"Love Shack": Don't Call It A Comeback AKA "Roam" (Up The Charts) If You Want To

Take that Patagonia vest-wearing attorney, that cat meme-obsessed housewife, that Bible-thumping Mormon schoolteacher, that Tesla-driving tech bro, gather them together at a wedding reception, play "Love Shack" and "Roam" on the stereo system, and what will they be doing? They will be dancing. Sure as the lord made little green apples, they will be dancing.

Herein lies the beauty of '80s music. No matter how weird your band, no matter how how "deviant" the majority of the record-buying public might have deemed your lifestyle, no matter how unlikely it would have been that you and your listeners would have ever frequented the same zip code, with the right song, you could still crash into the mainstream and find yourself permanently lodged there for all eternity. Witness Devo and "Whip It." Witness the Clash and "Rock the Casbah." And with all due respect to "Rock Lobster," in 1989, The B-52's did this not once, but twice. Little did the straitlaced public know, however, that the ride to the top hadn't been all fish and candy.

To those paying attention in the early '80s, the B-52's probably came off like a non-stop party (in bounds or out of bounds). It would have taken a serious dose of bad vibes to kill that buzz. Well, if anything could do it, a band member dying of AIDS might have been just the thing. From Wikipedia:

During the recording [of their follow-up to Whammy!], guitarist Wilson had been suffering from AIDS, though none of the other band members were aware of his illness except for Strickland, as he "did not want anyone to worry about him or fuss about him." Wilson died from his illness on October 12, 1985, at the age of 32 ... Cindy Wilson was devastated by her brother's death, and her bandmates were depressed about Ricky's passing. The band went into seclusion and did not tour to promote their album. This was the beginning of an extended hiatus from their musical careers.

Many bands break up for trifling reasons. The guitarist stole the drummer's toothbrush. Their last single only peaked at #7 instead of #6. You know, little stuff. A member dying of AIDS ... is not that kind of reason. Talk about a party out of bounds. If the B-52's had honestly called it quits at that point, who could have blamed them?

But cue the saccharine made-for-TV movie music, because in arguably the most feel-good twist in all of '80s pop, not only did the B-52's re-group after the passing of Ricky Wilson, they essentially tripled their popularity. "Love Shack" and "Roam" were certainly the first B-52's songs I ever heard, although, to be fair, I didn't frequent gay clubs very often when I was nine years old.

"Love Shack" and "Roam" are so much more ... how can I put this? ... melodically graceful than the usual B-52's fare. It's a little suspicious. Even their best tracks tended to sound like free association jam sessions that barely skirted novelty status. "Love Shack" and "Roam" are like ... actual songs. At times I've wondered if they weren't even written by the band themselves, but it turns out the only outside contributor was Robert Waldrop, lyricist of "Roam." The traces of post-punk from their debut album apparently weren't allowed into this particular love shack. What I find so uplifting about these two post-Ricky hits is that they aren't mournful or defeatist in the least. The B-52's literally partied their grief away, and the public must have found the unexpected positivity infectious - assuming they were even aware that one of the non-singing members had died anyway (I mean, there's the two girls in wigs, the awkward MC guy, and ... some other people?). Like the Pretenders before them, the B-52's turned New Wave tragedy to New Wave triumph. I'm tempted to recommend this approach to other bands, but if biblically bleak misfortune was truly the fuel that down-and-out recording artists needed in order to return to commercial relevance, then DeBarge would have had as many comebacks as Cher by now.

Fred Schneider was lucky, I say - damn lucky. Because the two other singers in his band possessed such rich, powerful, distinctive, sensual voices, it allowed him to get away with murder. Funny, but back in the day I never thought there was anything remotely weird about Schneider's off-kilter delivery (which Wikipedia defines with a German word too magnificent to be real: "sprechgesang"). Sure, their male singer sounded like Jerry Lewis on Benzedrine, but come on, that David Bowie guy sounded pretty weird too, and no one seemed to comment on that. He knows just when to drop in and just when to cut out, hardly ever stepping over Kate and Cindy's parts (Flava Flav, take note). He's like the spice, not the key ingredient.



Look: you know "Love Shack," I know "Love Shack" ... what can I say about "Love Shack" other than that it grooves harder and more effortlessly than most of the '60s dance singles it's imitating (mainly the Temptations' "Psychedelic Shack") and feels about as dated to me as an Ansel Adams photo of Half Dome. Highlights:

• 0:01 - Opening drum fill possibly lifted from the Four Tops' "It's the Same Old Song," followed by handclaps possibly lifted from the Angels' "My Boyfriend's Back" (all perfectly allowed, of course)
• 0:29 - Mmm, those harmonies on "Lookin' for the love ... getaway"  - eat your heart out, Bee Gees
• 0:59 - The little keyboard glissando that punctuates the double-timed drums after "get too-geh-thuh!"
• 1:47 - Cindy stretching "highway" into a four-syllable word, resembling something like "highway-uhh-eee!"
• 3:44 - The horns taking several seconds to haphazardly slide downward at the start of the "call and response" section, as if someone had just unplugged their power cable
• 3:58 - The surprisingly lusty "call and response" section, which sports a good deal more of a "battle of the sexes" feel than the corresponding section from the Isley Brothers' "Shout" that most likely inspired it
• 4:48 - Fred hollering "Your what?" and Cindy following with three of the most misinterpreted words in all of '80s pop. "Hen room ... busted"? "Can rule ... resting"? When informed one day that the words she utters are "tin roof ... rusted," I thought to myself, "How does that make any more sense than all the other mondegreens people have come up with over the years?"
• 4:53 - The "crowd" inside this supposed "Love Shack" (I assume made up of the B-52's and sundry companions horsing around in the studio), having continuously kept its presence relegated to the background (a la Johnny Rivers' "Live at the Whiskey-a-Go-Go" hits like "Memphis" and "Seventh Son") suddenly letting out a prominent yelp or two in reaction to the news of Cindy's tin roof allegedly rusting

Watching the "Love Shack" video is always a frustrating experience for me because I'm so used to listening to the 5:34 album version, and the video features the 4:18 single version, which chops up the call-and-response section so thoroughly that, I mean, they might as well have cut out the whole thing, but otherwise I find it a hoot from start to finish, looking like the Russ Meyer/John Waters collaboration that the world was just not deserving enough to receive. The roof of the Love Shack - excuse me, "Shaque D'Amour" - is a giant chess board! They pour soap suds into your martini! Even the goats are having a great time! Does this look like the sight of a band whose guitarist just passed? Well, that's probably how Ricky would have wanted it.



As for "Roam": while it's not quite as quotable and not quite as kitschy as "Love Shack," I'd say it's just as infectious in its own swirling, kaleidoscopic way, not to mention just as popular (both songs peaked at #3 in the US). It has something that very few B-52's songs have: wistfulness. I think Fred wisely knew to sit this one out. Question: have handclaps ever made a chorus worse? If anyone out there can find an example of this, please mail your response to Little Earl c/o Cosmic American Blog, 113 7th Ave., New York, NY 10026. A colleague at work recently asked me to name my top five favorite songs produced by Nile Rodgers, offering "Roam" as a possibility. I nodded and said, "Oh yeah, that's probably one," as if I was well aware that Nile Rodgers had produced "Roam." But I wasn't! Nevertheless, I kept my cool under pressure. Hemingway would have been proud. Funny but the production doesn't sound markedly different from the production on "Love Shack," which was produced by Don Was. I mentioned that I got a Pee-Wee's Playhouse vibe from the "Stand" video, but I definitely get a Pee-Wee's Playhouse vibe from the "Roam" video, which features the band members literally "roaming the world" via blue screen (I wonder if they've found Lisa Stansfield's baby) and what appears to be hand-drawn, stop-motion graphics. Check out Fred's face as a banana flies through a donut hole at 1:26. The studio they filmed it in was probably so cheap, I wouldn't be surprised if the tin roof had rusted.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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



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

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

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

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

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



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

Nothing's Gonna Stop Me From Making Fun Of Starship Now AKA The Belinda Soundtrack Throwaway That Finally Came To Life

Let's just say that after "Rhythm of the Night," DeBarge's and Diane Warren's careers went in ... opposite directions? While Debarge quickly became the '80s pop living embodiment of the Book of Job, Warren teamed up with songwriter Albert Hammond, he of "It Never Rains in Southern California" and "Free Electric Band" fame (and esteemed co-writer of such easy listening gems as the Hollies' "The Air That I Breathe" and Leo Sayer's "When I Need You") on her way to uncontested '90s power ballad domination. OK, not exactly Goffin/King or Bacharach/David here, but then again, their target recording artists weren't picky. Exhibit A: Starship.

Of Starship's three #1 hits, there is one I am not ashamed to like (and/or love?). I essentially agree with the consensus on "We Built This City," and "Sara" is a good 1986 pop song in the sense that John Paul II was a good pope, but like every great (crappy?) '80s band, what Starship really needed, to bring out its best side, was a movie soundtrack.

I wish I could say I've seen Mannequin so that I could make a snarky comment about it, but I just remember that when it came out, I thought the TV ads were funny. I was also seven years old. However, if you don't think that the soundtrack gave us one of the greatest power ballads of the '80s, hands down, no question, end of story ... then you'll need to get out of my face. AMG's Joe Viglione knows what I'm talking about:

For those purist fans of the early Jefferson Airplane and Jefferson Starship, a song like "We Built This City" took the path the Marty Balin-less group embarked on with "Jane" (a title Balin actually rehearsed with the group prior to his leaving for a solo career) farther into the arena rock wasteland. The four minutes and 29 seconds of "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now" were a huge treat on an entirely different level. It's really more a collaboration between producer/arranger Narada Michael Walden and singers Grace Slick and Mickey Thomas than it is a Starship track. Lead guitarist Craig Chaquico is merely a guest star here, for this is a high-tech quagmire of bells, whistles, strings, and Walden's vision, building the melody into a rock-solid stomp, but for Starship, it is its zenith ... With this tune the band evolved into the counterculture Archies, but Slick remains the Queen of Cool, and she adds a dimension of integrity, even bringing the very best performance out of Thomas, who was all things a singer for Jefferson Starship should not have been. Slick and Thomas work in unison here, not the tapestry that was her marriage with Balin's voice on "Miracles" but an effortless combination like the guitars of Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood, a doubling effect which intensifies the sentiment. The song by Albert Hammond and Diane Warren could not be constructed more perfectly or with such refined precision. Walden has to be commended for merging dance-rock with industrial, and for all the contrived elements, anathema to fans of the institution which once crafted "It's No Secret" and "Plastic Fantastic Lover," this platter is itself a fantastic plastic march of triumph and overcoming all obstacles.

"Merging dance-rock with industrial?" Well, it certainly merged something with something. I also didn't realize Thomas and Slick were the Richards and Wood of '80s power ballads, but who am I to argue? The opening percussive barrage sounds like an android version of John Bonham on NyQuil. It may be tame, but it's huuuuuuge. And once it settles into the main rhythm, the beat truly feels like a massive generator that's suddenly up and running and could not be stopped even if someone wanted to stop it. It's like the inevitable chug of time immemorial. Nothing's gonna stop that throbbing thump in the background. And the moment it kicks into gear, it unleashes all these little sparkly sounds that flutter around the stereo spectrum. It's like they dipped the song in glitter.

Mickey enters, singing in an unusually low and sadly unmockable register, but then Grace steps up to the plate, and it sounds like she's been spending some serious time in the batting cage: "Let 'um say we're cray-zayyyy/I don't care 'bout thaaaaaa-uh-aaat/Put your hand in my hand baby/Don't evuh look baaa-uh-aaack/Let the world uh-round-ussss/Just fall uh-paaaaart/Baby we can make it if we're heart to heaaaaaart." I remember listening to this song in the car with my father, and after Slick sang her lines, he starting getting a bit Simon Cowell on us: "Listen to that power! Now that's a powerful voice right there folks." I got the impression that this was a singer who was supposedly more well-known than the usual singer of songs from the Mannequin soundtrack, but I didn't learn about Grace Slick until years later, and I didn't realize she'd sung this song until even later. At the time, sitting there in the car, I just had this image of an extremely large woman with a gigantic pair of lungs. Amazingly, Slick was still quite thin in 1987 (but whoa, if you Google pictures of her now, be prepared).

Her verse is the perfect set-up for what may very well be the most glorious chorus in the annals of '80s power ballad choruses - and unlike popes, that might actually be some seriously stiff competition. Go ahead, sing it right now. I know you want to. Every note feels like it's a stone pillar in the vast temple of love that the song is building in your ears. Mickey suddenly jumps an octave, and the thing is, he can sing in that range without straining at all. It's at this point where you truly realize that nothing is going to stop Starship here: not the Army, not the Navy, not the Air Force, and certainly not the fucking Marines.

There's a nice section that sounds like the start of the fade-out but actually turns out to be merely the bridge, where Mickey proclaims, "Oooooh, all that I need is you," Grace concurs that "All that I ever neee-eee-eee-eeed," and Mickey clarifies by stating "And aaaahll ... that-I-want ... to dooooooooo" and basically they just want to hold each other forever, ever and ever. Mickey reaches back for a nasty "Hey!" and a solo comes in which, while totally expected, sounds exactly the way you hoped it would and does everything it needs to do.

Then it's time for the real fade-out, and Mickey unleashes his usual high-pitched might, with two choice interjections by Grace ("I knowwww" at 4:00 and "Whoo-hoo! Nuh-thin'" at 4:09), and it's at this point, with a faceless sea of background singers chanting the chorus, that the song becomes ... dare I say it? Moving? Touching? Here's the deal: with her three Starship #1's, Grace Slick became the oldest woman to have a #1 hit on the Billboard charts (a record eventually broken by - you better "believe" it - Cher). Now, think of how many female singers tried to stay on top for years and years, putting themselves through all kinds of humiliating industry contortions and makeovers. And yet here was Grace, actually doing it. Not only that, but think of how many times Jefferson Airplane/Jefferson Starship/Starship should have died an ugly, Betty Ford Clinic death. People might have even been glad if they'd died an ugly, Betty Ford Clinic death. But here they were, soaring across the airwaves with a hit Diane Warren power ballad from Mannequin, and they overcame every obstacle to become even bigger than they'd been in their prime. In a cheesy, slap-to-the-forehead kind of way, it's ... inspiring.

And then, like Alec Guinness at the end of Bridge on the River Kwai, Grace suddenly realized, with horrifying clarity, what she'd done, and promptly quit the band. Yeah, nothing's gonna stop Starship now, all right ... except Grace Slick leaving.



I only have a few questions about the video:

1. How much do you think it cost them to make mannequin versions of Mickey Thomas and Grace Slick?
2. Why does that dog have an ice pack on its head?
3. What's the deal with the campy black guy with the Jetsons sunglasses, and why would Mickey turn his fire hose off??

While easily the biggest hit from the Mannequin soundtrack, "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now" was, contrary to the recollection of everyone ever, not the only song on the Mannequin soundtrack. In fact, there was a song that played during the title sequence that was not even available for commercial purchase. And now we come to what has been referred to as the "holy grail" of '80s Belinda Carlisle tracks: "In My Wildest Dreams."

I assume at this point Belinda was up for anything, and as we all know, you weren't a true '80s pop singer until you recorded a soundtrack song, so she obviously had to check this off the list. A clean version of the credit sequence used to be on YouTube, but it looks like it's been taken down, so here's a version I just found that's cropped beyond comprehension, sped up, and dubbed in Italian. Naturally, the movie studio, I.R.S. Records, and I'm guessing even Belinda herself figured nobody would give two shits about a throwaway track playing over the credits of a not exactly Oscar-winning film, so "In My Wildest Dreams" was never released as an album cut or even as a B-side. But oh, how they underestimated the obsessiveness of Carlisle-ophiles.

Personally, the song kind of sounds like an old, wrinkled version of "Walk Like An Egyptian" that was left out in the sun too long, but rarity has a way of improving a work's quality. For years, the only copy of the song you could hear was one directly ripped from the movie soundtrack, which naturally was not stripped of the cartoonish sound effects that played on top of it during the credits (Yes, I had a copy). Recently Belinda, or rather, an independent British record label with Belinda's permission, began reissuing her entire catalog. In an interview clip I swear I saw only last year, but just spent more time than I'd care to admit searching for, she said something along the lines of: "We tried to reissue everything. I kept hearing from fans on the internet saying, 'What about the song from Mannequin? You have to release the song for Mannequin!' The song from Mannequin? I didn't even know what they were talking about. Oh yeah ... I sorta remember doing that song. I guess I remember that song." So let's hear it for those hardcore fans out there who kept Belinda on her toes. Either it was just re-released on her CD singles box set, or someone finally found the master tape and leaked it onto YouTube, but as of 2014, after almost 30 years, courtesy of divine intervention perhaps, fans can now hear the full, proper studio version of "In My Wildest Dreams." The debate rages on in the YouTube comments:

Holy feyuk! Been looking for this since like 1986! OMG, I have done everything to get a copy of the full length lol I even contacted her on twitter! Wow, thank you for uploading. So it's also on her CD singles? Got to look for it now. Never thought I'd get this!

Ive been looking for this since i was a child, i gave up looking a few years ago and by luck stumbled upon this. You have made my day! Honestly; you have no idea how happy i am hearing the whole thing. Thank you for the upload

YESSSS!!!! been looking for this for ages now how did you find this?

Finally! Been searching for the full version of this song for over 25 years. Thank you thank you thank you 😊

I think this was ripped from the singles boxset? if so the quality is terrible, and disappointing considering how long the fans waited for it...they should remaster it and make it really pump!

Belinda's youthful vocal charms are on full display in this giddy & gooey slice of late 80's pop. Plus the song is full of melodic, rhythmic and lyrical hooks. Dreamy!

Mannequin got a lot of playtime in our VCR. This song is as much a part of my childhood as the National Anthem.

Finally it's surfaced in some way! What a travesty that this track never saw a proper release. For me, it's my favourite Belinda track of all time.

If this had appeared 6 months earlier I would have had this as a song at my wedding haha.

They said Napster was evil, but this song never being released by record companies is the real crime against humanity.

Well ... judge not lest ye be judged. Also, "Favourite Belinda track of all time"? I don't know if I'd go quite that far buddy. At any rate. Who knew that Mannequin would have been the source of so much building up and breaking down? For while it caused Grace Slick to finally, finally say adios to the band that wouldn't die, it may have inspired Diane Warren and Belinda Carlisle to quietly, slyly look at each other ... and get a few ideas.

Late '80s Heart: Just Couldn't Leave Those Power Ballads "Alone"

Here's the deal: If you're gonna do a power ballad, you might as well go big. I want to ask a question, in all sincerity: Has anyone ever criticized a power ballad for being ... too powerful? No. No one has ever made such a preposterous statement. It would be like criticizing a swan for being too graceful, a sword for being too sharp, a Bond villain for being too dastardly. It would be absurd.

Well, what if your song's about being alone? Isn't that kind of a ... quiet emotion? Maybe to the outside observer, perhaps, but on the inside, and if you're, I dunno, 16 years old, it's big. It's an emotion so big, it took not one, but two Wilson sisters to fully capture the scope of that pain. Indeed, very few pieces of music have been able to express the sheer magnitude of despair that confronts those in the throes of solitude. Heart's 1987 power ballad, in this regard, may stand (wait for it ...)

Alone.

Once again, Billy Steinberg and Tom Kelly (AKA the "Like A Virgin" guys) secretly scored a ubiquitous '80s #1 hit without anyone noticing who in the hell they were. From Songfacts:

Tom Kelly and I were signed to Epic Records and we made one album under the name i-Ten. It was sort of made out to look like a group, but it was really just the two of us.

We made this album and it was co-produced by Keith Olsen and Steve Lukather. I wasn't really happy with the way it turned out, but it did have some good songs on it. One of the songs on it was 'Alone.' The album was titled Taking A Cold Look. It didn't do much although it has sort of a cult following in Europe.

The most prominent song on it was 'Alone.' Tom and I recorded it for that record and just sort of set it aside when that record didn't succeed ... I just put those songs in a drawer and forgot about them, but then Tom and I were having a good deal of success with 'Like a Virgin' and 'True Colors' and then we heard that Heart was looking for a power ballad and Tom said, 'What about 'Alone'?' I winced and said, 'Oh, I don't really want to look at that song.' He said, 'What do you mean? That's perfect.'

We took the song out and sure enough it was relatively easy to do because we liked everything about the song except the first line of the chorus. The version on i-Ten, the lyric said, 'I always fared well on my own.' Both lyrically and melodically it felt very stiff and unappealing. So I did a minor change on the lyric and it said, 'Til now, I always got by on my own,' and Tom changed the melody and gave it much more movement and almost a slightly R&B feel on the first line of the chorus. That really lifted the chorus, and then all of the sudden I liked the song again.

"I always fared well?" No, no, no. Sometimes it really is the little touches. Could you image, say, "I've been suffering recently from a lack of satisfaction"? Or "There's a lady who I believe is fairly certain that all that glitters is gold"? It's gotta scan right.

The song begins with a piano that initially seems to be alone, although on closer inspection it is paired with what may have been intended to sound like a ticking clock, but perhaps more closely resembles a squeaking shoe. Enter Ann Wilson, seemingly not bothered by the rodent in the studio:

I hear the ticking of the clock
I'm lying here, the room's pitch dark
I wonder where you are tonight
No answer on the telephone

And the night goes by so very slow
Oh I hope that it won't end though
Alone

OK, you're thinking, so it's another soft rock ballad a la "These Dreams." That's cool, but where's the rocking Heart of yore? And then BAM.

What I think separates "Alone" from its power ballad peers is that the power totally comes out of nowhere and it's like holy shit where did all that power come from? In the blink of an eye, the song goes from Howard's End to The Crow. At first it seems like Ann is merely taking a pleasant little stroll in the moonlight, but then it turns out she's accompanied by a vast and insatiable army of warlocks and sea serpents and stuff:

Till now I always got by on my own
I never really cared until I met you
And now it chills me to the bone
How do I get you alone?
How do I get you alone?

The best touch is the sudden harmonies added by (I imagine) Nancy and Ann that accompany the line "I never really cared until I met you." It's the way they split across the stereo channel with such precision, like a laser beam refracting. I just want to tell the ungrateful guy she's trying to woo, "Hey, she may look quiet and shy, but underneath, she'll come at you like a coven of feral witches - just give her a chance buddy."

Then the song slips back into sensitive ballad mode. The thing is, if you think too hard about the lyrics of "Alone," you realize that it basically describes an embarrassingly well-worn unrequited love song scenario that's not original or insightful in any way whatsoever. But if you forget about that for a second and just listen to it, you can't help but be touched in your ... you know ... that thing in your chest region?

Then there is the second chorus. Oh man, the second chorus. What's amazing about the second chorus is that the song has already revealed its "I'm going to suddenly go from serene and peaceful to explosive and fiery" gimmick and you figure there's no way it could be as effective the second time around. But it's better. At 1:56, the drummer performs this agonizingly slow, monstrously heavy drum fill that sounds like it's coming from Ringo's evil fairy stepmother. In the first chorus, Ann started singing right off the bat, but this time, there are a couple of extra bars that are merely instrumental, and it creates this unprecedented sense of anticipation. "Where's Ann? Why isn't she singing? Is she hurt? Is she ... dead?" Oh she's alive all right. Here is my best rendering of her soul-piercing battle cry:

"Ohhhhhhhhh-hauuu-huh-whoa-hauuu!"

And then she sings the chorus. Sit the fuck down.

The rest of the song just sort of rides the inertia from that second chorus all the way to the denouement, although Ann finds one last chance to shine around 3:09 with two jet engine-level cries of "Uh-lowwwwwwwwww-wn-uh!" You can practically smell the burnt fuel residue emanating from her lungs.



So, the video. It begins with some creative staging, as Nancy sits in the foreground playing a grand piano, her hair apparently having been dyed in apricot juice, while Ann, dressed in funereal black, leans on a balcony in the distance. At 0:30 we get a nice close-up of her mascara-smothered visage, but then ten seconds later we get another close-up, and suddenly she's wearing a veil. She's a widow! Dude! She's literally grieving over the death of her fleeting love for some random superficial crush.

But what about the chorus? Something crazy's gotta happen at the chorus, right? Well how about the piano exploding? Oh, and now the rest of the band is on stage and there's an audience with flashing lights and blah blah blah, but honestly: how hard do you have to be playing your '80s power ballad to make your piano explode? Do you think the insurance covered that?

Then at 1:38, the Wilson sisters find themselves in the world's most purple-saturated room. Seriously, what was the conversation like on that set? "Not enough purple! Bob, I wanna see purple bleeding out of my eyeballs!" Where's Barney and Grimace when you need them? And then, then, at 1:54, we have what might very well be the best use of a horse in an '80s music video, full stop. Nancy Wilson, for no apparent reason, is suddenly riding a fucking horse. Hi-Ho Silver, girl, that's what I say. Hi-Ho Silver.

Two final observations: 1) By the end of the video, in half the close-ups of Ann, she's wearing the veil, and in the other half, she's not. Was this a gaffe? Intentional? What does it mean? 2) I love the close-up of Nancy at 3:22 - it's like her post-power ballad sexy satisfaction face. You did it, Heart. You shagged that power ballad harder and longer than anyone had ever shagged a power ballad before. Take a well-deserved nap.

"Walk Like An Egyptian," Glance Sideways Like A Short, Jewish Californian

All right, let's unroll this random papyrus scroll that's been sitting on my desk and see what we've got here:

In 1986, Dr. Pierre Fouchet and Dr. Wei-Yin Sing, on an archeological mission sponsored by the International Excavation Society, came across a heretofore undiscovered tomb twenty-seven miles from Cairo. There inside the ancient shrine, they spotted a jewel-encrusted chest. After gingerly wiping off the dust, they found a message scrawled in hieroglyphics, which their guide quickly translated for them:

"Ridiculous Pop Hit, Only To Be Released In The 1980s"

Dr. Fouchet pried open the chest with a crowbar, and a smattering of phrases, paired with a cartoonishly Middle Eastern melody, instantly filled the spidery cavern. The song quickly climbed its way out of the shrine and proceeded, like an oriental snake-charmer, to hypnotize the Top 40 airwaves of the day. Fouchet and Sing, sadly, were never heard from again.

I mean really now. Explain this to me:

All the old paintings on the tomb
They do the sand dance, don't you know
If they move too quick
They're falling down like a domino

All the bazaar men by the Nile
They got the money on a bet
Gold crocodiles
They snap their teeth on your cigarette

Foreign types with the hookah pipes say
Ay oh whey oh, oy oh whey oh
Walk like an Egyptian

Wait, who's doing the walking? What does "Ay oh whey oh" mean? Why does Vicki Peterson sound like she's from Minnesota all of a sudden ("dohn-cha know")? And did ancient Egyptians even have cigarettes? And who else would have hookah pipes aside from foreign types? I'm not done here:

The blonde waitresses take their trays
They spin around and they cross the floor
They've got the moves
You drop your drink then they bring you more

All the school kids so sick of books
They like the punk and the metal band
When the buzzer rings
They're walking like an Egyptian

All the kids in the marketplace say
Ay oh whey oh, ay oh whey oh
Walk like an Egyptian

So are we still in Egypt? Does Egypt even have schools with buzzers in them? Or blonde waitresses? It never ends. What does Susanna have to say for herself? From a 2011 interview with MTV Hive (titled "The Bangles Never Made A Sex Tape"):

I have a question about “Walk Like an Egyptian.” I watched the video a lot as a teenager, and then at least a half dozen times preparing for this interview. For the life of me, I can’t figure it out. What the hell is that song about?

Well, we didn’t write it. And to be honest, we weren’t totally sure what it was about either.

I knew it!

It was written by this guy named Liam Sternberg, and I heard somewhere that it had something to do with a time he was on a ferry crossing a river somewhere in Europe. It was very windy or something, and there was waves, something was causing people to walk in a funny way. Apparently that was the inspiration.

I would accept that explanation if anywhere in the lyrics he mentioned “ferries” or “wind” or “waves.” But he doesn’t. It’s all gold crocodiles and cops in donut shops.

I know, it’s kind of vague. I just watched that movie To Kill a Mockingbird. And there’s a scene where Scout and her brother, I forget his name, says, “Let’s walk like Egyptians.” And then they do a funny walk. I watched that scene and I was wondering if maybe Liam had subliminally remembered that movie as a kid and maybe that’s where it came from.

But you don’t know?

I really don’t.

This interview is over!

[Laughs.] I’m sorry!

In another interview with the AV Club, she expands further:

I was up at Columbia on the A&R floor, talking to David Kahne about songs, and he said, “God, I’ve got this crazy song. It’s really cool—I don’t know what you’ll think of it, but …” So now I’m curious. I say, “Okay, play it for me.” So he played me a demo of Marti Jones singing “Walk Like An Egyptian.” Apparently Charlie Sexton had also covered it. It was written by Liam Sternberg, who was from Ohio and had some involvement with Chrissie Hynde from the early Ohio music days, the scene there. Anyway, great guy. So the song had been covered a couple of times or demoed a couple of times, but I heard the Marti Jones thing, and I was immediately struck by how cool it was. She did a really great vocal on it. It was very deadpan, very cool. I liked it. And I think the idea was that we were thinking, y’know, the album had a certain flavor to it, but it might be nice to have something with a very different kind of groove to it, a different attitude, just to kind of make the album seem more well-rounded in a certain way. I guess that’s what David was thinking. At any rate, the band decided, “Yes, let’s go for it. Let’s go ahead and record it.” And we recorded it at the Sound Factory.

And that should have been the end of that. But this was the '80s. And the '80s naturally said, "But wait, there's more!":

You know, as soon as I started having a copy to play for my friends, before it came out, I was amazed that so many people were struck by the song. I guess I had gotten familiar with it and had gotten past that first response where it struck me as very quirky but very original, but I never, ever thought it would be a single, so the reaction to it sort of surprised me initially. But it just sort of kept building. It was the third single on the record, and it ended up being maybe our biggest single in America. I don’t know, maybe “Eternal Flame” was bigger in Europe. But it really caught on. It was such a slow build, though ... It was a series of very unexpected things that just kind of all came together in just the right way to make that song a hit. I think it just genuinely caught on with people. I don’t think the record company even had to do that much. They sort of just let it happen. They had given up early on, because like I said, it was really slow. It was people calling into radio stations and requesting it. It started developing its own momentum, as I recall. That’s always good when that happens.

Is it? Is it???

Because "Walk Like An Egyptian" became the biggest thing ever. Although it hit #1 in December of 1986, due of the way Billboard compiles their year-end lists, it was named the #1 song for the entire year of 1987. "Walk Like An Egyptian" is one of those '80s songs people used to play to me in college, with a nostalgic grin on their faces, while saying, "Dude, the '80s!" I did remember hearing it a couple of times as a kid (not often), thinking it was funny, but in my college years I had little patience for such misplaced affection. However, as with many emblematic '80s hits, I didn't really care for it until I approached the decade with fresh ears about six years ago, and then I found that, no matter how hard I tried, I ... just ... couldn't ... resist.

I'm sure fans of the Paisley Underground Bangles already weren't too keen on the rest of Different Light, but "Walk Like An Egyptian" is definitely the point where they felt the Bangles jumped the shark. Honestly though - has jumping the shark ever felt so good? "Egyptian" genuinely reeks of that "anything goes" spirit. I think the key to its success is that the Bangles really commit to the absurdity. There's not a wink to be found. The Bangles don't sing it "silly"; they sing it like they'd sing anything else in their repertoire. They think they're doing a Kinks cover! They take this verbal mish-mash and they rock out.

There's also the fact that it seems to employ some sort of vaguely politically incorrect stereotype of "Middle Eastern" music. First of all, the song opens with a gong sound. Are gongs even ... Egyptian? Aren't they more Chinese, or Mongolian? Are we entering an opium den or something? And then there's this rhythmic "chopping" sound. What the hell is that? Is that like Egyptian guys doing karate? Where's Carl Douglas when you need him? And how about "Ay oh whey oh, ay oh whey oh"? That's about as ethnically accurate as the Tomahawk Chop.

It's also impressive that, as much of a departure as the song is, the Bangles still manage to infuse it with their signature mid-'60s garage fuzz-rock verve. After all, quasi-middle eastern drones were all over the place in psychedelic rock. I'm not saying this could've been performed by the Yardbirds or the Strawberry Alarm Clock, exactly, but ... it's got that heavily reverbed, Bo Diddley groove to it, you know? It still works with the Bangles' whole aesthetic. It's like "Psychotic Reaction" or "Green Tambourine." It's far out, man. Best parts:

1. Right after every "Ay oh whey oh, ay oh whey oh," all the instruments drop out aside from the (synthesized?) tambourine, leaving each singer to seductively intone the title
2. After Vicki's (impressively gnarly) guitar solo, the instruments drop out as they do in the chorus, but this time, the band simply whistles mysteriously for several seconds
3. Once Susanna finishes her verse and the band kicks back in (at 2:56), there's this ... noise, it sounds like someone trying to ... unsuccessfully start a car?

I should note that on their biggest hit, the Bangles split up lead singing duties: Vicki took the first verse, Michael took the second, and Susanna took the third. This famously left out Debbie, who not only didn't get a verse, but didn't even play drums! (They used a drum machine.) She still won't shut up about it even today. From the band's VH-1 Behind the Music episode: "Yes, ironically it's the signature song! It's the song everyone always talks to me - my friends are like 'Walk Like an Egyptian'! I'm like 'Oh God, please,' you know, because, it's just, you know, unfortunately, had a lot of bad memories for me."

How did she ever cope with the terrible trauma?? Let it be said, however, that being given a verse on "Walk Like an Egyptian" may not have been quite the honor after all. From the MTV Hive interview:

What are you thinking about when you sing that song? What do the lyrics mean to you?

Mostly I’m thinking, “Please don’t let me forget the words!” I have forgotten the words during shows to such a degree that I plaster the stage with little Post-It notes, just in case. And it’s so bizarre because it only happens on the songs that I’ve been singing for thirty years. I could sing those songs in my sleep, and I probably do. But for some reason, I start tricking myself. It’s a mind game. I’ll be up on stage singing, and in the middle of a song this little voice in my head will go, “Who are you kidding? You only think you know this song. You’ve forgotten everything!” And sure enough, I’ll stumble on a line and I can’t find my way back.

I feel like I should test your lyric memory right now.

No! No!!

The panic in your voice tells me this is a good idea.

This is a terrible idea. Because you’ll probably trip me up and it’ll be really bad.

Let’s just do one “Walk Like an Egyptian” verse: “All the Japanese with their yen/ The party boys call the Kremlin.” What comes next?

Um. [Laughs.] See, it’s like the alphabet. If you start in the middle, you’re going to have trouble.

Do you want a hint?

No, no, I can do this. [Long pause.] Let’s see, let’s see. [Long pause.] It’s got to be in order! That’s my problem.

“And the Chinese know (oh whey oh)…”

“They walk the line like Egyptians!” [Laughs.] Thank you. It’s very complicated. It’s like a beat poem. I don’t know what Liam was thinking.

Another observation: the lyrics, with their quasi-rapping nature, feel like they should be sung by, I don't know, a British singer, or maybe a New Yorker, but the Bangles sound so ... Californian. They don't sound jittery enough, or something. It feels like David Byrne or Neil Tennant would have been able to pull it off more naturally. The Bangles kind of sound like they're about to go skateboarding. Listen to the way Michael Steele sings "then they bring ya more" or "when the buzz-ah rings"; she drops too many letters from the words. Susanna takes it even further, turning "if you want to find all the cops, they're hanging out in the donut shop" into "if you wanna find all the cops, they're hangin' out in the donut shop." It's also hilarious how she, perhaps unintentionally, sexes up these rather unsexy phrases, singing "And the Chinese know-uh" and "All the cops in the donut shop say-uh" with little extra breaths at the end, like she's still in "Manic Monday" mode:

Slide your feet up the street, bend your back
Shift your arm, then you pull it back
Life's hard you know (oh whey oh)
So strike a pose on a Cadillac

If you want to find all the cops
They're hanging out in the donut shop
They sing and dance (oh whey oh)
They spin the clubs, cruise down the block

All the Japanese with their yen
The party boys call the Kremlin
And the Chinese know (oh whey oh)
They walk the line like Egyptian

All the cops in the donut shop say
Ay oh whey oh, ay oh whey oh
Walk like an Egyptian
Walk like an Egyptian

Which brings me, of course, to the video. It opens, unlike the studio recording, with the Bangles on stage, Vicki shouting fiercely into a microphone, "OK we're gonna do one more ... Yeah!" Wait, so is this the "real" video, or just some live footage? Oh no, it's the real video all right, just with a trendy pseudo "live" opening! As Debbie begins to shake that tambourine, the camera reveals that the Bangles have arrived, not from North Africa as stated, but apparently sub-Saharan Africa, as they seem to have just popped out of the jungle, their hair having mated with a particularly fluffy species of moss (Susanna's appears to have been dyed purple, but on closer inspection, that may just be the ridiculous back-lighting). At 0:40, the camera cuts to a studio shot of the girls in full Egyptian garb, which makes one realize just how short Susanna really is.



Over the course of the video, the camera takes us out of the concert hall and into the streets, where we are treated to the sight of various New York city-dwellers and passersby attempting to, as it were, "walk like Egyptians." This includes everyone from businessmen, window washers, firefighters, little old ladies, and dogs to, surprisingly, Princess Diana, Muammar Quaddafi, even the Statue of Liberty (!). All the cool kids are doing it!

And then of course, there are The Eyes. From that same MTV Hive interview:

How about that sideways glance you do in “Walk Like an Egyptian.” You know what I’m talking about?

Oh yeah yeah.

Your gaze shifts from right to left in that really flirty way. When I was 14, that absolutely killed me.

I guess it’s become an iconic moment in that video, and I didn’t even realize it was happening. We shot it in this soundstage warehouse in New York, and the audience was all contest winners from a radio show. I knew the camerawoman, Nancy Schreiber, because she’s worked with my mom before, who’s a filmmaker. Nancy was all the way in the back, somewhere behind the crowd, and I guess she was using a long lens because I didn’t even know she was filming me. I had this habit I’d adopted from touring, where I’d find one or two people in the audience and make eye contact with them during the entire show, just to anchor it. I’d single out a person to the left of me and a person to the right of me, and that’s who I’d sing to. And that’s what I was doing when we were shooting the video. But I had no idea the camera was so tight on my face.

So you’re like Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct, when she was all, “I didn’t know they were filming my beaver!”

[Laughs.] Right, right. And that’s the truth, sometimes you don’t know where the camera is. They don’t always tell you. And maybe it’s for the best. If the camera was really close, right up in my face, I would’ve been more nervous and self-conscious. It was just something that I do when I sing live, and I was caught in an unguarded moment.

Have you always known that your eyes were such a commodity?

I don’t know if I’d go that far.

I would. Do you ask for a crate of Visine in the Bangles contract rider?

What? No, no, no.

You get pink eye and the band is over.

[Laughs.] That’s so funny. No, there’s nothing like that. It’s interesting the things that people associate with the Bangles and with me. It’s all just part of the lore.

Indeed, I have heard it said, in ancient Egyptian mythology, that the eyes of the short Hebrew Bangle were known to be powerful enough ... to raise a mummy from the dead.

If We Built This City, Can It Be ... Un-Built? AKA Nothing Screams "Dust Bowl" Like Corporate Synth-Rock

Woo! All right! No more worrying about those pesky, lingering ties to some old band named Jefferson Airplane. Pffftt. Now we can give the people what they want!

Fact: Jefferson Airplane had two big Top 10 hits in 1967. Jefferson Starship had several Top 40 hits, big and small, between 1975 and 1984. However, neither of those fine musical institutions ever managed to have a #1 hit.

Starship had three.

God either has A) a very twisted sense of humor, or B) very embarrassing taste in music.

Seriously though, what's the moral of the story here? Do the very thing you've struggled not to do for decades, and suddenly you'll be rewarded beyond your wildest dreams? Turns out Jefferson Starship's problem wasn't that they'd sold out; it was that they hadn't sold out enough.

On the other hand, time has a funny way of balancing the scales. "We Built This City" has occasionally received the distinction of being named "the worst song of all time." All time? That's a lot of songs. We're talking every caveman grunt, every biblical croon, every Nickelback growl. According to Wikipedia, most of these surveys laid out some ground rules:

The defunct magazine Blender's ranking of the song as the worst song ever was in conjunction with a VH1 Special of The 50 Most Awesomely Bad Songs...Ever. In order to qualify for the distinction, the songs on the list had to be a popular hit at some point, thus disqualifying many songs that would by consensus be considered much worse. Blender editor Craig Marks said of the song, "It purports to be anti-commercial but reeks of '80s corporate-rock commercialism. It's a real reflection of what practically killed rock music in the '80s."

In 2011 a Rolling Stone magazine online readers poll named "We Built This City" as the worst song of the 1980s. The song's winning margin was so large that the magazine reported it "could be the biggest blow-out victory in the history of the Rolling Stone Readers Poll".

It's a landslide! I must now direct your attention to an article published in GQ last year, "An Oral History of 'We Built This City,' the Worst Song of All Time," featuring testimony from defendants such as songwriters Bernie Taupin and Martin Page (I'm afraid Heart's "These Dreams" may not have been their biggest 1985 pop music crime), producer and co-writer Peter Wolf, and Starship members Mickey Thomas, Craig Chaquico, and Pete Sears, among others. The jury's verdict? Guilty pleasure as charged! Highlights:

Craig Chaquico: Peter came to my recording studio in Mill Valley and played the demo for me. About a minute in, he hit the pause button and in his Austrian accent started to sing: “Vee built dis seety on vock and VOLL” ... Peter Wolf was a genius synthesizer player. The Synclavier was cutting-edge. We didn't feel like we were selling out; we felt like we were trying to land a man on the moon.

Peter Wolf: Journey was recording in the studio next door, and every time I opened the door, their band members were standing outside with their mouths open. “This is the Starship? It's unbelievable!”

Craig Chaquico: It's a very '80s track. I remember watching Miami Vice in between takes.

Pete Sears: That was the best song on the album, even though it's considered the worst song of all time. The rest were a load of crap.

Mickey Thomas: Bernie didn't say “mambo,” he said “mamba,” which is a snake. Marconi created the radio. Maybe Bernie meant to say “mambo.” Maybe it means: If you don't like this music, some really angry snakes are gonna come out of the speakers ... At one point I did start to sing “mambo,” to try and be more grammatically correct, and after a while I thought, “Fuck it,” and went back to “mamba.”

Craig Chaquico: Marconi's the guy who invented the radio, and his style of music was the mamba. But listen to the radio now. Do you hear any mamba? That's how I look at the lyric: Things change. I could be totally wrong.

Mickey Thomas: When the song went to No. 1, I said to Bernie, “More than ever, people are gonna ask what ‘Marconi plays the mamba’ means.” He said, “I have no fucking idea, mate.”

Craig Chaquico: The No. 3 song on that Blender list was “Everybody Have Fun Tonight,” by Wang Chung, which Peter Wolf produced. I called him and said, “Dude, I'm on one of the worst songs ever, but you're on two. That's awesome!”

Martin Page: “We Built This City” is like Mickey Mouse. People want to knock it and they want to love it. It's iconic, like Mickey's ears. The moment it comes on, people go, “I know that. I love it.” Because people love Mickey.

That's certainly the first thing I think of when I hear "We Built This City": "I'm going to Disneyland!" Full disclosure: I'm probably in the camp of "awesomely bad." While I would never play the song by choice, I would certainly sing along to it at a karaoke night, especially when Grace Slick gets around to her hilariously-enunciated "Some-wunn always playyy-innng, cor-por-ay-shun-games!" I also love how the riff between the chorus and the verse sounds like it's being played by a giant pair of electronic scissors. But that's neither here nor there. I don't know if any one song can be declared "the worst song of all time," but back in 2009, my (part-time?) co-blogger Herr Zrbo dared to declare the video for "We Built This City" to be the "Worst. Video. Ever." Some choice excerpts:

First there's the montage of people's faces looking thoughtful and contemplative. Why are they looking so stern while lost in their innermost reflections? Why? Because they're all looking at the Lincoln Memorial of course! Now, I wasn't aware that Lincoln built this city, or country, on rock and roll. Actually, I'm pretty sure he didn't found much at all. And I'm damn 100% sure he didn't listen to rock and roll.

But then, what follows afterwards! I'm just going to call it folks, it's the MOST cringe-worthy moment in music video history of ALL TIME. As our oh-so-80s rebel protagonists look on in adoration at Lincoln, the statue comes to life, raises his fist, and sings the chorus! It's just so, so awful. Even in 1985 this scene must have been perceived as awful. Words can't honestly express how truly awful it is. Not only that but it's creepy as hell.

The video just proceeds to be awful from there on out. Grace Slick sings about corporations and how annoying it is that they're constantly changing their names (boohoo!), all set to the backdrop of... Vegas casinos?! I wonder if the band realized the irony in these lyrics, as Starship are well known for having changed their name multiple times. Then a bunch of people are running away from giant tumbling dice. Why? I guess those dice represent those pesky corporations and their pesky habit of changing their names.

Then there's the radio announcer part during the bridge. I think it's there to give some 'street-cred' to the band, but if you listen to what the announcer says it makes little sense. He starts with "looking out over the Golden Gate Bridge on another gorgeous sunny Saturday." Ok, that sounds pretty good. Then: "and I'm seeing that bumper-to-bumper traffic." Huh? If you're trying to get the the radio guy to hippen-up the song, do you really want him talking about bumper-to-bumper traffic? How about something like "and there's no traffic today!" My reaction to this part is something like "Bumper-bumper traffic?? Oh well, I'll just stay in today and let someone else build this city."

Zing! I don't have much to add, other than that for a video made in 1985, the blue screen technology seems laughably poor. Also notice how, after Abe Lincoln miraculously springs to life, the camera cuts back to the assembled onlookers, who act as if ... nothing remarkable has happened whatsoever! I mean come on people, Lincoln just sang the chorus of "We Built This City." At least give the man a courtesy clap.



Less maligned, although perhaps that may not be saying much, is "Sara," which hit #1 in early 1986 and does not feature Grace Slick singing ill-conceived lyrics in a comical way. "Sara" isn't actually good for much of a laugh at all, come to think of it. The weirdest thing about "Sara" is that it could have been by anybody: Mr. Mister, Survivor, Peter Cetera, Mike & The Mechanics ... pick a band, any band! Let's just say that in the pantheon of "Sara" songs, I think it's third banana to Fleetwood Mac's "Sara" and Hall & Oates' "Sara Smile," both chronologically and artistically. Forget about being in the same league; it might not even be in the same sport. If those other two "Sara" songs are like downhill skiing, Starship's "Sara" is more like curling.

I'll tell you what Starship's "Sara" doesn't make me think of, though: the Dust Bowl! That's right, the video was apparently directed by Dorothea Lange as part of the Works Progress Administration. I think "Sara" wins the award for "Best '80s Video Featuring A Tornado." Here's how Wikipedia describes it:

The music video for "Sara" prominently features actress Rebecca De Mornay and Thomas in a storyline about a relationship ending, on a Dust Bowl farm in the midwest, with frequent flashbacks to what is presumably Thomas's character's childhood and the tornado that wrecked his home.

Thomas's "character"? Mickey certainly does a nice job leaning against a fence post and staring off into the distance. And why does Rebecca De Mornay keep morphing into Thomas' salt of the earth mother? That's kind of ... fucked up. Strangely, I find both the black-and-white footage of his hard-scrabble youth and the imitation "home video" footage of modern-day Mickey and Rebecca horsing around oddly convincing, but they don't seem to mesh tonally. When I watch a Starship video, I expect tonal unity, damn it! The last shot is cool, but I think it's one video too late: that ominous dust cloud should have swallowed up the "We Built This City" video instead.

How "These Dreams" Of An '80s Comeback ... Turned Into Heart's Worst MTV Nightmare

Yes, "What About Love," but what about Heart? Were the Sisters Wilson about to regret their thorough and complete change in musical and visual style? Their next single appeared to answer that question with a resounding cry of defiance:

"Never."

This one rocketed up to #4, a height they'd never even reached in the '70s. The first few notes of the song make it sound as though it's going to be a karaoke backing track version of the Emotions' "The Best of My Love," but then a little combo synth/guitar lick kicks in out of the blue to say "Hey! All-Natural, Organic Cheesy '80s Rock Here!" The video finds Heart on a massive sound stage surrounded by billowy pink sheets and copious amounts of netting. While Nancy appears to be wearing Robert Plant's hair, Ann appears to be wearing ... Robert Smith's? Honest question: had Capitol Records outlawed normal guitars? Did they stipulate in the band's contract that they could only play those cartoonish lightning bolt guitars? Also: video being docked a few points for lack of anvils.



Of course, when they weren't rocking out, the Wilson sisters were busy spending their evenings in absurdly opulent bedrooms, folding silk scarves, trying on questionable outfits, and drinking wine, as the video for "Nothing At All" demonstrates. They also had a panther infestation on the premises. And you thought mice were a pain. I gotta tell you, when that panther follows Ann into an elevator at the end, and then several seconds go by, I have to admit I get a little bit concerned, but when the door opens, the panther has turned back into ... her precious little kitty cat! Awwww. That's right. Ann Wilson can tame even the wild beasts of the night. Nevertheless, I would have to designate this only the second-best '80s video to feature a panther (hard to top "Maneater").



It's also hard to top three consecutive top ten hits, but I guess that's what Bernie Taupin can do for you. According to Wikipedia, Taupin and "poor man's Elton John" Martin Page initially offered "These Dreams" to Stevie Nicks, who said no way Jose, but Heart jumped all over that shit. And when did Stevie Nicks ever have a solo #1 hit? That's right: never. And instead of Ann singing lead, for some reason Nancy ended up taking the reins on this one. As secondary lead singers in bands go, how does this evaluation sound: not quite Pete Townshend, but better than Keith Richards?

I don't remember hearing the other singles from Heart as a kid, but "These Dreams" instantly makes me think of sitting in the parking lot waiting for my parents to come out of the supermarket, or some other equally unpleasant scenario. The one lyric that always puzzled the crap out of me was "Every second of the night/I live another life." Being roughly six years old at the time, I remember thinking about that line in depth, almost taking it literally. "So does that mean that you die every second, and then you're reborn? So basically you would live ... let's do the math here ... like 32,400 lives in the course of one evening? How could you even do anything in such a short lifespan? The moment you're born, you'd just die again. You couldn't even get up to go to the bathroom. You'd just be dead. That's crazy!" Although it was the first time I devoted intense analysis to an enigmatic Bernie Taupin lyric, it would not be the last. Maybe if I hadn't heard the song so much at the time, I'd like it more now, but let me just say that I'm currently listening to it for blogging purposes only. Basically, every second of this song, I wish I was listening to another song.

Although Nancy Wilson herself appears to have no regrets about her signature moment of glory, or at least the audio portion of it, in general she does not sound terribly fond of this particular phase of Heart's career. Here's a lengthy excerpt from an interview she gave with The Believer in 2007:

NW: But you know, Ann and I have been through some challenging times together, especially trying to lead our band through the ’80s.

BLVR: What was tough about that time?

NW: The way that MTV was changing the landscape. Things were shifting away from the artistry of rock music—away from writing good songs—and tilting toward the commercial side. Suddenly record companies were putting a lot of pressure on bands to look a certain way, to have a certain image, to sound a certain way… and to sell a lot of records. One of the things that happened as a result was that certain bands, like Heart, who used to have their own voice were suddenly forced to start performing songs written by other people.

BLVR: Who were those other people?

NW: A whole stable of L.A. hit-makers. The labels made us and other bands record those songs because they wanted a sure thing—something that would become a radio hit. Before that point, we’d always written all our own stuff. We barely even did covers, except for some Led Zeppelin songs. But when MTV came along, things got a lot more corporate, fast. And we were not naturals to that way of doing things. Of course, we were lucky to be able to put our stamp on some songs, to really make them ours. I mean, I still loving singing “These Dreams.” Bernie Taupin wrote the words for that one.

BLVR: The guy who wrote all those songs with Elton John? Like “Tiny Dancer”?

NW: Yep. Those are his lyrics in “These Dreams.”And there are other songs we still love to perform from that era ... But the real problem of the ’80s was the hit we took in terms of artistic integrity. Though we were able to put songs we’d written on every single one of our albums during that period, the ones that the label would focus on—the ones that would get turned into the big singles—were written by other people.

BLVR: I think there’s a public perception that since you were a big rock band—since you were Heart—you could always do whatever you wanted. But it sounds like there weren’t real choices so much as things you had to do to survive.

NW: Yep. It actually makes my feet hurt right now, to think about it.

BLVR: Your feet?

NW: Oh, yeah. For the videos, we’d get stuffed into these awful outfits—tiny stiletto boots and corsets and bustiers. Then there’d be all these smoke machines. [Fakes a choking fit] And a ton of hair spray was involved! It seemed like a fun dress-up party at first, but it got kind of old when we were expected to do it all the time. Ann or I would be like, “Uh, why don’t we try something different?” And the label would say [faking a deep-throated voice]: “No, babe! That’s the image that sells, babe! Lick your lips and suck in your cheeks!” We had our own ideas about what our image should be. Softer. More like what it used to be. A kind of Led Zeppelin look. But when we’d take those ideas to the designers, they’d come back to us with clothing that looked nothing like what we’d described.

And shooting videos during that period could get pretty ridiculous. We’d do them in two or three days; and everyone would be on cocaine, especially the director; and no one would sleep; and they’d call you in for your close-up at six in the morning.

BLVR: Looking back, is there any one video that you just wish you could just strike off the map?

NW: [Singing like Cher] “If I could turn back time!” Although, there was another one—I think it was “What About Love” but I can’t remember; one of those power ballads—and for it, the director wanted me to put on a harness and jump off a tall building in a fog. He worked on me for days, trying to convince me to do it. I really didn’t want to, but finally he wore me down. I said, “If it looks stupid, we don’t use it—and I get the final say.” He was like, “OK, OK, just put on the harness!” So I totally did it. And of course, it looked stupid and felt even more stupid.

BLVR: Did it go in the video?

NW: Nope. But that kind of thing was the epitome of the ’80s. In every video, people wanted a big rock punch line—a visual hook, something no one had ever seen before. You know, like: “Act Three really has to rock, dude.”

But the thing is ... those record execs were right! That image was totally selling like nobody's business! Look, Heart, if you can't stand the heat, get out of the '80s kitchen. At any rate, I wouldn't quite say that Act Three in the video for "These Dreams" happens to particularly "rock," but neither do Act Two or Act One, as far as I can tell. And since when did music videos have "acts" anyway? While I can't discern the three acts, here is my list of the top seven most ridiculous images in this video:

1. Nancy gently massaging a pool of water, with a creepily orange sky and papier-mache mountains behind her
2. Two hooded members of ISIS (I assume?) holding a giant picture frame with the image of Ann Wilson in it, and then the camera just smashes right into the glass (1:27)
3. Nancy frantically crawling on the sand, trying to escape something (those guys from ISIS?), finally catching her breath aside what appears to be a giant rook from a giant chess board (1:33)
4. Nancy marching down a massive staircase into a hidden pool of water, being escorted by twenty hooded ISIS guys holding flashlights (2:35)
5. Heart's two male guitarists flopping face up into that same damn pool of water ... only to eerily pop out of the water just a few moments later! (3:02)
6. Nancy standing on a grid-patterned platform ... with hands poking through! (2:25)
7. Nancy rising out of a hot tub ... surrounded by more hands! So many hands! (3:19)

Well, "These Dreams" probably figured it would be Heart's only #1 hit, but it turned out that, in barely just a year or so, it would not find itself ... alone.

The Changing Winds Of Grace Slick AKA Kantner Finally Throws The Nuclear Furniture

Ah, Grace Slick. Your family tried to raise a good little girl, but you were simply having none of it. Private schools and a promising modeling career at a high-end department store just weren't enough to steer this all-American ingenue away from a life of hardcore leftist radicalism. Select highlights (or lowlights?) from Wikipedia:

In 1968, Slick performed "Crown of Creation" on The Smothers Brother Comedy Hour in blackface and ended the performance with a Black Panther fist. In an appearance on a 1969 episode of the Dick Cavett Show, she became the first person to say "motherfucker" on live television during a performance of "We Can Be Together" by Jefferson Airplane.

During her hospital stay after [daughter] China's birth, Slick joked to one of the attending nurses that she intended to name the child "god" with a lowercase g, as she "wished for the child to be humble."

Slick was dragged off a San Francisco game show for abusing the contestants.

Slick and Tricia Nixon, former President Richard Nixon's daughter, are alumnae of Finch College. Slick was invited to a tea party for the alumnae at the White House in 1969. She invited political activist Abbie Hoffman to be her escort and planned to spike President Richard Nixon's tea with 600 micrograms of LSD. The plan was thwarted when they were prevented from entering after being recognized by White House security personnel, as Slick had been placed on an FBI blacklist.

In 1971, after a long recording session, Slick crashed her car into a wall near the Golden Gate Bridge while racing with Jorma Kaukonen. She suffered a concussion and later used the incident as the basis of her song "Never Argue with a German if You're Tired (or 'European Song')," which appears on the Bark album (1971).

Despite her retirement, Slick has appeared a couple of times over the years with Paul Kantner's revamped version of Jefferson Starship when the band played in Los Angeles. The most recent appearance was during a post-9/11 gig during which she came on the stage initially covered in black from head to toe in a makeshift burqa. She then removed the burqa to reveal a covering bearing an American flag and the words "Fuck Fear".

The girl had moxie, all right. And not even Jefferson Starship's long, agonizing slide into faceless corporate arena rock was going to dull the edges on this particular knife.

Slick didn't have a huge presence on Winds of Change's "Be My Lady," which hit #28 and at least still kind of sounded like Jefferson Starship's mellow late '70s singles such as "Count On Me" and "With Your Love," as opposed to, I dunno, Foreigner. The video features Mickey Thomas in a series of Escher illustrations: The corner of a house ... without a house! The stairway that leads ... back to itself!



But the Chrome Nun (as David Crosby was fond of calling her) certainly made her presence known on "Out of Control." Ever wonder what happens when 40-year-old ex-hippie Baby Boomers suddenly listen to punk one day and decide, "Yeah, I can do that!" This is what happens. Patti Smith, Siouxsie Sioux, and Poly Styrene, look out, 'cause here comes Grace Slick.



The album's title track petered out at #38. Apparently the video was filmed on the set of The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, with Grace Slick as Tinkerbell's older drug-addicted sister and Mickey Thomas as Bernie (from Weekend at Bernie's). Oh, and of course there's wind! Lots of wind!



By Nuclear Furniture, you can really sense Paul Kantner's tolerance finally reaching its breaking point. From Wikipedia: "Before the sessions came to a close, he stole the master tapes, put them in his car and drove around San Francisco for a few days and wouldn't bring them back until the band mixed the album in a way more to his liking." Well, I suppose that's one way to deal with deep disappointment in your band's new direction: take the album hostage! "No Way Out" hit #23 (#1 Mainstream Rock), and its complete dissimilarity to "White Rabbit" must have finally convinced Kantner to take the one pill that made him smaller. The video finds Mickey and his girlfriend accidentally stumbling into a laboratory run by ... sci-fi wizards? He becomes psychologically interrogated by ... Father Guido Sarducci? And Grace Slick is running around speaking like a munchkin? And some shirtless dude with a porn 'stache (I think he's the drummer) is lifting weights in bed, staring at a Japanese geisha who's dancing in front of a Mao poster? I give up on this one.



Last but not least: were you secretly hoping that Mickey Thomas and Grace Slick would run for president as "Mick & Slick"? In the "Layin' It On The Line" video, you get your wish, along with cameos by ... Willie Brown? Timothy Leary? G. Gordon Liddy? The Residents? Hey, at this point, they've got my vote. Maybe they can spike their tea with LSD once they get there.

Power Ballad "Heart" Attack AKA One Band's Reluctant Journey To The "Heart" Of '80s Cheese

Some '70s bands figured out the '80s right off the bat. Others needed a little time, but, boy, when they got there, they got there nice and good.

Let's cut to the "heart" of the matter here (also, let's see how many bad "heart" puns I can incorporate into this post ... actually, I think I'm done). Heart's initial brush with the '80s began rather inauspiciously: a hit cover of Aaron Neville's New Orleans R&B slow jam "Tell It Like It Is," one of the "new" tracks off their first greatest hits album. Suffice to say, this was not a long-term plan for success in the MTV era. (And couldn't the high school PTA have found a cheaper prom band?)



See, I think in the '70s, you could just be a bar band from down the street. But in the '80s, you had to be bigger, cheaper, tackier, poofier. You needed to reach the back row of that stadium filled with sexy middle-aged housewives. You needed to schlock it up.

For the Ladies Wilson and Friends, the transition would not be easy, nor would it occur overnight, but rest assured: it would occur. Private Audition (1982) peaked at #25, Passionworks (1983) at #39. The latter's "How Can I Refuse" showed signs of the band potentially catching on to the schlock, particularly that electronically-processed triple-thwack drum fill in the chorus. In the video, we see the Wilson sisters' hair becoming slightly more permed, with Nancy wearing what appears to be Bowie's mullet from Labyrinth. Although the clip features an early taste of the third-rate sci-fi/fantasy landscapes to come, with its interlude of peyote-fueled necromancy in the deserts of a distant realm (question: best music video featuring a crystal ball ever?), the majority of the clip still finds the band "performing," you know, "on stage." No, no, no. It reached #1 on the Mainstream Rock chart, but only #44 on the Pop chart. Epic Records had seen enough.



Capitol Records, on the other hand, saw a second act in our two little queenies, but first they laid out a few conditions:

1. No more of those crappy songs you're writing, you know, "yourself." We give you the songs, you cover them.
2. The videos, girls, the videos - they need more: flames, corsets, anvils, you know, shit like that.

It looks like Heart got the memo. They got the memo, rolled it up, and smoked it. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I give you "What About Love."



The band hops on a tour bus after another exhausting gig. Everything's in black and white. Nancy cuddles up with her guitar. Lonely, pensive Ann begins to sing about heartbreak. "But where are the explosions?" you're asking. "Where are the explosions?"

BOOM. Heart's got your explosions right here, buddy. And flames, lots of flames. Ann takes the stage wearing a medieval gown and holding a mallet. She means business. Because next comes the metallurgy.

The fuckin' metallurgy.

Two guys pour molten gold into a cast, and out of that cast rises ... Nancy Wilson. Heart: forged from the cauldrons of '80s power balladry. Then the camera cuts to a mysteriously masked woman holding a blowtorch. She takes off her helmet to reveal that she is ... Ann Wilson! Singer by day, blacksmith by night. Then peasants begin hauling gold bricks. And of course there's anvils, lots of anvils. At 2:12 Nancy appears to be offering her guitar as a sacrifice to the metallurgy gods, or perhaps the Capitol Records execs? Then Nancy and the lead guitarist jam while standing on top of a spiral staircase ... that's engulfed in flames. Notice also how the lead guitarist appears to be playing a sled, and the bassist is playing a guitar with a hideous cheetah design on it. Suddenly, the last shot shows Ann still sitting on that tour bus, dejected and reading ... Gone With The Wind? Is that where this whole daydream came from?

The band had its doubts, and I can't possibly fathom why, about its new direction, but here's a question: if you don't act on your doubts, do they actually mean anything? Here's Ann Wilson from a recent Rolling Stone interview:

At the time, that transition was really hard for me. And for a couple of reasons. One was that we were accepting songs from outside writers. I think we came to the realization that, "Hey, we're not writing so well right now. We're not coming up with the goods." So we decided to go ahead with it and audition some outside stuff. And you can make sense of that in your brain, but it's hard to convince your emotions and your ego to accept that kind of thing. So it was rocky for me. When I first heard the demo for "What About Love," my hackles went up because I thought it sounded like a victim song. "Oh, poor me! What about me?" It felt like an "I'm so weak and you can just walk all over me" type song. And so I rejected it. But our producer and the record company and everyone kept working on me, and I finally agreed to sing the song. And when I did, I brought my own sort of rage to it, I guess. It ended up not being a victim song and I think it's good.

Rage. You got that? Do you feel the rage?

I guess the question on the minds of eager MTV viewers really had been "What About Love?" and apparently Heart had really answered it, as the single sent the band back into the top ten. I don't remember hearing "What About Love" much at the time, and when I heard it later, the first thing I thought was, "Wow, this is a total ripoff of Roxette's 'Listen To Your Heart'!" Turns out I had it backwards; "Listen To Your Heart" was a total ripoff of "What About Love." Well, not totally, since every power ballad is essentially a ripoff of the same power ballad. It's like there's this one Ur-ballad sitting in a vault somewhere in a strip club on Hollywood Blvd., and everyone who ever needs to write one takes a little piece of it.

Oh yeah, and you know who's singing backing vocals on "What About Love"? Mickey Thomas and Grace Slick. Let's see Roxette rip off that.