why blemish an entire continent, one might ask. it’s really sweden’s fault.
inspired by david bowie’s space oddity (another song i can’t bear to listen to, though for other reasons — it creeps me out), singer joey tempest of the swedish band europe wrote a song about leaving mother earth in a space vehicle. with such inspirational lyrics as we’re heading for Venus, and still we’ll stand tall, the song crept into wild popularity in 1986. now, it lives on in practically every sport arena at every level in the world. yes, that is a killer riff that synthesizer is playing, but it’s so killer that no one can remember what comes after it. nor, for that matter, do they care. it’s curious how a song about EVA is now popular in sporting events. who knew fist-in-the-air anthems about standing tall work equally well in arenas and in the milky way.
anyway, the banal song will get stuck in your head, and not in a pleasant way. oddly enough, the band never did a whole lot that was quite as memorable here in the states. pity. i suspect synchronized swimming still lacks a pumped-up anthem.
this goes out to my peeps from the Toms River North Class of ’83.
when i was a senior in high school, there was so much to think about: college, life after high school, getting the hell away from my hometown, and just which song would be our prom theme. the year before, our prom theme was open arms by journey, an acceptable, if not predictable, ditty. this year, i hoped it would be different. i was thinking it would be nice to shake things up. i went to our senior class meeting, hoping against hope that we could do something different. a few classmates and i had the thought: how about i wanna be sedated?
as you can imagine, that went down like a lead balloon.
in its stead, just you and i was voted in.
(no, i’m not bitter. much.)
for starters, they sing a grammatically incorrect phrase: it should be just you and me. that always tweaked me a bit.
but the song is such melodramatic pap. legend has it, neither rabbitt nor gayle ever intended the song to be a duet; in fact, it is said that the song was recorded and then spliced together. (talk about your drama.) frankly, it puts me to sleep.
so here i go again, indicting a song that probably has ended up a popular wedding song. it probably won’t make me popular, i suspect. i certainly wasn’t in high school, so this probably changes nothing…
as an english major, i am qualified to tell you that sex and death is a common theme in literature (especially among those crazy victorians.) any one of us card-carrying bores devourers of writing across the ages can probably cite poems, such as john donne’s the flea, which link the concept of sex with death. (you can read all about it and figure it out. my masters isn’t in lit, so that’s about as far as i’ll take you.)
thus, the modern-day variation on this theme, (i just) died in your arms tonight by that one-hit wonder cutting crew produced in 1986 pretty much treads on familiar ground. sadly, the lyrics aren’t even a third as clever as those words by donne. in fac, the wuss who sings the song is probably damned lucky he got laid considering his pathetic turn of phrase.
and don’t get me started on the overblown synth orchestra. oh, i could hardly stand the crap that some bands, like OMD, emitted — all those machines to sound like violins, all those cold sounds that are somehow meant to sound warm and meaningful. don’t get me wrong – i like synthesizers when they’re used properly. but songs like IJDIYAT make me wonder who out there actually could relate to the feeling of the song. the execution is poor.
during the mid-1980s, you could do a lot worse than live in miami. i disagreed, of course, and moved back to NJ; but in the time i lived in coral gables (an affluent suburb of my ami, my miami), miami vice was white-hot on TV. rumors would float about as to where the miami vice people were shooting in town. i suspect if any of us ever actually fell upon don johnson or phillip michael thomas johnny bob, we would have probably died or at least turned to dust (a dust which probably would have ended up snorted up someone’s nose in miami. those were how those times rolled.)
glen frey wrote this song for an episode of miami vice. now, i like glen frey as much as the next person; he, of new kid in town and tequila sunrise (just to mention two — there are so many, many others.) but you belong to the city sounds like a bad poem from the high school literary magazine.
‘Cause you belong to the city
You belong to the night
Livin’ in a river of darkness
Beneath the neon lights
You were born in the city
Concrete under your feet
It’s in your moves, it’s in your blood
You’re a man of the streets
deep.
anyway, after it’s appearance on the show (and the subsequent soundtrack LP, which did very well), the song ultimately became the bed for an incredibly annoying pepsi commercial starring don johnson and glen frey. (but of course.) the joy continued.
this is just a case of a man who i knew could do so, so, SO much better.
every rose has its thorn, an annoying number one hit for the hair metal band poison, had died a quiet, happy death for me since it’s seemingly-never-ending days on playlists in 1988. then, two events revived this tripe from the dead.
first, lead singer bret michaels started the series rock of love. (then, rock of love 2. then, rock of love bus. and of course, how can we forgetrock of love charm school and charm school with ricki lake? i know i am still trying.) all along, this 40-something former rock star moaned and emo-whined about finding his soulmate, and yet the primary criteria for the women present were: 1) the amount of silicone they possessed; 2) the sheer vulgarity of their personalities; and 3) whether they were willing to basically give it away. most (blissfully) were pretty unaware of michael’s old band; most in fact had the musical taste of a rock, screaming and grinding like crazy every time they attended one of his solo performances.
but thanks to this franchise of shows, i ended up hearing every rose has its thorn more than i cared to.
this, in turn, led to the second reason the song has re-emerged. our new local rock station, 105.9, has apparently moved the demographic up a bit and now includes a lot, and i do mean a lot, of 80’s hair metal. and every single hair metal band who wanted that one hit pulled together a power ballad. maybe the favorite power ballad that gets a ton of airplay on this station is…you guessed it. every rose has its thorn.
But I guess that’s why they say
Every rose has its thorn
Just like every night has its dawn
Just like every cowboy sings his sad, sad song
Every rose has its thorn
so now, i get to endure this rancid (and i don’t mean the band) song every time i forget my mp3 player in the car. as an english major, i have difficulties with michael’s rhyming scheme as well as his simile. thorn, dawn, and song don’t really rhyme (unless you are a new yawker, and even then, song is pushing it.) i don’t seem to recall roy rogers or gene autry singing sad, sad songs, but then again, i was never a huge fan of westerns.
if every rose has it’s thorn, then perhaps every car radio ought to have it’s mute button. for just such occasions, i mean.
do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
in 1981, american ex-pat joe dolce came up with cult hit shaddup you face, an unintelligible song with a chorus apparently written by joe’s eye-talian mama:
Whassamatta you? (hey!)
Gotta no respect?
Whaddaya think you do?
Why you looka so sad?
It’s-a not so bad
It’s-a nice-a place
Ah, shaddap you face!
it actually ended up on the billboard hot 100 and took its place among the thousands of novelty songs that litter doctor demento’s mind and radio show. in the UK, it even knocked ultravox’sviennaout of the number one spot. this is somewhat surprising since the song hearkens back to an old sing-song that someone’s grandmother might have sung, albeit with wildly different lyrics.
annoyance aboundeth.
for starters, telling ANYONE to shut up was verboten in my family — it still is today. you can disagree with someone else’s opinions, you can shush little kids who need to be quiet in a theater, when wildly provoked, you can tell a grown someone to hush. but to tell someone to shut up is like to slap someone in the face. it is just not done around here. and so hearing this song to me was a full affront on kindness. it was a dude encouraging people to behave badly. and to me, the 16 year old emily post of NJ, this was just wrong.
secondly, this ended up on a rock chart??? seriously??? novelty acts often annoyed me, but they were an annoyance that hardly showed up anywhere except on novelty shows. but i was subjected to this in my car on a regular basis for awhile. was it because people in the NY/NJ metro could relate to the eye-talian mama? (was it because the station managers could?) i couldn’t bear to hear this the first time; after the 50th time, i was screaming uncle.
to say it was a major step below pac man fever pretty much would be an understatement.
i have never been a huge fan of cher’s singing. so when the former mrs. bono / former mrs. allman made a musical comeback aboard the USS Missouri in 1989, i was not among the people cheering her on. to me, this song is an anthem to cher’s future of never-ending attempts to be younger. between her plastic surgeries, her cougar antics, and her musical choices, cher has been trying to be the female dorian grey.
maybe it’s easy for me to say, as i am not yet in my 60s and don’t make my living in front of a camera in an industry ruthlessly in pursuit of young and younger and thin and thinner. but it is infuriating that a beautiful woman like cher has the need to reupholster herself. cher is a wonderfully talented actress (her performance in moonstruck still remains one of my favorites) who shouldn’t need to prance around in little nothings singing utter crap. she should be appreciating herself at every age… and acting!
if i could turn back time with cher, i would somehow get her to appreciate her worth so that perhaps she wouldn’t resort to plastic surgery. (as for dating much younger men, i’d say go for it.)
and i would get her to sing better stuff. i realize that diane warren, the author of this song, is a very-much awarded songwriter. but the thing that sold the song as far as i’m concerned is cher strutting her stuff in a body stocking barely covering her naughty bits. otherwise, it is a droning drag of a song.
little sisters get no respect. billy idol goes after his in white wedding; and now, drummer kelly keagy of night rider ranger out-and-out mortifies his little sister christy in this 1984 hit power ballad. as a little sister, i feel it is my duty to stick up for poor sister christy and her public pillaging by her older brother. apparently, big brother was shocked and stunned over how quickly his little sister was growing up. apparently, he wasn’t too pleased about her rumored extracurricular activities:
You’re motoring
What’s your price for flight
In finding mister right
apparently, someone was cruising around for trouble with a capital T, and big brother didn’t like that much. but instead of just calling her up on the phone, he instead writes an over-blown song that gets so hugely popular (and embarrassing), to the point where sister christy contemplates a name change. (so i read once, anyway.) gee, dude — why didn’t you also write a song about her first period?
i suppose older brothers mean well. i know; i have two of them, middlebro and BTD, two guys who probably could not be more different and yet who i happen to know truly emanate from the same gene pool. (miraculously.) there are times people think i am more like middlebro, and times i am more like BTD, so i guess you could say i am the hybrid sibling. anyway, the two occasionally meddled in my life, but seldom at the same time. however, i still remember one time when the three of us (plus BTD’s college friend ralph) went to see a genesis concert in 1987 at madison square garden. we took the train to penn station, figuring we ‘d grab something to eat before the show.
in life, there are some people who you are doomed, or maybe destined, to bump into from time to time. whether it’s karma, weird luck, or just some mystical crapshoot that you consistently lose, some of us run into people in the most impossible and improbable ways. thus it was when the four of us entered penn station. there, on the far corner, was an old boyfriend, one whose breakup nearly sent me over the edge and down the hole with alice and the rabbit. i gasped — i mean, what are the odds you’ll see someone in penn station? but there he was. i exclaimed, oh my G-d, there’s so-and-so!
in one of the rarest moments of brotherly solidarity, BTD and middlebro wordlessly picked me up by my bent elbows, turned me around, and put me on an escalator going up. i remember ralph, poor puzzled ralph, saying to BTD, what the hell is up? but no one answered him. and i knew. my brothers did not want any part of the joy that might follow such a meeting.
only too bad for them. once i regained consciousness after the shock, we walked over to a nearby pizza place. as we walked in, there was so-and-so and his brothers. i remember saying hi, and i remember my brothers turning me around and us leaving the pizza place pizzaless.
i guess i ought to be grateful that neither brother has ever written a bloated power ballad about my ill-fated love life.
in the mid-1980s, eddie murphy was hotter than a jalapeno in the desert. riding a wave of popularity from his stint on saturday night live (a stint i adored), murphy was now headlining clubs and starring in wildly popular movies. unlike most actors when asked what they want to do next (answer: direct), murphy decided to tackle the music industry. pulling in superfreak rick james, murphy cut a single in 1985, party all the time.
when i first heard the single, i thought it was a joke.
seriously? he’s singing? man, his voice is so high in a way that screams my circulation is cut off in strategic places. i kept waiting for the jokey part; i remembered him singing in his buckwheat voice, in his roxanne voice… and when he sang kill the white people, well that just nearly made me lose it laughing. so where is the joke in party all the time???
apparently, the joke was on me. it became a hit. and since then, it has actually been covered by other artists.
on the bright side, it became a sort of anthem here when we were parents of kids learning to use the bathroom. suddenly, you could hear me break into song:
my girl wants to potty all the time, potty all the time, potty all the time!
(BC will kill me when she reads this, but she was only two at the time, so get over it, young lady.)
sadly, we lost patrick swayze this year. an accomplished actor and dancer with a fabulous comedic streak, swayze should have quit while he was ahead.
but nooooooooo.
during the making of dirty dancing, swayze shared this song, originally recorded in 1984 for a movie that did not use it, with his producers, who passed it along to someone who could actually make the song happen. and happen it did, all over the place, on the coattails of the wildly-successful movie. i suppose i ought to be grateful — it was his one and only hit, and it doesn’t appear that he tried again after this, sparing the world of more aural misery.
the ultimate stamp of approval sign of success: david hasselhoff covered it on his greatest hits album. sadly, youtube does not offer that lovely version up, so please accept this consolation prize: the hoff’s cover of hooked on a feeling. (hey~ don’t hassle the hoff!)
RIP, patrick swayze. i think you’ll prefer to be remembered for your work beyond this song. and you will.
