"I Want A New Drug/Duck/Ghost" AKA Who You Gonna Call? My Lawyer

When Ray Parker, Jr. came out with the theme from Ghostbusters, everybody and their mother apparently thought, "Hey that sounds just like Huey Lewis and the News' 'I Want a New Drug'!" Everybody, except for four-year-old me, of course, who'd never heard "I Want a New Drug," but who had recently been scared shitless by a (possibly ill-advised?) theatrical viewing of Ghostbusters.

Years later I would see lists of Huey Lewis' hit song titles, and I was always confused by the title "I Want a New Drug." I thought drugs were bad, mmm-kay? Why would Huey Lewis, quite clearly a morally upright and decent person, be advocating drug use? Was the song supposed to be ironic? Was he playing a character? Even now, I'm looking at the lyrics and I have no idea why he's talking about drugs. According to Patrick Bateman, "not only is it the greatest antidrug song ever written, it's also a personal statement about how the band has grown up, shucked off their bad-boy image and learned to become more adult," but I'm not entirely buying it. Besides, nobody says, "I want a new drug." That's like saying "I want a new school." It just sounds awkward. Maybe you'd say, "I want to take a different kind of drug," but not "I want a new drug."

At any rate, in the late '90s I finally heard "I Want a New Drug," and you want to know the funny thing? It didn't even occur to me that the song sounded like "Ghostbusters." If anything, I would have assumed that Huey Lewis had ripped off Ray Parker, Jr. He certainly wasn't ripping off himself. "I Want A New Drug" is sort of Huey Lewis' stab at Aerobic Rock, and he stabbed well: not only did the song peak at #6, but it managed to top the Dance Club Play chart. I don't think Michael Jackson had anything to worry about.



The video featured the debut of Huey's now-iconic red sportcoat/black t-shirt/shades look, and, funny, but he keeps spotting the same girl everywhere he goes. Matter of fact, isn't that the same girl from the "Heart and Soul" video? Well by golly, it is! Her name is Signy Coleman, and fellow '80s blogger Noblemania managed to track her down recently:

How were you cast?

It was very funny. My agent said, “They’re looking for punk rockers so I want you to put some of that spray stuff in your hair and put on torn fishnet stockings.” I said, “Lynn, I’m not doing that. I don’t look anything like a punk rocker.” I said I’ll put on high heels but that’s about the extent of it. I went to the audition and there were 50 of the most hardcore punk rockers I’ve ever seen. I turned around to leave and the director popped his head out of the room they were casting in and said, “Hey, miniskirt, where are you going?” He pulled me in and said they were also looking for a girl who’s the opposite and stands out in the crowd of these unusual characters. I was asked to pretend to flirt with guy across the room, which I like to believe I had a little experience with at that point.

Did you have to audition for the second video (“I Want a New Drug”), or were you asked to be in it because of the first video?

I was just asked. They were filmed about a year apart. That one was more difficult. They had me on a boat in the bay when it was cold. The concert footage in it was real concert footage. Girls who are Huey fans are hardcore Huey fans. Right before they were about to start they walked me across the stage and put me dead center and there were girls in the front row of the audience who had all kinds of unladylike things to say to me. I won’t repeat them! The crew had to handpick a group of people to surround me so I didn’t get my hair ripped out, particularly when Huey leaned in to kiss me.

Lesson No. 1: Don't fuck with Huey Lewis fans. Lesson No. 2: Huey Lewis goes wherever he wants, even when it makes no sense. From Wikipedia: "The video is rather fast and loose with Bay Area geography: it starts with him driving toward downtown San Francisco, then on a ferry headed from Marin County toward San Francisco...then boarding a helicopter that flies over downtown back toward Marin County where the concert seems to be held." Hey, this was in the days before GPS, OK?

So, another solid hit, another tongue-in-cheek video - that it's, moving along, right? Not so fast.

One day, Huey was listening to the radio, minding his own business, when he heard a brand new song that sounded strangely ... familiar:

When the similarities between this song and the theme song of the 1984 film Ghostbusters were heard, Huey Lewis sued Ray Parker Jr. for plagiarism, claiming that Parker had stolen the melody from "I Want a New Drug". Lewis had been approached to compose the main theme song for the film, but had to decline because of his work on the soundtrack for Back To The Future. The two parties settled out of court. Details of the settlement (specifically, that Columbia Pictures paid Lewis a settlement) were confidential until 2001, when Lewis commented on the payment in an episode of VH1's Behind The Music. Parker subsequently sued Lewis for breaching confidentiality.

Well, yeah. When something's confidential, it's confidential - even fifteen years later. Ray Parker, Jr. never forgets, bitch. OK, so maybe he ripped off "I Want a New Drug." But you know what? He actually made it ... better. Let's face it, "Ghostbusters" is funkier, catchier, and heavier than "I Want A New Drug" ever was. At the very least, it may be the most danceable song about ghosts ever written (with the arguable exception of "The Monster Mash"). Besides, the song always makes me think of the movie Ghostbusters, which is, you know, a great movie. "I Want a New Drug" just makes me think of the D.A.R.E. program. If anything, the song Ray Parker, Jr. actually ripped off was the Bar-Kays' "Soul Finger," but let's not split hairs. Maybe Huey was just pissed off that, in a delicious irony, "Ghostbusters" only made it to #6 on the Dance Club Play chart, but hit #1 on the pop chart.

The "Ghostbusters" video didn't quite have the same budget as the Ghostbusters movie, but it does have more neon furniture, and more celebrity cameos (Irene Cara? Peter Falk?!). At about the 3:08 mark, the damsel in distress shows up in some sort of light blue button-up blouse that's also a skirt (?), but in a strange way I find it kind of hot.



Perhaps the musician who had the clearest vision for how to improve "I Want a New Drug" was not Ray Parker, Jr., but Weird Al. Over the course of three minutes and thirty seconds, Yankovic unleashes every potentially groan-inducing duck pun known to man: "I'll tie him up with duck tape"; "The duck stops here"; "Show me how to get down"; "One that won't smell too foul" - the man could go all night. The only thing missing was a music video with Signy Coleman in a duck suit.

The Commodores Have A Hit - Without Lionel Richie! But Only Just One.

When Lionel Richie left the Commodores, they should have been done. I mean, that's like the Supremes without Diana Ross. That's like Black Sabbath without Ozzy Osbourne. That's like Van Halen without David Lee Roth. That's like Pink Floyd without Syd Barrett!

Wait a second.

The point is, by the time he left, Lionel Richie pretty much was the Commodores. Quick, name another Commodore. That's what I thought. It must have come as a complete (and mostly pleasant) surprise, then, when the band sans Lionel suddenly came out of nowhere with "Nightshift."



The remaining members had special emotional motivation to write a great song, beyond simply proving their worth to the masses. "Nightshift" was a tribute to two R&B legends who had recently passed away: Marvin Gaye and Jackie Wilson.

It might sound like Marvin Gaye's father did something really horrible when I tell you that he fatally shot his son, but from what I understand, the reality is that Gaye picked a nasty fight with his father and probably assaulted him as well, somewhat egging his father on, and he knew his father would try to kill him if he did this, so in a sense, Gaye's death was sort of a roundabout suicide. But when the news broke, I don't think too many people cared about the exciting details. Gaye had just released his "comeback" single, "Sexual Healing," roughly a year earlier, and now he was dead.



While less known these days than Marvin Gaye, Jackie Wilson was also a dynamic and influential soul singer. The critical line on Wilson is that his studio recordings rarely captured his performing talents. Still, he had several big hits, such as "Lonely Teardrops," "Baby Workout," and "(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher And Higher." In 1975, he suffered an on-stage heart attack, fell into a coma, and was essentially an invalid until he finally died in 1984.



What makes "Nightshift" an especially successful eulogy, to me at least, is that it is a very subtle eulogy. For years I didn't even realize it was a eulogy. I must have heard this song a thousand times late at night, and I always just assumed it was a pleasant tribute to Quiet Storm radio. Just look at the video. There is not a single clue or hint in the video that betrays the nature of the lyrics. It could be about two cab drivers named Marvin and Jackie, for all we care.

Then one day, I actually listened to it closely. By the time I did, I knew who Marvin Gaye and Jackie Wilson were, and I knew how and roughly when they had died. I recognized the references to "What's Going On" and "Baby Workout." This pleasant song about late night radio suddenly blossomed into something kind of stunning.

Other tributes to deceased singers usually have hackneyed references to "heaven" and "Jesus" and God knows what else. "Nightshift" conjures up an image of the afterlife as being one big eternal R&B station, where classic songs play forever and never die. Sure, the image of Marvin and Jackie "singing proud" and "pulling a crowd" in heaven's night club could have come off as a little hokey in the wrong hands. That's where the music comes in.

The mere sound of "Nightshift" is so graceful and ethereal, it's almost as if the song is coming down from heaven itself. In other words, do you realize how easy it would have been to fuck this up? And after the particularly brutal nature of Gaye's and Wilson's deaths, fans probably needed to hear some reassuring voice saying that everything was actually going to be OK, and that their depressing deaths wouldn't overshadow the beauty of the music they made in life. "Gonna be a long night/It's gonna be all right/On the night shift." Yeah man.

There's another factor that makes the song powerful: the underdog factor. It's not just moving because it's a non-embarrassing celebrity eulogy song, but it's also moving because the Commodores managed to come up with a terrific hit, even after Lionel Richie left! The tribute sort of combines with the underdog story of the leftover Commodores grabbing one last moment of glory and it just makes the song even sweeter.

But then the Commodores were done. For real. Although, if it makes them feel any better, the hits dried up for Lionel just a year or so later, as well. Soon they were both has-beens. Everything worked out.

Sailing On A Billy Ocean

You're probably sitting at home, thinking, "Why can't there be more R&B singers from Trinidad and Tobago?" Precisely, my friends. Precisely.

OK, so Billy Ocean moved to London when he was eight. But come on, London didn't put the "ocean" in "Billy Ocean," you know what I mean? A man never forgets hits roots, and even though he had several UK hits in the late '70s, it wasn't until the former Leslie Sebastian Charles painted a sultry portrait of a mythological creature from his homeland that he transcended the Atlantic ocean, and several others.



Apparently Ocean's record company thought it could milk the song for all it was worth by releasing it with region-specific lyrics; according to Wikipedia, "The song was recorded under different titles for different parts of the world—resulting in versions such as 'European Queen' and 'African Queen'." Come on, was that really necessary? I mean, the song was popular enough in America and Britain without needing to be called "American Queen" or "British Queen." Hell, Britain already has a queen. And America already has several, like Richard Simmons, and Gore Vidal.

Besides, in a way, "Caribbean Queen" had already been a worldwide smash. The four note synth riff; the eerie, swirling strings, the guitar lick drenched in echo ... where have I heard this all before?



Growing up with a song can sometimes blind you to its obvious similarities with another. I never, even for five seconds, realized until about six months ago that "Caribbean Queen" is a total rip-off of "Billie Jean." My God. It was right under my nose all this time and I never noticed it!

But let's face it - if you're going to rip off a song, it might as well be "Billie Jean." I mean, this in no way makes me like "Caribbean Queen" any less than I already did. It's a good rip-off!

At any rate, I have this image in my mind: the morning after discovering his Caribbean Queen, Billy Ocean picked up a guitar, sat out on his front porch, and sang "Suddenly" to the world.



Are you sure it's love, Billy, or maybe just a cold?

The Grisly Fate Of DeBarge

DeBarge were supposed to be the Jackson 5 of the '80s. Well, they got at least half of it right.

Like the Jackson 5 before them, DeBarge were, on the outside, a Motown family group with sweet, cuddly little songs. But on the inside, DeBarge may have succumbed to the ugliest, most depressing downward spiral of any band of the '80s. And I'm about to tell you all the sordid details!

It started out so well. The band, consisting of brothers Mark, Randy, James, Eldra (or "El" as he came to be known), and sister Bunny, experienced their first big taste of success in 1983 with the ballad "All This Love." To make the Jackson 5 aspirations complete, James even married a young Janet Jackson. It would seem that the world was at DeBarge's feet. Listen to how lovely and magical, here in the initial glow of stardom, they sound:



And the world was at their feet, if by "world," you mean "Dianne Warren." You know, Dianne Warren. What's that, you say? Name doesn't ring a bell? I'll bet these names ring a bell: Celine Dion's "Because You Loved Me," Toni Braxton's "Unbreak My Heart," LeAnn Rhimes' "How Do I Live," Aerosmith's "I Don't Want To Miss A Thing." Oh, her. Yes, Dianne Warren is the undisputed champion of shitty late '90s adult contemporary ballads. I am not, shall we say, particularly fond of that period of her work.

However, in 1983, Warren was just another struggling songwriter when she wrote her first hit, Laura Branigan's "Solitaire." She didn't quite know what to do with "Rhythm of the Night" until someone at Motown decided to recycle the calypso sound of "All Night Long" and shove that sweet little DeBarge family on top of it.



Look at them, so effervescent and carefree.  Little did they realize, but the shit was about to hit the fan.

The suits at Motown started whispering in El DeBarge's ear: "Drop that loser family of yours; what you need to do is go solo." A hit single from the Short Circuit soundtrack, paired with drugs, can probably make a DeBarge think he's capable of anything.



Bobby and Chico DeBarge (I guess there were always plenty of spare DeBarge siblings just lying around?) were brought on to replace him. James and Janet's marriage was annulled after one year. OK, so they hit a little rough patch, surely they'd sort this out?

That same year, Bobby and Chico DeBarge were arrested for drug trafficking in their native Grand Rapids hometown. They were eventually convicted of drug charges and sentenced to two different prisons to serve their sentences.

Come on. Couldn't they have at least put the brothers in the same prison? OK, fine, so it's just a little drug trafficking, nothing we haven't seen before, they can recover, probably served their time and came out nice and rejuvenated?

Bobby DeBarge died at a hospice in Grand Rapids after contracting AIDS after years of heroin addiction.

OK, so things didn't work out for Bobby, but everyone else was probably fine, right? El looked like he had a sharp head on his shoulders, let's see how he did:

In 2001 he was arrested for cocaine possession and was given probation. In 2006 he was arrested again for possession of a controlled substance and was once again given probation. In 2007 he was arrested in a domestic dispute and was held without bail. The charges were later dropped. Later that year he was arrested yet again and charged with cocaine possession and given probation again. However, he was once again arrested in 2008 for possession of crack and drug paraphernalia, breaking the terms of his probation. For this violation he was immediately sentenced to two years in state prison in California. On March 20, 2012, El was arrested in Encino for possession and sale of narcotics. The singer, however, was not charged because a Los Angeles district attorney found insufficient evidence.

OK, well, at least he didn't die from AIDS, at least not yet, so that's probably a step up. How about the other brothers?

James DeBarge recently was sentenced to prison for drug offenses.

Yeah.

Tommy DeBarge, who also suffered drug addiction, is under kidney dialysis but has nonetheless continued to perform, sometimes with surviving members of Switch and with his family members. Randy DeBarge and Mark DeBarge are said to have "incurable diseases" according to their mother.

"Incurable diseases"? Like what, AIDS? I mean, if it was AIDS, then the family would just say it was AIDS, because they certainly didn't have any problem letting people know that Bobby had AIDS. So what kind of diseases are we talking about here? Elephantitis? Leprosy?

The moral of the story is: if you've ever thought about being a singing family on Motown ... don't do it.

Jeffrey Osborne - No Relation To Ozzy

Like Lionel Richie and Kool & The Gang before him, Jeffrey Osborne may have risen to prominence as a funk/disco artist, but his heart was in Cosby Rock.

As the lead singer of L.T.D., Osborne had a #4 hit in 1977 with "(Every Time I Turn Around) Back In Love Again."



But every time he turned around, R&B trends shifted behind him.

Clearly, Osborne needed to be singing inspirational MOR ballads:



Or maybe he needed to be singing sleazy, pseudo-Rick James funk numbers (with requisite imitation "Beat It" guitar solo):



Damn it, '80s, make up your mind!

Editor's note: According to several YouTube commentators, that "requisite imitation 'Beat It' guitar solo" I was just making fun of was actually performed by Brian May of Queen (!). Hey Michael Jackson, you can have Eddie Van Halen.

James Ingram: Quincy Jones' Little Buddy

In 1981, Quincy Jones was so hot, he could basically just release an album featuring all of his buddies singing on it, even if nobody knew who the hell his buddies were, and expect people to buy it. That album was The Dude. And although it featured contributions from Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder, the two hit singles from the album, "Just Once" and "One Hundred Ways," were sung by a performer who, at that time, was a complete unknown. But Cosby Rock, and the world, would never be the same.



James Ingram was a singer just skilled enough, and yet just generic enough, to slide into the background of the '80s and be all over the place, without anybody really noticing. For instance, he sang two extremely prominent leads along with Ray Charles at the end of "We Are The World." Younger viewers may watch the clip of "We Are The World" today and wonder, "Who the hell is that guy singing with Ray Charles?" Who the hell is that guy? That guy is James Fucking Ingram. And how, they may ask themselves, did James Ingram end up singing prominently with Ray Charles on "We Are The World"? Because. He was Quincy Jones' little buddy.

In fact, Ingram became the master of the '80s duet: the infamous "Yah Mo B There" (with Michael McDonald - I am not going to post it again, although Lord, I am tempted), "Somewhere Out There" (with Linda Ronstadt - anybody remember An American Tail?), and, while we're at it, who can forget "What About Me?" (with Kenny Rogers and Kim Carnes)?

But Ingram's ultimate crowning achievement with the form would have to be his #1 1983 duet with the equally competent, equally quotidian Patti Austin, "Baby, Come To Me." Of course, having Quincy behind the boards always helps. Oh, and a little background vocal assistance from Michael McFuckin'donald.

The Pointer Sisters: They May Be Excited, But You Better Not Be

How many times have you heard a pop song where the woman is desperately dreaming for some super-suave ladies' man on a big white horse to come in and sweep her off her feet? Not the Pointer Sisters. See, the Pointer Sisters love you for who you are. The Pointer Sisters understand the appeal of the "nice guy."



Here is the rare '80s hit to praise passivity and humility over action and confidence. "He's So Shy" is so bouncy, so sweet, so ingratiating in every way, I wish I could tell you more about how much I adore this song ... if I wasn't so painfully shy!

And why does everybody have to be in such a rush these days? Whatever happened to taking your time?



The Pointer Sisters were so full of positivity and good nature, they weren't even afraid to encourage their weird-sounding, super-deep voiced sister to sing now and then. I'm pretty sure when most people heard "Automatic," they thought, "All right, a great new Stevie Wonder song!" And then they found out it was the Pointer Sisters. "So wait, you mean to tell me ... that's a woman?" Ruth Pointer - and what a woman she is. Does she have a stray testicle somewhere?



So let me pose a thought experiment to you: it's 1984, the Pointer Sisters are putting out a song called "Jump (For My Love)," and you need to make a video. What else is going on in 1984? The Summer Olympics! Come on guys, this video makes itself!



Finally, before I get too excited to talk about anything else other than the sheer, unbridled majesty of the Pointer Sisters, there is "I'm So Excited." When the Pointer Sisters initially released the song in 1982, nobody actually got all that excited; it peaked at #30. But in the wake of "Automatic" and "Jump (For My Love)," the song was re-released, and this time listeners mustered up the appropriate level of excitement; it peaked at #9, going on to become arguably their best-known hit (and with the Pointer Sisters, that is saying something). Check out the extended 12" version, where all the instruments drop out of the mix at the end except for the bass and bongos and the sisters can barely stop themselves from jamming! The song is also, if I'm not mistaken, the unofficial marketing theme for Cialis. Remember tiger: they make look excited, but underneath, what they really want is a shy guy with a slow hand. Hell, they're so excited, they're even wearing sunglasses in the bath tub.

How The Pointer Sisters Went Cosby

The Pointer Sisters. "I'm So Excited." "Jump (For My Love)." "He's So Shy." Typical mainstream '80s dance pop. I mean, nothing could be weird about the Pointer Sisters, right? Right??

Little did you know.

The tale is old by now: many '80s stars didn't exactly end up where they started. And then ... there are the Pointer Sisters.

In the '70s, the Pointer Sisters recorded a little bit of everything. What do I mean, "everything"? I mean big band music. I mean bebop. I mean country. I mean everything.

Oakland's finest definitely weren't strangers to funk and R&B. In fact, their '70s R&B material is probably a lot grittier than their '80s R&B material. On songs like "Going Down Slow," they sound more like Labelle or the Staple Singers than Lionel Richie or Michael Jackson.



Also, for a while, the Pointer Sisters thought they were the Andrews Sisters.



And then there was the country song. From Wikipedia:

Bonnie Pointer would play down the idea of a C&W hit by the Pointer Sisters being a novelty: "People think because we're always trying something different we're not sincere. Like country music. For us it's no joke...Our folks came from Arkansas and we grew up singing country songs. It's part of us."

Apparently it was. "Fairytale" peaked at #13 on the pop chart, and although it only peaked at #37 on the country chart, well, you have to be impressed that it even charted there at all. In the wake of its crossover success, the Pointer Sisters became the first African-American group to perform at the Grand Old Opry. The song was even covered by Elvis!



But clearly black country music was not what '80s audiences were waiting to hear (right, Lionel?). In 1978, the Pointer Sisters switched record labels, and intentionally or not, switched sounds as well. Or rather, they picked one sound and they stuck with it. One of the sisters even got lost in the shuffle and was never heard from again.

Well, if you're going to pick one sound and stick with it, you might as well pick Cosby Rock. Am I right or am I right?

"Just" The Ultimate Cosby Rock Anthem

Like George Benson, Grover Washington, Jr. was a jazz musician who did the crossover dance. Somehow or other, he roped Bill Withers into his game.

Withers had been laying low for quite a while since his peak in the early '70s. Not many soul musicians drew inspiration from folk, but Withers did this and he did it well. "Ain't No Sunshine," "Use Me Up," "Lean On Me" - hating Bill Withers is like hating ice cream. Suddenly, in 1982, on the wings of Grover Washington, Jr.'s sexy sax, Withers' congenial magic filled the airwaves once more.

I don't think any record sleeve so completely captures the spirit of its single the way the record sleeve for "Just The Two Of Us" does. You've got a saxophone, and a glass of wine. It's nighttime. Done.

"Just The Two Of Us" may, in my opinion, be the ultimate Cosby Rock anthem. It is so the epitome of Cosby Rock, a version was even recorded by...Bill Cosby:

George Benson: How Jazz Went Cosby

Q. What's lamer than a funk musician going pop?

A. A jazz musician going pop.

You see, jazz is already kind of lame as it is, and half the time you're on the border of easy listening, but you think you're all cool and special because you're playing jazz. Better to just abandon any pretense of high art and head straight for the dentist office.

George Benson knows what I'm talking about. In the '60s, Benson was a real, legitimate jazz guitarist. At least that's what people tell me; not knowing the difference between good jazz and shitty jazz myself, I'm just going to have to take everybody's word for it. AllMusic's Richard Ginell writes, "He can play in just about any style -- from swing to bop to R&B to pop -- with supreme taste, a beautiful rounded tone, terrific speed, a marvelous sense of logic in building solos, and, always, an unquenchable urge to swing". You know me, I'm always a sucker for a "rounded tone" and "terrific speed" (wink wink).

But George Benson could do one thing most jazz musicians could not: he could sing. Initially, the man wasn't in a big rush to exploit his vocal prowess. Although he played jazz, he always had a fondness for pop music, doing instrumental versions of AM radio staples like The Monkees' "Last Train To Clarksville," The Association's "Along Comes Mary," and The Mamas & The Papas' "California Dreamin' " in his own groovy way. His 1973 version of Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit" will fuck you up. He even recorded an entire album-length tribute to Abbey Road.

But Benson never fully crossed the line until 1976, when he had a left-field pop hit with a version of Leon Russell's "This Masquerade":



Suddenly, George Benson was a pop star. And he liked it.

I'm pretty sure I heard "Breezin'" somewhere in the background of a Yacht Rock episode:



Then there was his tasty re-make of The Drifters' "On Broadway," which I and many others will forever associate with the opening sequence of All That Jazz:



Yeah, these were pop hits, but they still sounded somewhat like jazz. No, George needed to kick his sell-out phase into high gear. Enter Quincy Jones.

Fresh from the success of Off The Wall, Jones and frequent Michael Jackson songwriter/funkiest Englishman alive Rod Temperton teamed up with Benson for "Give Me The Night." As far as I'm concerned George, the night is all yours:



Suddenly the George Benson guitar sound was everywhere. Listen to the opening notes of "Too Hot" or the solo in "Hello," for instance. Funny thing is, by the time of "Turn Your Love Around," I don't even think Benson was bothering to play guitar on his own recordings:



The metamorphosis into Cosby Rock ... was complete.

Hey, Speak For Yourself Lionel, I Didn't Say Anything

There must have been something about Gregory Hines movies that brought out the best in '80s pop stars. Like Michael McDonald and Kenny Loggins before him, Lionel Richie couldn't resist the charms of the Soundtrack Song.

I can see our proverbial studio executive now: "You know what we need? A movie about two ballet dancers! But wait - one of them's Russian, and the other one's American! We'll call it White Nights. Fellas it's a hit! Get me Baryshnikov on the phone! And Hines! And Isabella Rossellini!"

So is "Say You, Say Me" about the Cold War? Lionel better hope so, because as far as I can tell, it's not about anything at all. The melody and production are so powerful, though, nobody really cared. Maybe Lionel caught a glimpse of a majestic dystopian future:

I had a dream, I had an awesome dream
People in the park, playing games in the dark
And what they played was a masquerade
From behind the walls of doubt, a voice was crying out

Maybe it's not about the Cold War, but about the War of the Worlds? The War on Drugs? Will we ever find hope in this cold and heartless world?

Then all of a sudden, the song starts going cray-zay:

So you think you know the answers, oh no
Well the whole world's got you dancing, that's right I'm telling you
Time to start believing, oh yes
In even you who are, you are a shining star

Maybe, just maybe, we can break free from the prison of modern life. But no, the moment of possibility vanishes, and we're back to where we started.

You know, Lionel, just say whatever you want.

Where Kool & The Gang Searingly Chronicle The Breakdown Of All The Marriages They Foolishly Instigated

So you've taken Kool & The Gang's advice and gotten yourself hitched. A lifetime of joy and marital bliss awaits you, right?

At seventeen we fell in love
High school sweethearts,
love was so brand new
We took the vows of man and wife
Forever, for life
I remember how we made our way
A little patience, the times we prayed
Can't imagine that this love is through
Feelin' the pain, girl when you lose

Wait a second, "This love is through"? But you said...what about...you didn't tell me about this, Kool & The Gang.

Flyin' high we never took the time
To stop and feel the need
Funny how those years go by
Changing you, changing me
I remember love's fever
In our hearts, girl and in our minds
Can't imagine that this love is through
Feelin' the pain, girl when you lose

Oh great, now you tell me. Thanks a lot, Kool & The Gang. As J.T.'s voice soars into the open night, I can practically taste the court papers and child support on my lips:

"It's so so hot baby, yes it's so hot, I just can't take it, I can't stand no more baby, we were once lovers! We took our vows, of man and wife, foreeevaaahhh!"

Well, one man's song about marital troubles is another man's song about safe sex:



While I'm at it, let's not forget Lil' Kim's sampling of "Ladies Night" on her "Not Tonight" remix, featuring Missy Elliott, Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes, Da Brat, Angie Martinez, Mary J. Blige, Queen Latifah, SWV, Total, Xscape ... and basically every female rapper ever.

That might genuinely be too hot for me.

Lionel Goes Country

We all have certain ambitions in life. Some of us want to run a marathon. Some of us try to climb Mt. Everest. Some of us hope to win an Oscar. Lionel Richie wanted to write a hit country music song.

Other black singers had gone there before. Let's not forget Charley Pride, who managed to sound exactly like a white country singer except, holy shit, he's black.



Ray Charles decided to tackle country on his own terms, performing country songs in an R&B style, ending up with a unique, new kind of genre entirely.



But by the '80s, it had been a while.

Now, if you stop to think about it, country elements had been lying latent in Lionel's songs as far back as "Easy" and "Sail On." But no, "country elements" weren't enough for the man. Lionel wanted to pen an official "country music song." Well, if he couldn't sing it himself, maybe he could get some white guy to do it. Enter Kenny Rogers.



"Lady" wasn't just a #1 country hit, it was also a #1 pop hit. Perhaps feeling encouraged, and willing to test his powers to the limit, Lionel did not stop there. Thanks Kenny, it was fun, but no, he wanted a country hit under his own damn name.

"Stuck On You" (do I hear faint traces of Eric Clapton's "Wonderful Tonight"?) became the fourth straight Top Ten hit from Can't Slow Down, peaking at #3. But I doubt Lionel cared much about that. No, what he really cared about was that the song climbed all the way to #24 on the country charts. #24!

Ladies and gentlemen, Lionel Richie had finally become an official country music singer.

You ride 'em, cowboy.

Where Kool & The Gang Definitely Don't Promote Marital Sex

Here's a Kool & The Gang song not likely to be played at a wedding reception. Even fans of their '70s incarnation can get behind this one; to quote one YouTube user, "Didn't care much for their 80's output, but this song is a banger!"

The band was apparently hoping it would be considered a rocker. I'm staring to come under the impression that every single '80s R&B artist, at some point, tried to do their own "Beat It." Kool & The Gang released a couple of different mixes of "Tonight." The version that appeared on my '80s Tape was, oddly enough, the "album" mix. They also released an "AOR Mix," with a different and slightly longer guitar solo, presumably in an attempt at having a crossover "Album Oriented Rock" hit. Didn't work, I'm presuming.

What's always struck me about "Tonight" is that, while the lyrics appear to describe a 16-year-old guy losing his virginity, the song doesn't sound particularly happy or idyllic. Instead, it sounds kind of freaky and menacing. Maybe it wasn't such a great night after all. When J.T. leaps into a piercing falsetto at the end, proclaiming "Oh tonight, I wanna da-aaa-ance with you," I mean, I'm glad he wants to dance, but I wouldn't want him dancing anywhere near me.

Hello? Is It The Most Unintentionally Hilarious Video Of The '80s You Were Looking For?

There are cheesy '80s music videos. And then there is Lionel Richie's "Hello."

Some artists viewed the new possibilities of the music video format as an opportunity to push the limits of visual creativity. Lionel Richie took it as an opportunity to push the limits of cheese.

The song "Hello" itself is already on the sappy side. "I've been alone with you inside my mind/and in my dreams I've kissed your lips a thousand times." Yeah, Lionel, like you're the first person to ever write a love song. But when that little chord swoops in after the word "for," and he slides into the chorus, I have to admit, I'm a goner.

But they needed to create a whole new category of cheese to accurately measure the cheese level in this video. You see, Lionel's a college professor (or a student teacher? a high school teacher?), she's a student, he's in love with her. Pretty corny. Except there's just one twist: she's blind.

Oh! Snap! Boo-yah!

No, Lionel, don't go there - wait - just - don't - but - aaaaaaaaaaaaand he went there.

It's hard to know what to say. There's the embarrassing play dialogue ("It isn't good for you Billy Boy. Too many memories, too many ghosts." "It's what I know - this, and the can."). There's the late night phone call. And finally, there is the sculpture. Oh, the sculpture.

You know what? I'll just let the YouTube users take it from here:

That statue needs a heavy douching of jerry curl juice to portray him accurately

No one has ever captured my jerry curl in clay......I'm jealous

Lionel Richie Chia Pet Head. On sale now!

Do you think that the bust of Lionel that looks nothing like him still exists? It's probably worth a fortune. I would love to own it. It would really tie the room together.

how does she put her makeup on??

Why is she reading with the lights on?

obviously pretending to be blind for a scholarship

Hello? Is it me you're looking for? Oh, sorry... I'll try back later. Do you know when she'll be in? Around 9, you say? I apologize for the mixup again, take care now.

What subject is he teaching? Mackin' 101

Yo, how come no one notices that Lionel Ritchie is singing in the middle of class out of nowhere.

Lionel, what the f*ck kinda shirt are you wearing @3:47? its like a striped button up tank-top-vest with pockets...

Where Kool & The Gang Single-handedly Create Your Wedding Reception Playlist

For reasons that remain unclear to this day, in the '80s Kool & The Gang took it upon themselves to make the jobs of wedding DJs the world over just a little bit easier. Don't know what to play at a wedding? Just pop in a Kool & The Gang Greatest Hits CD and you're all set.

"Celebration" may not only be heard at weddings, but also at birthdays, bar mitzvahs, Quinceaneras, and freed hostage welcoming parties (see: Iran Hostage Crisis, 1981). Personally, I will forever associate the song with Oakland A's home victories, but the tune can be applied to virtually any sporting event, aside from those held in Cleveland, where fans have nothing to celebrate.



Depending on at what point you play the video for "Get Down On It" at your reception, sickness may be unintentionally induced. As one YouTube user put it, "Guy who made the video had just found the 'ghosting' function and thought 'hey thats pretty cool!' "



Meanwhile, the video for "Fresh" was apparently a rare collaboration between Bob Fosse and Ridley Scott:



Imagine chewing on your steak, and then turning around to find that...Kool & The Gang have taken over your favorite all-night diner! "Hey, get that keyboard off the table, you're scratching the paint."



But the mother of all Kool & the Gang wedding reception songs has to be "Cherish." "Cherish" is to '80s wedding reception songs as "Just The Way You Are" is to '70s wedding reception songs. It is a wedding reception unto itself.

But see, what I like about "Cherish" is that it is not specifically about weddings, or even about romance. According to AMG, the band was recording in the Bahamas, and "while working along the beach, lead singer James 'J.T.' Taylor watched the band members' children happily at play and thought to himself 'how blessed we are. God has been good to us and we should cherish it.' " His falsetto at the 3:33 mark is so sweet, it almost makes me want to cherish something. Like my sarcasm.

The video is like a perfect four-minute distillation of every Time-Life "Romantic Classics" infomercial ever made, complete with seagulls, bonfires, and tiki torches. I warn you: the sheer wholesomeness of these images may cause blindness.

Dear God, Something Terrible's Happened, Why Can't Lionel Richie Slow Down??

In 1982, Lionel released his first solo album, simply called Lionel Richie. The album was an immediate success and boasted three hit singles: "Truly," "You Are" (which brightened up my '80s Tape) and "My Love," a song I heard on the radio a couple of months ago and kept waiting for it to slip into the chorus of "Easy," and then I realized that after a while Lionel Richie's ballads all just blend together and become one big Lionel stew.



But in retrospect, Lionel Richie was merely a warm-up for the MOR onslaught that was Can't Slow Down.

Imagine a record executive sitting around his penthouse in 1983, smoking a cigar, thinking, "Man, if only I had an album that was just like Thriller, but much wimpier." Can't Slow Down is that record.

Picture an emasculated hybrid of "Beat It" and "Bille Jean" and you might have "Running With The Night." Who needs a scorching guitar solo from Eddie Van Halen when you can have a scorching guitar solo from...Toto's Steve Lukather?



Then there was the time Lionel Richie tried to sound Jamaican. "People dancing all in the street/Feel the rhythm all in their feet/Life is goooood, whyyyylde and sweet." Dude, Lionel, you're from Alabama. You're not fooling anybody.



But clearly all the partygoers are having too good of a time to care about the man's dubious accent; even the policeman can't resist joining in on the fun. As one YouTube user put it, "This song stopped me from killing myself with a spoon today."

Also: did you know that Lionel Richie is huge in the Middle East? According to ABC News, "Grown Iraqi men get misty-eyed by the mere mention of his name. Iraqis who do not understand a word of English can sing an entire Lionel Richie song." Fittingly, on the night American tanks invaded Baghdad, Iraqis celebrated by blasting "All Night Long" throughout the streets. Probably not the kind of party Lionel had in mind.

How Kool & The Gang Went Cosby

Once upon a time, back in 1969, a man named Robert Bell decided to go by the name of "Kool," and he began collaborating with some fellow musicians whom he then termed his "gang." This "Kool" and his so-called "gang" played a variety of what was then called "funk." Their songs boasted titles such as "Chocolate Buttermilk," "Raw Hamburger," "Electric Frog," "Funky Granny," and "Rated X." They didn't even have a lead singer. Who needs a lead singer when you're funky?

Among my peers, the most well-known track done by the funk-era Kool & The Gang is probably "Jungle Boogie," thanks to its usage in the opening credits of Pulp Fiction (Side note: did you know that '70s R&B actually existed before Quentin Tarantino discovered it?). The man delivering those guttural vocal ad-libs was apparently the band's roadie.



And who could forget their contribution to the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, the not-in-terribly-good-taste "Open Sesame"? I don't think lines like "Get on your camel and ride," or the comical usage of the "There's a place in France where the naked ladies dance" melody would go down too well in this day and age. But hey, there probably weren't too many Muslims in Studio 54, I'm guessing.



The '70s Kool & The Gang wasn't solely about high energy dance numbers, however. See "Summer Madness," their freaky, spaced-out version of a ballad.



But as every musician of the '70s quickly found out, the good times couldn't last forever. AMG gives the band's 1977 album The Force 1 1/2 stars. Lead single "Slick Superchick" peaked at #102. Suddenly, this gang wasn't so kool anymore.

Enter one James Taylor - who went by "J.T." in order to avoid confusion with the singer-songwriter of "Fire and Rain" fame.

One could argue that this James Taylor possessed even less of an edge than the other one. But with J.T. at the helm, Kool & The Gang not only returned to prominence, but swiftly eclipsed their earlier popularity.



Now, there are funk purists who adamantly claim that the '70s Kool & The Gang was the "real" Kool & The Gang, and that the version of the band that came to dominate radio in the '80s was watered down crap. These are probably the same people who think that Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd was the "real" Pink Floyd, or that Peter Green-era Fleetwood Mac was the "real" Fleetwood Mac. These people were probably young adults in the '70s, they are probably 60 years old now, and nobody cares what they think anymore.

Yes, it's true that there might have been more "credibility" and "real emotion" in the early incarnation of Kool & The Gang. But here's how I see it. There were a lot of other bands like them. I mean, who wants to be just another good funk band? Better to be the absolute masters of a shitty genre than runners-up in a good genre, that's what I say.

And the thing is, I don't think it's quite as hard to make a good funk song as it is to make a good pop song. This coming from a songwriting genius, of course. But funk songs are like jams; at times, they're barely even songs. After a while they can get kind of samey. In my opinion, it takes more effort to write a song like "Cherish" than it does to write a song like "Jungle Boogie." The later Kool & The Gang songs have lyrics, and chord progressions. They're sturdier compositions.

But why do I have to choose, really? In the end, it's all kool with me.

How Lionel Richie Went Cosby

By the mid-'70s, the once mighty Motown empire was finally beginning to decline. The Jackson 5 jumped ship to sign with CBS. Only two original members of the Temptations remained. Diana Ross became swallowed up by her own ego. Marvin Gaye became swallowed up by his own penis. Things were looking grim. No one expected a young funk band from Alabama to make much of a difference.

I never understood why a band would name itself after a computer, but hey, that's cool. The Commodores' first hit, "Machine Gun," sounded like it could have been music from a video game, and was used to great effect in the "rise of Dirk Diggler" portion of Boogie Nights.



Then there is "Brick House," staple of frat house comedies and Tyler Perry movie trailers, otherwise know as "She's a brick...HOWZ."



But few people realize that the band who made "Brick House," a song as gritty and funky as anything by The Isley Brothers or The Ohio Players, was the same band who gave birth to the undisputed champion of Cosby Rock:


I can see it now. "Guys, this funk stuff is cool, but you know what I really like? Ballads. Can we try some ballads?" "I don't know, Lionel, that stuff is for pussies." "Aw, come on, just one song? Let's see how it does. If it flops, it flops."



If only. Instead, "Easy" unleashed a monster. The song became the Commodores' biggest hit yet (not to mention an "easy" target for Faith No More, who recorded an amusingly faithful cover version in 1993). The real Lionel Richie had finally stepped out from behind the funky facade. "Issac Hayes? Pfft. How about Barry Manilow? With a dash of Glen Campbell? Now we're talking."

The rest of the group gleefully rode the ballad train. "Still," "Three Times A Lady"...funk? What's funk? We've never heard of this "funk" that you speak of. Close your eyes, and "Sail On" is practically a Yacht Rock song.



Apparently the Commodores are sailing through the clouds here and not the ocean. Maybe they couldn't find any stock footage of a boat and had to settle for stock footage of a hang glider instead. I like the part where Lionel's band mate can't recall whether the lyrics are "Sail on, honey" or "Sail on, sugar." It's a big difference, buddy, get it right.

By 1981, Lionel was doing sweeping duets with Diana Ross.



"Endless Love" was billed as "Lionel Richie and Diana Ross," not "The Commodores and Diana Ross." The writing was on the crossover wall. He stuck around for one last uptempo dance number, "Lady (You Bring Me Up)," before finally sailing on to easier pastures.



For the rest of the band, though, it probably felt more like Monday morning than Sunday morning.

Cosby Rock

In September 1984, The Cosby Show made its television debut. According to Wikipedia:

For Cosby, the new situation comedy was a response to the increasingly violent and vulgar fare the networks usually offered... The show had parallels to Cosby's actual family life: like the characters Cliff and Claire Huxtable, Cosby and his wife Camille were college educated, financially successful, and had five children. Essentially a throwback to the wholesome family situation comedy, The Cosby Show was unprecedented in its portrayal of an intelligent, affluent, African-American family.

I never really watched The Cosby Show. I don't honestly know much about it. But for the purposes of this blog series, I find Cosby a fitting symbol - a representative, if you will, of a certain shift in '80s black popular culture. Bill Cosby is emblematic of the way in which '70s African-American edginess gradually slid into '80s African-American tameness. And as television went, so did music. Ladies and gentlemen: I give you "Cosby Rock."

In perhaps a mixed sign of our nation's racial progress, I think it's fair to say that in the world of '80s pop music, exceedingly vacuous, non-threatening, yuppified pop songs were not solely the province of white people. True, since the beginning of American popular music, black musicians have often aimed at the middle of the road, but mostly out of necessity. Come off too dangerous, and white people weren't going to buy your music.

The difference with '80s R&B, however, is that - and correct me if I'm wrong here - the focus toward the middle of the road seems to have been more of a deliberate choice. In the '70s, mainstream audiences had demonstrated great acceptance toward gritty, often political funk from artists such as Sly & The Family Stone, Parliament-Funkadelic, Curtis Mayfield, and Stevie Wonder. In other words, white people could handle the heavy stuff. No, these '80s R&B singers wanted to make sentimental crap. But such is the beauty of true American freedom: You have the freedom to churn out Adult Contemporary schlock, if that's what you really want to do.

But I wouldn't want anyone to be fooled by some pseudo-narrative of black upward mobility. It was the '80s. Everybody was still fucked. It's just that nobody really wanted to sing about it. Well, a few people did. We called them "rappers." But come on, like that was ever going to make it. No, the future was obviously George Benson and Billy Ocean.