just ... what's the diagnosis?"

"Well, it's not merely the horse tranquilizer. I'm picking up traces of paint thinner, varnish, whale antiseptic ... I mean, stuff I haven't seen in years. Your heart's shot to hell. I don't even know how you're still alive."

"Probably that Belgian lab experiment from when I was a kid."

"Your what?"

"Never mind. So what are we talking about here, a heart transplant?"

"I'm afraid it's much worse than that. What we're going to need is a medical miracle, a procedure that's never been done before."

"I don't follow."

"You don't need another heart. I'm afraid the only thing that can save you is ... two hearts."

I blinked three times.

"There's a hospital in Portugal that's pulled off a similar procedure in a goat, but ... it's never been tried in a human."

"Two hearts ... living in just one mind?"

"Precisely."

"But ..." I poked gingerly at my shriveled chest. "Where will you find the room?"

Well, obviously, they figured it out. I had every intention of turning over a new leaf, I did. I'd been given a second chance - it was a sign from God, right? But about three days after the surgery, I found myself in a foul mood (I think I caught "In Too Deep" slipping from #4 to #6 in the charts), and I figured, "Well, between the two hearts, they can probably withstand more usage than just the one, you know?" So ... I went right back on the stuff.

About a month later, I got a call from Hans - you know, my dealer in Copenhagen - demanding this, that, and the other thing.

"Phil, you still owe me twenty thousand krone, you lying prick!"

"All right, all right, all right! but listen Hans, I'm dead broke, I mean really broke. You know what I just had to pay for?"

"What?"

"I had to pay for an extra heart in my chest."

"Really."

"Didn't come cheap."

"Phil, I do not give a fuck about you and your extra hearts. Either pay up or I am sending the big boys."

"No! no! OK, there's gotta be something, a favor I can do, some kind of benefit concert, like that whole Live Aid thing, you name it, I'll do it."

There was a pregnant pause. "Well ... you know ... I have a friend, a film producer, he is involved with this movie about a train robbery..."

"You need someone to do the soundtrack?"

"Well, yes, of course, but what he really needs is ... a lead actor."

I let out a snort. "Hans, forget it. I can't even keep my own pants on these days, let alone star in a fucking movie."

"Twenty thousand krone, Phil, twenty thousand krone ..."

So ... I took the part. And I wasn't half-bad! Had a lot of fun making it. Ran into Lamont Dozier in an adult bookstore in Simi Valley one day, started gushing about how much I loved his work, how he could really use a comeback opportunity, how I had this whole soundtrack album to do, and how Erica's Daughter was a much hotter read than the sequel, Emily's Daughter. Great track, "Two Hearts." But yeah, all the budget money for the video I had to send straight to Hans, so we didn't have any money left over for actors. I told the director no problem, I could do it all myself. Wasn't anything I hadn't done before.

Soul II Soul: R&B Goes British, Positive, Afrocentric, Says "Whoops! Can't Have This"

You thought Boyz II Men knew how to work a roman numeral? Get a load of Soul II Soul.

I have a foggy memory of sitting at home on a typical 1989 afternoon, catching a particular video on television, and thinking to myself, "You know, these black musicians currently dancing on my TV screen are not dancing like the typical black musicians I usually see dancing on my TV screen. Who are these particular black musicians, and where did they come from?" One day I received the answer, and explanation, I was looking for:

Britain. They came from Great Britain.

This ... explained ... everything.



Now, I could be entirely mistaken, but I have the feeling that the African-American experience is slightly different from the, uh ... African-British (I doubt that's the term?) experience. Maybe it's the accents. Maybe it's the fish and chips. Maybe it's the superior educational system. But even at nine years of age, I could sense that Soul II Soul were not cut from the usual American R&B mold that I was familiar with. They looked like the bohemian, cafe-dwelling, poetry-reading, jazz and Earth, Wind & Fire-listening kind of black. They looked like they celebrated Kwanzaa, quoted Langston Hughes and James Baldwin to each other, and had posters of Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu in their bedrooms. Just look at their song titles. You didn't usually see tracks called "African Dance" or "Jazzie's Groove" on Bobby Brown albums, is what I'm saying.

Like most of my countrymen, until I got my hands on Soul II Soul's debut album, Club Classics Vol. One (Retitled Keep On Movin' in the US, presumably because the label assumed American consumers would have been too stupid to realize it was not, in fact, a compilation), I had only ever heard two Soul II Soul songs: "Keep On Movin'" and "Back To Life (However Do You Want Me)". These two singles - breezy, elegant, suave, and almost melancholy, but possessing just enough muscle to stand out from the usual Quite Storm fare - were sung by Caron Wheeler. Hence, I concluded - erroneously, but not without company I imagine - that Caron Wheeler (not to be confused with the Sundays' equally enchanting Harriet Wheeler) was the "lead singer" of a mainly song-oriented group named Soul II Soul. My conclusion, though understandable, was WRONG, TOTALLY WRONG.

It turns out that Soul II Soul were more of a dance/electronica/DJ-oriented collective that didn't really focus on recording proper "songs" with verses and choruses per se, or even lyrics. Soul II Soul, God bless them, cast those oh so American musical boundaries aside. Wikipedia lists their genre as "soul/neo soul/dance/R&B/rap/British soul/reggae," but I feel like "neo soul" would have just about covered it (in a way, they were knocking on the door of trip-hop). Some of the tracks on Club Classics Vol. One feature lead singers other than Wheeler, some feature light rapping, and others are flat-out instrumentals. What I'm trying to say is that, if you're wondering why a group that released two excellent hit singles didn't release more of those excellent singles, it's probably because the listening public heard Soul II Soul's other songs that didn't have Caron Wheeler's voice on them and thought, "Wait a minute, this is Soul II Soul? But where's the lead singer?" See guys? You thought you could be all "utopian" and "collectivist" and "boundary-free," but let me tell you something: it doesn't help the brand. Even the Alan Parsons Project, for crying out loud, eventually caved on the lead singer question. But Soul II Soul refused to sell their soul. To paraphrase Graham Nash, "Was the money you didn't make worth the price that you didn't pay?"

But wait, there's more! Not only did Caron Wheeler sing nothing else on the album aside from the singles, but the version of "Back to Life" that appears on the album isn't even the hit version, but rather a radically different, virtually a capella mix. It's like that time in college I was perusing my friend's CD collection, grabbed 2Pac's All Eyez On Me from the rack, and said, "Yeah! Put on 'California Love'!" only to watch him grimace and explain, "Uh ... the version on the album is just this weird remix, it's not the version you actually want to hear." Buzz kill. Oh the problems music consumers used to have that we simply don't have anymore.



So, Soul II Soul's videos. At the time, they might have seemed like a glimpse into R&B's future, but in retrospect they're more like a glimpse into Cornel West's wet dream of R&B's future. So many dreads, so many weaves, so many beads, so many dashikis, so many multi-colored 'do rags ... it's like Maya Angelou on acid. And when was the last time you saw violinists in an R&B video? I almost wished these two videos could just ... keep on moving and not stop. Instead, the moment they end, I find myself coming back to life, back to reality - and, honestly, compared to a Soul II Soul video, my reality is pretty bland. Favorite YouTube comments:

As a kid I swore she said "yellow is the color of some rain". I thought she was saying that sometimes life pisses on you 😂!

Yellow is the color of some race. I used to think that's what she was singing. lol

the summer of '89, i remember brothas bumpin this in their Ford Escorts. the sound systems were more expensive than the car.

This song reminds me of a funny incident that happened back in 1990 when this song was popular and on the radio. I was a sophomore in high school and our class was waiting outside for our teacher. But then we were informed that our teacher was out sick and to wait outside for the substitute. So we were wondering who our sub was going to be and this old lady was walking toward the classroom. Then I guess one of my fellow classmates was hoping the old lady wasn't going to be our sub. As the old lady was coming to open the door, the guy started singing "Keep On Movin, Keep On Movin Don't Stop, No." Man, we just started busting out laughing.

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.

"Leave A Light On": Belinda + Beatle = Beautiful Bliss

If three separate European explorers, traveling up the California coast in succession, could fail to discover San Francisco Bay, then perhaps I could be forgiven for initially failing to care very much for Belinda Carlisle's "Leave a Light On."

When I first downloaded Belinda's Her Greatest Hits about nine years ago (in a dense haze of guilty pleasure delirium), there were certain singles I was aiming to hear, and "Leave a Light On" was ... not one of them. Didn't remember the song from my youth, even though after a quick glance at her Wikipedia page I learned that it had been a fairly sizable US hit for her (#11, a height she would never again reach stateside). I hardly even noticed it. Sounded like a Bryan Adams album track. Kinda slick, kinda glossy, too many instruments spoiling the broth, not enough room to swing a cat. It passed through me like water, or like something even more bland than water (IV fluid?).

Then I read the song's Wikipedia entry and learned that the guitar solo had been played by George Harrison. You know ... I couldn't put my finger on it but suddenly the song started to get ... a whole lot better. I listened to it a couple more times. Yeahhhhh. I was kinda into it now. George Harrison? Making a guest appearance on a Belinda Carlisle song? Hare fuckin' Krishna. You know what? Screw my initial reaction. This song was magnificent, I had always thought so from the very first moment I'd heard it, and no one could tell me otherwise.



That's right. While Paul McCartney was busy teaming up with a cool new wave kid (Elvis Costello) in order to sprinkle some critical credibility onto himself, George Harrison was teaming up with a much better-looking cool new wave kid of his own. I mean, who needs erudite wordsmithery when you've got that hot, hot Yuppie bod? (Her cleavage on the single sleeve alone could, I fear, swallow a small Pacific island.)

Come on. I guess I shouldn't have even been that surprised. Isn't it only natural that one of the members of my favorite group of all time (clichéd choice, I know) ended up collaborating with my favorite female singer of the '80s (less clichéd choice)? The Zelig-like career of Belinda Carlisle had everything, so of course her stream of cosmic dust would have inevitably overlapped at one point or another with the Beatles' stream of cosmic dust. Talk about a match made in Little Earl heaven. Discovering this information made me feel just a bit more validated. See, my life-consuming obsession with Belinda Carlisle wasn't so unreasonable after all. Even George Harrison liked her! Fandom = justified.

So how exactly did the so-called "Quiet One" end up playing guitar on some silly little Valley girl's record? According to Belinda, she simply asked him on a whim. From Lips Unsealed:

Rick said we should try to get someone cool and with a distinctive style to play the lead guitar part. I thought for a moment and said, "What about George Harrison?" I had met George briefly a few years earlier in San Remo, Italy, and Morgan, through his work on Sex, Lies, and Videotape, knew someone who was close to the former Beatle and able to get word to him. George responded right away, saying he'd love to help out.

So is that how it works where you're Belinda Carlisle in 1989? Just make some outlandish suggestion and watch it come to fruition? Hey, you know what? I need someone to help give me basketball lessons. Yeah, OK, how about Michael Jordan? No wait, I need someone to help me buy a gift for my niece. Oh, I've got an idea - how about Santa Claus? In the words of Belinda's humble session guitarist, it's all too much for me to take.

He had worked with very few artists, so I was honored. I absolutely loved the work he eventually did. After he passed away, his widow, Olivia, told a mutual friend that she had found an old Runaway Horses cassette as she went through some of his stuff. She said, "Please tell Belinda that George really loved her voice."

Well that makes two of us, George, that makes two of us. Man. How would you like to be able to walk this earth and tell yourself, every day of your life, that George Harrison loved your voice?  Maybe that makes up for Belinda's horrible Dickensian childhood just a little bit? Sort of like how Harry Nilsson said that having John Lennon produce Pussycats almost made up for his father having abandoned him ... almost. Here's Rick Nowels's version of how the whole business went down:

I met George Harrison at a party in Los Angeles in 1987 and he complimented me on "Heaven Is A Place On Earth" which I had produced and co-written for Belinda. A year later when I was working on Runaway Horses, we decided to contact George to see if he was interested in playing on a couple of tracks for the album. George said he would be happy to play, and to send him the tapes, and tell him what we wanted and what songs to play on. I wrote him very specific notes and asked him to play on "Leave A Light On" and "Deep Deep Ocean." I arranged "Leave A Light On" with a sixteen bar solo instead of an eight bar solo to give George some room to stretch. After I got the tapes back, to my delight, George called me at A&M Studios and asked if it was all right and said I owed him a beer.

And, as far as I know, to this very day, Rick Nowels still owes George Harrison that beer. Per the internet, even the guest guitarist himself was unusually proud of his playing on the track:

The best slide solo I ever played was on ... what's her name? That girl singer who used to be with that all-girl band? ... Belinda Carlisle of the Go-Go's! That's who it was. I played on one of her albums. One of the slide solos had its own little tune which related to the tune Belinda was singing, but it's also a little composition in its own right, which I was really pleased with.

You know, if George was happy with it, then I'm happy with it. According to one message board, there's a video clip of George and Eric Clapton being interviewed either before or during their tour of Japan in 1991 (the link is sadly dead and my attempt to scour the earth for this footage has gone for nought), in which Eric talks about how distinctive George's guitar playing is, and that he keeps hearing other people try to play like George, such as, for instance, this random session guitarist on a track by some redhead girl whose name he can't remember. After some discussion, George mentions to Eric that the random session guitarist who was trying to play like George Harrison ... was probably George Harrison! A few comments down on this same message board, someone theorizes, as another possible explanation for why, given the thousands of recording artists he could have guested with, he ended up guesting on a stupid Belinda Carlisle song, "Would the fact that Belinda was a super HOT babe at the time have anything to do with it?" Couldn't have hurt.

Oh right, then there's this whole other part of the song that's not the guitar solo played by George Harrison. Frankly, it's grown on me. The lyrics strike me as a possible riff on Creedence's "Long As I Can See the Light," without Creedence's mournful late-night exhaustion. The walloping production arguably doesn't do justice to the composition; I'd almost like to hear someone play this song alone on an acoustic guitar, just to let it breathe a bit and see what happens. Also, the longer Belinda holds her notes, the more her vibrato tends to go a bit haywire, like a motor that slides out of its moorings from the force of the torque. Since less-than-superb singing could never be Belinda's fault, I blame Rick Nowels. Amusingly, if my research hasn't misled me, the woman belting out "Darling leave the light on!" during the fade-out in a gospel-soaked wail a la Foreigner's "I Want To Know What Love Is" is not a Martha Wash-style heavy-set black woman, but the extremely white and extremely blonde Bekka Bramlett (daughter of blue-eyed soul duo Delaney and Bonnie, whom George Harrison and Eric Clapton famously toured with in 1969 - for those of you out there looking for another bizarre connection in this whole saga). I should mention that, while it charted respectably in America, "Leave a Light On" was actually almost as much of a massive global hit as "Heaven is a Place on Earth" had been, peaking at #4 in the UK and #5 in Australia, and arguably being her second best-known song in most countries. Huh. You learn something new every day.

Once again MCA spent the big bucks and lured Peter Care into directing another Belinda music video. Somehow her hair has become redder and curlier; let's call this her Debra Messing phase. Perhaps she was leery of spending another video shoot for Care freezing her ass off on a beach near Half Moon Bay, because this time she's cruising the Nevada desert (although it can certainly get cold at night), for what purpose it is hard to say (prowling for drugs?). Check out these splendid fashion choices:

• Long white sleeveless dress, sort of "ruffled," and cowboy boots (Yee-haw!), occasionally paired with jean jacket
• Green off-the-shoulder top with ... orange tights?
• Droolingly form-fitting lacy black dress
• Another long white sleeveless dress, but this one's more like a "gown," with pointy cones over her little Belindas, plus heels - this is more like her "Elizabeth Shue in Leaving Las Vegas" look
• Shawl and sunglasses - let's call this her "Thelma and Louise" look

It's amusing to see 1989-era Vegas look so modest and low-key. I don't even think the MGM Grand had been built yet. I mean, what did people even do there? Gamble?

Lisa Stansfield: The Ferdinand Magellan Of British Neo-Soul

Here's a question: do you think Lisa Stansfield has ... found her baby yet? I mean hell, it's been 30 freakin' years already. How many times do you think she has literally traversed the globe searching for this guy? How many Shanghai opium dens, Moroccan cafes, and Eskimo huts has she poked her head into in her never-ending quest to track down that elusive paramour? Aren't there, like, private investigators you can hire for this kind of thing? On the plus side, I'll bet she's picked up an impressive array of languages. Just think of the frequent flyer rewards. Wouldn't it be ironic if her baby turned out to be ... dead? No wonder she can't find him. Or maybe he just moved back in with his parents.

Though she could've won a Tracey Ullman lookalike contest, and though she sported the best hair curlicue since the reign of Bill Haley, Lisa Stansfield, in her heart of hearts, to her misfortune (or perhaps to her great fortune), was a fiery soul diva stuck in an era of robotic dance-pop. You know how some members of the LGBT community might refer to themselves as "a woman trapped in a man's body," or vice versa? Well Lisa Stansfield was like a burly early '70s American black man trapped in a skinny late '80s Northern English white woman's body. But did she let this tragic twist of fate stop her? No sir.

Stansfield certainly has an impressive set of pipes, but there's something about her 1,000 watt delivery that causes me to giggle ever-so-slightly. Examples:

• "Been around the world and aye-aye-aye...": Is she providing her own DJ stratching?
• "I was oh-uh-oh so baaad": Look out, she's dropping octaves and speak-singing. She's a tough cookie all right.
• "I did too much lyyyyyinnnnn', wasted doo much tyyyyyme ..." More like "I did too much elonnngatinnnn', stretched doo many syyyyyllablessss ..."
• "I was the one, the weakest one of all": Whoa, it's like a little mini-Prince suddenly took possession of her body and caused her throat to choke up and turn squeaky-like. Quick, somebody slay the demon before it devours Stansfield whole!

Unfortunately, by the outro, it's clear that the demon Prince has turned Stansfield into his permanent host creature (See "I've beeeeen uh-round the wuuuu-huh-huldddd" at 3:49), within whom he can lay his eggs and spawn a million more little demon Princes.



Maybe if Stansfield boasted a deeper catalog, I wouldn't be quite so tempted to (gently) mock her vocal style. For instance, while Madonna was certainly guilty of releasing big, showy, earnest ballads like "Crazy for You" or "Take a Bow," she could still turn right around and release winking, self-aware singles such as "Material Girl" or "Human Nature." Whereas Lisa Stansfield just released ... "All Around the World." Now here's the part where I point out that Stansfield scored at least six other Top 10 hits in the UK, and even three more Top 40 hits in the US. But let me tell you something: I've been around the world and aye-aye-aye, I've never heard the radio play any other Lisa Stansfield song aside from "All Around the World."

But man, she sure nailed it on this one (the single peaked at #1 in the UK and #3 in the US). It oozes that "late, chilly, rainy night in London" vibe that I get from, say, Saint Etienne, or the Pet Shop Boys circa Behaviour (without, of course, oozing those acts' arch British drollness). It's like a Studio 54 symphony for a hip-hop age. Which leads me, naturally, to Puff Daddy's "Been Around the World," featuring Mase and the Notorious B.I.G.

Here's how I imagine this went down. One late evening (or perhaps very early morning?) in a Manhattan recording studio, at some point before his corpulent being departed this earth, Biggie was horsing around with his trusty producer, Sean "Man of A Thousand Questionably Chosen Rapper Names" Combs, taking a break between snorting blow off a woman's belly and re-organizing his cherished collection of gold medallions, when he proceeded to playfully ad-lib a new variation of "All Around the World." Combs, in his infinite wisdom and foresight, decided to record this off-handed nugget of genius. In this re-interpretation, Biggie managed to articulate the poignant concerns of a downtrodden community:

Been around the world and aye-aye-aye
And we been playa hated
I don't know and I don't know why
Why they want us faded
I don't know why they hate us
Is it our ladies
Or our drop Mercedes
Maybe maybe

Spoken like a true poet of the proletariat. Then, at some point following Biggie's murder, Puff Daddy must have been "combing" through his tapes when he came across this little morsel, and inspiration struck. All he needed to do was sample David Bowie's "Let's Dance" (another memorable attempt by a white British singer to sound black), sprinkle in some verses from the world's most comatose rapper (Mase), and presto - another worldwide smash! (And that's not even mentioning the 10-minute music video starring Jennifer Lopez and Quincy Jones in which Puff Daddy and Mase manage to thwart an attempted overthrow of the Tunisian government by Wyclef Jean.) The lesson: sometimes when you embrace the black community, the black community will embrace you right back.



Honored though she was by this unexpected homage, I assume she was slightly more honored by an invitation to duet with a certain idol of hers. If Stansfield's falsetto vocal leaps were, it appears, an attempt to emulate Marvin Gaye (while accidentally, in my opinion, more closely emulating Prince), the swooping strings in the background owe more than a little to The Walrus of Love himself, Barry White. And, apparently, Barry White thought the same thing:



Yes, Lisa Stansfield. After circumnavigating the earth, you may not have found your baby, but for four minutes and twenty-three seconds at least, you found your soul brother from another mother.

Earl, You Know It's True: You Still Like Those Two Milli Vanilli Songs

Spoiler Alert: Rob and Fab weren't actually singing.

There. I said it. Can't erase that knowledge from your brain. Hate to ruin the shocking twist for everybody. But the question regarding Milli Vanilli is not "How could Grammy voters have possibly failed to realize that those two guys weren't actually singing?" Rather, the question is "Why were Milli Vanilli even awarded Grammys ... in the first place?"

Could someone care to explain to me exactly what it was about Milli Vanilli's work that merited the kind of recognition that did not extend to their peers? Was it their thought-provoking lyrics? Their superlative musicianship? I will drop the snark if someone can genuinely, truly answer this question for me. The scandal wasn't that their Grammys had to be rescinded; the scandal was that they even received any Grammys ... to begin with!

That said, I have a confession to make. Your Honor, I plead guilty to the following crimes:

1) Stabbing a naked homeless man on the side of a South Dakota highway
2) Stealing 36.5 million dollars from an orphanage in Knoxville, Tennessee
3) Genuinely liking Milli Vanilli's "Girl You Know It's True" and "Baby Don't Forget My Number"

The first two, forgivable perhaps, but that last crime ... that's just a bridge too far. Honestly, time heals all wounds, and, you know, a record is a record, and the dirty truth is, it doesn't really matter who was doing what, and what I'm trying to say is ... I ... I ... (peeks around) ... actually enjoy "Girl You Know It's True" and "Baby Don't Forget My Number."

I mean hell, it's not the kind of scandal that has seriously tainted the music. If only they'd turned out to have been secret rapists or sexual predators instead. I was never really a "Girl I'm Gonna Miss You" guy. I will accept blame from certain fans for not being particularly fond of "Blame It On the Rain" (Dianne Warren, bless her soul). But "Girl You Know It's True," and "Baby Don't Forget My Number" - any day, any time, crank 'em up, I'll be there, front row.

Like the Roman Empire or the Italian Renaissance, Milli Vanilli did not arrive out of nowhere. The brainchild behind all the malarkey, one Frank Farian, was the svengali responsible for Boney M, a German disco act that managed to rocket to superstardom in virtually every country but the U.S. Here is an astute observation several YouTube commentators have made about Boney M's immortal "Rasputin": It is a song performed by a German band, consisting of Jamaican singers, singing lyrics in English, about a Russian historical figure. Well, that was the '70s for you (and could someone please give me the Russian translation for "There was a cat that really was gone"?). At any rate, it turns out that, at least as far as American chart success was concerned, with Milli Vanilli, Frank Farian would have the last laugh - and I'm fairly certain he was literally laughing.



Everything about Milli Vanilli screams out "mindless" and "disposable" - especially the name, which has always reminded me of Magilla Gorilla (for all of you Hanna-Barbera aficionados out there). They dance by stomping in place and then pointing their arms to the sky a la Superman! Milli Vanilli were not attempting to be ... innovators. If you're looking for an act that was keen to avoid accusations that they were repeating themselves, look elsewhere. Take, for example, their copious sampling of the "Ashley's Roachclip" drum loop. It would take me less time to name the rappers who haven't sampled the "Ashley's Roachclip" drum loop than the rappers who have (here's the Wikipedia page); the two songs I personally associate the most with the sample are Eric B. and Rakim's "Paid in Full" and P.M. Dawn's "Set Adrift on Memory Bliss." Well, Milli Vanilli sampled it not once, not twice, but thrice. They were like the stoner roommate who orders the same kind of pizza every night. Their goal was not diversity; their goal was enjoyment. Milli Vanilli knew they liked this sample. They knew their listeners liked this sample. Why change samples?! The thing is, on both "Girl You Know It's True" and "Baby Don't Forget My Number," the sample serves the same exact function: it signals a momentum shift out of the comparatively stiffer verses and into the funkier, zippier choruses. And I want to take them to task for repeating the trick, except ... God damn, it works like a charm both times. (Side note: Girl, I'll bet you didn't know that "Girl You Know It's True" is actually a cover version.)



Here's the part of this whole twisted saga that I still don't get: the singing kinda sounds generic anyway! It's not like the inimitable vocal stylings of Charles Shaw and Brad Howell really made the songs soar (I'd say it was more the utterly shameless bubblegum hooks - "Baby Don't Forget My Number" might have the best "bah bah bah bah" refrain since the Turtles' "Happy Together"). Hell, half the time, at least on "Girl You Know It's True" and "Baby Don't Forget My Number," they're basically speak-singing. Honestly, I could've sang this shit. What I'm saying is, why go through all the trouble of having a giant lip-syncing scandal just to slap some faceless R&B dudes onto the final product? They really didn't think this thing through, did they?

Swede Emotion: The Single-Minded Purity Of Roxette

Oh, to be Roxette.

What a blessing it must have been, what a gift from the gods, to have had one, and only one, ambition in life: to make the proverbial "perfect" pop song. What a psychological load off one's back. So many performers struggle with the weight of social import, or cultural legacy. Roxette just said "Screw all that shit!"

Here is a recording duo that harbored no delusions about their goals, suffered from no misplaced sense of artistic significance, aspired to no heights they could not reach. Roxette once released a compilation titled Don't Bore Us, Get To The Chorus! (a phrase apparently coined by Berry Gordy, a musician also not terribly concerned with the intellectual heft of his work). Has a more inspiring manifesto ever been adopted?

In my old paperback version of the All Music Guide, Stephen Thomas Erlewine wrote, in his Roxette bio, "It's tempting to write Roxette off as nothing more than a shallow pop-rock band, but their shameless hooks are precisely what makes them so enjoyable. Roxette has a knack for writing extremely catchy and simple hooks and melodies that are sweet but not saccharine; it's radio-friendly pop, but the hooks don't wear thin with repeated plays." Well, I don't know about the rest of their catalog, but, speaking for myself, I can name you exactly three songs from the duo of Per Gessle and Marie Fredriksson whose hooks, I've found, have yet to wear thin. You want to know how thick these hooks are? Let's just say I've licked these particular Tootsie Pops a thousand times, and still haven't reached the center.

In the history of rock, many great lyrics have been composed, but none, I fear, have surpassed the following:

Walking like a man, hitting like a hammer
She's a juvenile scam, never was a quitter
Tasty like a raindrop, she's got the look

Heavenly bound, cause heaven's got her number
When she's spinning me around, kissing is the color
Her loving is a wild dog, she's got the look

Fire in the ice, naked to the t-bone
Is a lover's disguise, banging on the head drum
Shakin' like a mad bull, she's got the look

Swaying to the band, movin' like a hammer
She's a miracle man, lovin' is the ocean
Kissin' is the wet sand, she's got the look

Well, Morrissey, you certainly had a good run, but clearly, by 1989, your time as rock's greatest wordsmith had finally passed. Seriously, what was the concept here? Just string a bunch of evocative phrases together, rap-sing them at a machine gun pace, and pray to Thor (or whatever god the Swedes believe in) that no one notices? Allow me, if I may, to write a few extra verses of Roxette's "The Look":

Itching like a bird, kicking like a cookie
She's a lovable razor, screamin' like a jerky
Fuzzy is a hot dog, she's got the look

Water in the ocean, drinking like a gator
If she moves in time, got to see her later
Heavy like a fire hose, she's got the look

Can I ask you something? How could there possibly be "fire in the ice"? How could "She" be a "miracle man"? Is kissing "the color" or "the wet sand"? Are they "hitting like a hammer" or "movin' like a hammer"? It just doesn't add up people. It just ... doesn't ... add ... up. By the end of the chorus, Roxette have quite obviously cast aside any pretense of effort, the lyrics literally consisting of the phrase, "And I go la la la la la." I want to be angry with them, but they were absolutely right to phone this in. It didn't matter!

The opening guitar lick reminds me of the riff that kicks off the Monkees' "Pleasant Valley Sunday"; let's just say that if Roxette were aiming for Bubblegum glory, they couldn't have aimed any higher. The main chord progression is basically "Hey Jude"/"Sympathy for the Devil" but they throw so many rhythmic twists and turns in there that they give that tired progression a fresh new sheen, like a Taco Bell menu item that simply combines the same five familiar ingredients into an unexpectedly arresting shape.

In the liner notes to Don't Bore Us, Get To The Chorus!, Per Gessle describes "Listen to Your Heart" like so: "The Big Bad Ballad. This is us trying to recreate that overblown American FM-rock sound to the point where it almost becomes absurd. We really wanted to see how far we could take it." And just how far could Roxette take it?

Farther than the naked eye can see.

"Listen to Your Heart" is a power ballad so big, it probably ate twelve other power ballads on its way to school. "Listen to Your Heart" is so big, Jupiter and Saturn have to stand on a stool in order to see over it. You're momma's so fat ... But arguably not even the sight of a massive crowd swaying their arms (and sparklers) back and forth inside the ruins of Borgholm Castle on the Swedish Baltic Sea island of Öland is a sight epic enough to capture the grandeur of "Listen to Your Heart." You think the "hair metal meets ABBA" guitar solo is big enough? How about the ascending bridge doused with a wall of "ah!" backing vocals? That big enough for you? How about a TUKC where Marie Fredriksson tries to out-do her double-tracked self through two rounds of the chorus? No, sorry, none of those moments really max out the "epic" meter on a song as epic as "Listen to Your Heart." The moment that does that is the moment I would like to call The Pause. Marie appears to have finally pinched the last loaf from her bowel movement ("I don't know where you're goooooo-innnn"), then takes a breath, chills for a couple of bars ("before .... you tell him goodbye"), apparently gets splashed by a wave from the Baltic Sea, and presumably retires for the evening. A listener could reasonably assume that the track is making its way toward the fade-out, as the piano and conga drums rise in the mix. Great job guys, I'm gonna go check the sports scores. Then BLAM. The song blazes for another 90 seconds, Marie returning for a series of soaring encores, like a poop that just keeps spewing out fiery chunks of waste long past the point of logic.



Like Grease, Say Anything, and Dirty Dancing, Pretty Woman is another one of those movies with a target audience that probably does not include me. I have never seen it. It turns out that "It Must Have Been Love" was merely refurbished for Pretty Woman and not written explicitly for it, so I suppose I don't have to resent it on account of that association? Besides, isn't this a bitter ballad about love lost? Is there an unbearably sad scene in the movie where the spirit of this song serves a genuine purpose, or does it simply play on somebody's car radio for 30 seconds? In the end, it matters not. Quick anecdote about the video from Wikipedia: "According to Fredriksson, shooting this video was a surreal experience, as [director Doug] Freel 'wanted all movements in slow motion, so I had to lip-sync the vocals at double speed. My first lesson in how to sing an emotional ballad Mickey Mouse style.'" Where can I find that version?

So fine, they're not exactly Bjork, OK, but here's why, ironically, I don't find Roxette's brand of "disposable" pop all that disposable: Marie Fredriksson sings with too much genuine passion. I'm not sure how old she was during Roxette's heyday, but unlike so many 21st century pop singers, who sound like high schoolers, Marie sounds like she's been around the block a couple of times. She's slept under an overpass for an evening or two,  if you know what I mean. Listen (with your heart) to the outro of "It Must Have Been Love," starting around the 3:00 mark. I mean, that's some heavy shit right there. Fredriksson suggests rage, sweetness, sincerity, feistiness, and a touch a weariness all at the same time. I think if I walked up to her and called this song "schlock," she would probably spit in my face. She means it, man. And if she's invested in what she's doing, then I'm invested in what she's doing. Sometimes "art" is the last refuge of scoundrels who don't know what the hell they're in it for. Sleep easy, Roxette. After all these years, your juvenile scam still hits like a hammer.

Herbert Walker Memories

Eventually, as all things must, the '80s came to an end.

But despite what a glance at the calendar might indicate, it did not, in fact, end overnight. What I'm trying to say is that there is such a thing as "time," and then there is such a thing as "pop music time." And "pop music time," you see, is slightly more elastic, more elusive, more elliptical. It ignores the clean divisions of astronomy - at least for a year or so. For instance, when people talk about the pop music of "the '60s," aren't they really talking about the era between 1964 and 1970? In a sense, the pop music of 1960-1963 almost belongs more to the '50s. It was that double whammy of the JFK assassination and the British Invasion that truly launched "the '60s," right? What? What's that you say? Bob Dylan, the Beach Boys, and several Motown artists had already released significant recordings by then? Doesn't fit the narrative! Shoo! Be gone!

All right, fine. All definitions of eras in art are basically bullshit. And yet.

I can't help but think of the years 1989 and 1990 as an era of its own - a transitional phase in pop music, a period that, like the reign of our recently departed former president, was not quite fully '80s and not quite fully '90s. On a Venn diagram, it would register as that grayed-out crap in the middle. That said, it was definitely more '80s than '90s. In the Little Earl History of Popular Music, the '90s didn't truly evolve into the '90s until 1991. I look back at the artists who were dominating the charts in 1990, and they were either holdover acts from the '80s, or acts who, for the most part, would wither and crumble to dust in a year or so (Wilson Phillips, anybody?). But when I look back at the artists who were dominating the charts in 1991, I see the '90s. Let me amend that slightly. When I look back at the artists who were dominating the album charts in 1991, I see the '90s. Several albums from the more "alternative" end of the spectrum came out in 1991 and managed to top the charts, or come very close to it: Nevermind, Metallica, Achtung Baby, Out Of Time, Ten, Blood Sugar Sex Magik. This, as far as I'm concerned, was the true start of the '90s.

As for the Billboard Hot 100, I don't know what I see. Lots of Amy Grant and Cathy Dennis. But honestly, that was just another element of the transition: I don't know what byzantine methodology Billboard was employing at this point, but I feel like, in the '90s, the Hot 100 ceased to be an accurate reflection of the music that people in the '90s were actually listening to. Radio began fragmenting into subcategories like hip-hop, modern rock, and ... whatever the hell Amy Grant and Cathy Dennis were. There really was no true "Top 40 radio" any longer. There are several rap and alternative rock singles from the '90s that those who were following music at the time might remember as having been "huge" hits (such as "C.R.E.A.M." or "Closer"), but if you go look up their actual chart positions, you'll see that they barely dented the Hot 100 (#60 and #41, respectively). Sure, they were huge hits on the Rap chart, or the Modern Rock chart, but not on what had apparently become the Suburban Housewives' Chart. Whereas when I look at the Hot 100 charts from the '80s, I think to myself, "Yeah! That's exactly all the cheesy shit that was being played to death on the radio!"

There's a bit more at play here. In terms of my own biography, the period of 1989-1990 was the last period of pop music I actively followed and devoted actual attention to as it was occurring. Here, if you will, is what happened. In March of 1991, my favorite Top 40 station, 99.7 X100, suddenly, decisively, without warning, became 99.7 KFRC - an oldies station. "Oldies"? You mean there was music that came out ... before the '80s? I was shocked, stunned, aghast, appalled. Up to this point in my existence, unlike many of my peers, I had received virtually no exposure to oldies. So it turned out that oldies and me were meant to be. I became an instant convert and never looked back. For some reason, I decided I preferred this band called the Beatles to acts such as Milli Vanilli and Paula Abdul. Sure, I lingered around for a couple of months or so - I vividly remember a school mate lustily crooning "I Want to Sex You Up" on the playground, to the consternation of the yard attendant - but all I know is that, by about September of 1991, I had checked out of contemporary pop music entirely. Split the scene, flew the coop. When I recall that period, I could almost swear that I had literally traveled back in time to England circa 1967. You know that pastoral, vaguely Victorian landscape that the Beatles are seen frolicking around in while sporting their new and yet strangely ageless mustaches in the "Strawberry Fields" promotional film? I think that is literally where I spent the early '90s.

In other words, I missed it. Flat-out missed it. I missed all the moments that my peers tend to discuss these days as universally-experienced early '90s cultural touchstones. The "Smells Like Teen Spirit" video? Missed it. Kurt Cobain's suicide? Missed it. I mean yeah, I vaguely remember somebody mentioning that Kurt Cobain had killed himself, but it meant absolutely squat to me at the time. "Guy was probably an asshole anyway," is what I'm guessing I thought. Frankly, I didn't even know the difference between Nirvana and Metallica. As far as I was concerned, they were both really loud, angry, guitar-heavy bands that had just released albums that consisted of 12 tracks each, with the first song on each album being the big "hit" song with the catchy guitar riff. Grunge? Metal? Same diff.

Here's how I know that all those albums from 1991 I listed above represent the "real" start of the '90s: I have almost no recollection of hearing them. I remember my classmates talking about them. I remember feeling that this new music was "not my thing," in the same sense that dating girls was "not my thing." I did not feel "cool" enough or "hip" enough to relate to this new music. In retrospect, '80s music, overall, was quite dorky. Really dorky. I had no trouble relating to '80s music. But in March of 1991, I fell down the oldies rabbit hole and didn't claw my way out for years. I think in September of 1993, the cable company in my town accidentally included MTV and VH1 in my family's cable package for roughly two weeks. It was like a glimpse into another era - one far removed from my own. What was this "Blind Melon" and "Soul Asylum"? You mean Janet Jackson was still making music? So confusing. I didn't genuinely listen to those big "alternative" albums from 1991 until about 1998, toward the end of high school and the beginning of college. (Long story short: I'm all caught up now!) My point is, maybe this shift between 1990 and 1991 wasn't much of a shift at all. But when I hear a song from 1989 or 1990, as opposed to a song from slightly later, all sorts of associations from that era fill my spherical ol' cranium, whereas when I hear a song that came out after 1990, I associate it with some guy in college telling me how "awesome this video was when it first premiered on MTV!" I could not blog about the pop music of 1991. I simply wasn't there. Herbert Walker Memories is the end of the line.

So, 1989-1990. In retrospect, this period was whack. Alternative music genuinely began peaking through the layers of Top 40 gauze, but only here and there, and only the more palatable, streamlined strands. Maybe mainstream radio could handle the Cure and Depeche Mode at this juncture, but it wasn't quite ready for, say, the Pixies or the Jesus and Mary Chain (wouldn't have been prudent). Still, as I reflect on the era with my increased level of rock scholarliness, I can't help but be impressed by how many artists with a vague whiff of "alternative" about them managed to score hits so massive that even nine-year-old me could get caught up in the buzz. Did I, at that tender age, pick up on the difference between, say, Roxette and the B-52's? Did I realize that one act was an unapologetically chart-humping duo from Sweden, and the other act a queer-friendly outgrowth of the Athens, GA scene? How about the difference between Paula Abdul and the Fine Young Cannibals? Did I realize that one artist was a choreographer with a whiny voice who decided to give dance-pop a shot because why the fuck not, and that the other artist was a Northern soul-flavored splinter group of the English Beat (with origins stretching back to the British ska revival of 1979)?

Oh heyyyyyll no.

And that is precisely my point. Sitting here in 2019, I have to ask myself, "What the fuck kind of an era was this?" But see, at the time, these were just the hits on the radio. There wasn't anything odd about it. Only now can I pick out all the strange cross-currents and unexpected artistic bedfellows. For example, it's interesting to observe the manner in which rap began its lengthy trickle into the upper reaches of the charts during these years - but not the Public Enemy, N.W.A., Slick Rick kind of rap. Oh no. It was more like the Technotronic, Snap!, Young MC, Tone Loc, Biz Markie, "We Didn't Start the Fire" kind of rap. There were non-rap songs that would suddenly feature a verse of rap without warning. Artists would use a dash of rap as flavoring, not serve it up as the main course. People couldn't handle that yet.

I'm tempted to say that the 1989-1990 era of mainstream pop has been "critically underappreciated" or "overlooked," but let me clarify. About eight years ago, as my obsession with '80s music grew to a borderline unhealthy degree, I downloaded every Billboard Year-End Top 100 list from 1980 through 1990, and then proceeded to listen to those lists straight through, from the #1 song of the year down to the #100 song. As far as I was concerned, the year-end lists from 1980 through 1988 offered up some fairly solid listening, even toward the back end of each year. But when I got to 1989 and 1990, I noticed an interesting trend. Each list contained, I would say, about 25 to 30 tracks that I was inclined to categorize as first-rate, artistically inventive, melodically arresting songs that have held up well and still sound great today, and then about 70 to 75 songs that may have been popular at the time but, in my opinion, do not really merit repeat listening and might even be songs that I actively dislike. I'm talking about the soggy residue of hair metal, adult contemporary pop, and new jack R&B. What I'm saying is that if you separate the wheat from the chaff and only listen to the wheat (suddenly I'm in the mood to play a Bread album), you would think that this was an incredibly rich and rewarding era of pop music! But a comprehensive analysis of the era does not, I think, bear this view out. I feel like, in that 1989-1990 period, the great songs were great, and the crappy songs were crappy. There was no in-between.

But boy, that minority of excellence sure paints an evocative picture. Follow me, now, on a journey I would like to dub "Herbert Walker Memories."