The One Paula Abdul Song I Will Straight Up Defend

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

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

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

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

Except for "Straight Up."

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

A few of the ingredients that do it for me:

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

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



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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lisa Stansfield: The Ferdinand Magellan Of British Neo-Soul

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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



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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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



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

Swede Emotion: The Single-Minded Purity Of Roxette

Oh, to be Roxette.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Farther than the naked eye can see.

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



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

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

Herbert Walker Memories

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh heyyyyyll no.

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

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

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

Brenda K. Starr's "I Still Believe": The Final Aching, Dying Whisper Of '80s Pop

In his AllMusic biography for Rosie & the Originals, Richie Unterberger quotes another writer, Mark Sten, who provides the following description of the 1960 oldies radio staple "Angel Baby":

"... generating a robot mantra devoid of embellishment or variation, the perfect underpinning for Rosie's piercing, disembodied-siren vocal. With 'Angel Baby,' rock had regressed as far as it could, some nameless dread loosed within the collective Top 40 mind had run its course and spent itself in a lost mournful wail. 'Angel Baby' was the final moonlit flowering of rock's medieval phase, paean to a purity and innocence no longer possible in the real world."

"Rock's medieval phase"? So which phase are we in now? The Concentration Camp phase? I kid, I kid. But as "Angel Baby" served as the departing, plaintive, youthful sigh of its era, I believe there is a song from the Summer of '88 that embodies a similar spirit. In my humble opinion, there is a hit that captures that last flicker of '80s musical guilelessness, before the tide of '90s crassness would swiftly rush in and snuff out those faintly glowing embers once and for all. If there is a "final moonlit flowering" of '80s pop, a "paean to a purity and innocence" that would no longer be possible in the world of '90s Top 40 radio, it is Brenda K. Starr's "I Still Believe."

Allow me to explain, with a few handy links. In just a few short years after 1988, at least 75% of the R&B-flavored, drum machine-powered Top 40 ballads that, musically speaking, weren't terribly far removed from "I Still Believe," would feature lyrics such as these:

• "Let me lick you up and down, till you say stop/Let me play with your body baby, make you real hot/Let me do all the things you want me to do/'Cause tonight baby, I wanna get freaky with you"
• "Good lovin' body rockin' knockin' boots all night long/Makin' love until we tire to the break of dawn"
• "I can do it soft or I can do it hard/I can make you scream if you let down your guard my baby/If it ain't good enough baby, I'll work harder/I'll keep pumpin' every minute girl"
• "Do you mind if I stroke you up/Do you mind if I stroke you down/All through the night/Until your body's tired"

These lyrics were not controversial or unusual. These lyrics did not emanate from Prince and a couple of Prince's side projects. Oh no. This was the lingua franca of the day. If you weren't singing about fucking somebody for an impossibly lengthy duration, you didn't stand a chance. In just a few short years, the average listener of Top 40 music was basically going to need to put a condom over their radio in order to listen to it. Pop music went straight from the Disney Channel to Cinemax, and it went there fast. In summary, if Brenda K. Starr had come out with this song in 1993, she would have melted like the Wicked Witch.

Now, flash forward to the Spring of 1999. I am sitting in my freshman dorm room, which I share with my Vietnamese-American roommate (suffice to say, while we share a room, we do not share remotely the same taste in music). Suddenly he begins playing a new Mariah Carey song, and begins playing it more times than I deem necessary, but that's neither here nor there. I instantly recognize the track as a cover version of a song that had originally been an omnipresent hit in the Summer of '88. I recall, incorrectly, that the song had originally been performed by Debbie Gibson. All I can think is, "Why the fuck is Mariah Carey covering some old Debbie Gibson song?"

Was there a memo I missed where Debbie Gibson had suddenly become ironically hip and cool again? Ah, but my perennially flawless pop music memory had erred for once - although the error was quite understandable. You see, in my foggy recollection I conflated "I Still Believe" with "Foolish Beat." Both are melancholy break-up ballads that prominently feature the words "love again" in the chorus, both had been hits right around the same time (although "I Still Believe" only peaked at #13 as opposed to #1), and, according to Wikipedia, both songs merited inclusion in Rolling Stone's "50 Awesomely Bad Break-Up Songs." For several years I expressed confusion over Mariah Carey's covering of a dopey Debbie Gibson tearjerker, while somehow sensing that I was off the mark. Finally, in February 2011, I wrestled myself free from the shackles of Summer of '88 ignorance and learned the true identity of the original recording artist.

Here's the deal. Once upon a time, Brenda K. Starr (possibly a distant cousin to Ringo?) employed an unknown back-up singer named Mariah Carey. In fact, it was Brenda K. Starr who fatefully handed Mariah Carey's demo tape to Tommy Mottola. In other words, we owe Mariah Carey to Brenda K. Starr. Not really, but the point is, ten years later and sitting on top of the R&B diva Matterhorn, Mariah wanted to pay tribute to the singer who gave her that big break. From Wikipedia:

She explained that the song "reminds me of the fact that not long ago I was a teenage girl with nothing to my name but a demo tape, my voice, and my ability to write songs. Brenda K. Starr treated me like a 'star' and gave me a shot." ... "I'm really glad that I got a chance to remake the song 'I Still Believe,' because the album is called '#1's' and this is the first song that I sang as a professional singer. I would go on the road with Brenda. I was a little skinny kid with no money that she took under her wing and she was so nice to me. I auditioned to be her back-up singer and she hired me and she used to bring me clothes and food, and she really took care of me like a big sister. A lot of people wouldn't have done that. The main thing was that she believed in me and it's really hard to get people to listen to your tapes. [...] She was always real cool and helpful and supportive. I always loved this song. When I sing it now, it reminds me of those times."

Brings a tear to your eye, but personally, I feel like Mariah Carey's version of "I Still Believe," with its Brett Ratner-directed video (!), is a stellar example of how '90s pop lost so much of the directness of '80s pop in an effort to seem more "sophisticated." Mariah doesn't simply sing the song. She does all this "stuff." She slathers herself all over the intro, rather than simply letting it play as Brenda does. She constantly shifts from a creaky whisper to high-volume belting. I am not going out on a limb if I suggest that Mariah Carey is a more talented singer than Brenda K. Starr, but I hear so much calculation and decision-making in Mariah's vocal choices. Mariah sounds like she "really loves this song that helped her get her big break" and she wants you to know how much it means to her. Brenda K. Starr sounds like she just told the construction worker across the street who cat-called her to fuck off. There's nothing "off-the-cuff" about Mariah's version. It's too lush, too spotless, too professional to be the butt of blogger jokes. The Mariah Carey version knows that it's going to be "significant," that it's going to be "remembered" by her fans. No thank you. The Brenda K. Starr version, the one that was merely hoping to hang around on the airwaves for a couple of months before its three minutes and forty-five seconds of fame were up, is the one for me.

You see, Brenda K. Starr had one shot - one chance at pop music immortality - and she took it. This was her one spark of hope, and Brenda grasped it with both hands.

"I Still Believe" rises up from the bowels of the Hudson River on a sludgy wave of tinkling keyboard, synthesized bass, and ambient seagull sound effects. I feel like a '90s pop song would have gone to greater lengths to sound "state-of-the-art" and "high-tech," but "I Still Believe" makes zero attempt to mask its low-budget origins. It could have been recorded in some derelict office park in New Jersey by some guy whose day job was, I don't know, bouncer at a strip club (amusingly enough, it was produced by Eumir Deodato, the man responsible for every J.T. Taylor-era Kool & the Gang hit, which might explain the recycling of the seagull sound effect from "Cherish"). I'm sure there were exceptions, but why do I get the impression that Top 40 hits in the '90s couldn't simply show up off the street and walk right into the charts like this one did? To me, "I Still Believe" is the last of a dying breed, like an '80s pop hit sung by Marisa Tomei's character from My Cousin Vinny. (According to Wikipedia, Brenda is half-Jewish/half-Puerto Rican - she's like a walking borough.)

It's the little touches, the unintended moments, that elevate a track like this over more deliberately ambitious material:

• 1:02 - I hear just the faintest whisper of mic distortion on the word "again," as if Brenda is straining at the boundaries of the technology in order to ensure that her pain can be heard
• 1:55 - Were you afraid there might not be a sax? Of course there was going to be a sax. It announces its arrival with a stream of ascending notes in the middle of the second verse, just as Brenda lets loose with a rapid-fire series of "No-no-no-no-no"s
• 2:03 - She reaches down into the depths of her Tri-State agony as she growls "Rrrrr-ah-still-buh-leave-that-we-can-be-to-geh-thuhhhhhh! Huh-ohhh!," before some double-tracking kicks in on "If we believe that true love," suggesting a momentary burst of inner strength. You're going to get through this, Brenda, you really are.
• 2:28 - An army of overdubbed "back-up" Brendas enters and proceeds to sing the chorus, while the real, lead-singing Brenda waits until 2:31 to let loose with an intense "Yeah-eahhh"
• 2:42 - The fade-out is really where Brenda kicks it into gear. First she emits a soulful "Oh baby yeah!" before jumping an octave on "I had a dream." Then at 2:52 she sings ever-so-slightly behind the beat, letting out a rushed "will-find-ourselves." She's so ... sensual. However, nothing may top the supremely New Yawk delivery of "Ooh-ooh baby oy do-woo!" and "Just gimme one mo' troy" that follows. You couldn't contrive that kind of attitude.

Brenda not only brought it in the studio, she brought it in the video (as if you had any doubts). First of all, she's wearing exactly the kind of outfit you'd imagine she'd be wearing: a leather jacket over a cropped white short-sleeve sweater and leather skirt, with giant hoop earrings. My guess is that she didn't even dress up for the video; this was probably just what she happened to be wearing that day. The video alternates between shots of Brenda dancing in an abandoned brick warehouse with rays of white dust being illuminated by the light from the windows a la "One More Try" and shots of Brenda strolling dejectedly along what appears to be the Brooklyn shoreline as she passes an endless stream of happy couples holding hands in the park. Can't anyone see her torment?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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



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

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

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

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

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

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

"Kissing A Fool": George Unleashes His Inner Rat Pack

From Track One, Side One all the way up through "Monkey," one could not have exactly accused Faith of being an album lacking in top-tier material. Four #1 singles, a #2 single, some solid album cuts ("Hand to Mouth," "Hard Day") ... hell, I wouldn't have blamed Georgios if he'd just shaved that stubble, hung up the ol' leather jacket, and called it a day.

But no.

The man wasn't satisfied. He still needed to throw one more killer song onto his album - a song performed in the kind of style that no one in their right mind would have ever thought he would have been capable of mastering. Not just a ballad. Not just an adult contemporary ballad.

A standard.

Strap on that cummerbund, slip that valet a $100 bill, and check your coat at the door, because with "Kissing a Fool," you and George are about to spend an elegant evening uptown. Say hello to Georgios Connick, Jr.

As if Faith hadn't already been enough of a mega-blockbuster, career-redefining album, he slips in a little "Kissing a Fool" at the end and makes it even mega-er, even more re-defining-ing. "Kissing a Fool" was George's way of saying, "I can even do this, y'all." Here's my main thought: most of the material on Faith, while excellent, certainly sounds ... of its time. Let's face it: it's an album smothered in synth sauce. Most of it has managed, in my opinion, to also transcend its time, due to the passion and playfulness in his singing, the inherent melodic sturdiness of his songwriting, and the craft in the production.

But "Kissing a Fool" is another beast entirely. It's the Dorian Gray of George Michael songs. It still sparkles like the top of the Chrysler Building on a breezy autumn morning. Granted, it doesn't sound like a recording from the '50s, which I imagine was the primary vibe George was aiming for. But it sure doesn't sound like a recording from the '80s either. This could have been recorded for a Tony Bennett comeback album circa 1993, I'm thinking. It could have been recorded for one of those Rod Stewart Great American Songbook albums from the '00s. It could have been recorded bloody yesterday. In other words, he didn't just write a standard. He made it sound like a standard. For instance, when the horns come in toward the end, they don't sound like, say, "I Want Your Sex, Part II: Brass In Love" horns. They sound like snappy, full-bodied, swingin' supper club horns. The piano rings and shimmers around the stereo spectrum like the refracted light emanating from the candles presumably resting on top of it. And those vocals! The vibe on this track is so smoky, I feel like I'm getting cancer just listening to it.



"Kissing a Fool" was Faith's coup de grace. As the last jazzy notes of an electric guitar bring the track to close, one can almost feel the final remnants of Wham! firmly and irrevocably dissipating into the night air like the helpless victim of an Evanesco spell. How the single got to #5 in the U.S. I'm not entirely sure; who hadn't already bought the whole album at that point? Maybe they really needed the instrumental version on the B-side? And until our friends at Vevo get around to acquiring the rights to the video, I'll have to embed this version that features subtitles in Spanish. My favorite lyric in "Kissing a Fool" - excuse me, "Besando a un Loco" - has always been "La gente nunca puedes cambiar como piensan." Don't tell me I'm the only one. Also, notice how George uses his guitar as a literal prop. He doesn't even bother to pretend-strum until the end of the bridge. Anyone "fooled" by that faux-playing only deserves to be "kissed" by death. From Professor Higglediggle:

Michael iterates the codification of Shakespeare on the concluding track to Faith, twisting the accumulated symbolic capital of the Bard's oeuvre into the seemingly anodyne lounge jazz ballad "Kissing a Fool," a maladroit melange of interpretations of various "Fool" characters found in Shakespeare's canonical works. The opening couplet, "You are far/When I could have been your star" (re)positions Feste's promise in Twelfth Night, "What is love? 'Tis not hereafter/Present mirth hath present laughter" as an astrological farce, while the following lines, "You listened to people/Who scared you to death/And from my heart" re-contextualize the mocking plea of Falstaff, "Master Gower, if they become me not, he was a fool that/taught them me. This is the right fencing grace, my lord; tap for/tap, and so part fair" in Act II, Scene I of Henry IV, Part II. However, Michael appears to misunderstand, if nobly, the Fool's wry observation "The man that makes his toe/What he his heart should make/Shall of a corn cry woe/And turn his sleep to wake" in King Lear when he croons, "Strange that I was wrong enough/To think you'd love me too," although this might arguably be intended as a nod to Costard in Love's Labours Lost, rendering it less malapropos. Avoiding a  reference to the Fool's smooch-laden banter in Twelfth Night ("What's to come is still unsure/In delay there lies no plenty/Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty/Youth's a stuff will not endure") may have either been a noble gesture of restraint on the singer's part, or an exclusion properly foolish.