Classic Songs of My Youth Revisited #58

Don McLean – American Pie

When it comes to music, we live in a super-sized era. The digital delivery system means there are no theoretical limits to how long an album can be: I know of at least two original releases that exceed four hours, and I will absolutely listen to them someday when I have nothing better to do. On the same day recently, Taylor Swift released a 65-minute album and a 122-minute extended version. These kinds of excesses put even Drake’s extravaganzas to shame. Even now, Kanye West is probably plotting his return to glory with a 106-hour album that is 90% him making animal sounds. (And, yes, I would absolutely check that out.)

In an earlier time, the length of a record was confined to the limits of the medium it was delivered on. (These are all approximations: there were technical tweaks that could lengthen these times, though sound quality degradation was a real risk in doing so.) A compact disc could run up to 74 minutes, the standard cassette tape held 30 minutes per side, vinyl albums up to 44 minutes total. The shortest of all was the humble 45 vinyl record: just a mere 5 minutes maximum per side.

These technical limitations had an impact on how the art could be presented. The Allman Brothers’ 34 minutes-plus epic “Mountain Jam” took up two (non-consecutive for some reason) sides of their 1972 double album “Eat A Peach”. Anyone who ever listened to music on an 8-track player knows the experience of the loud click between tracks interrupting a favourite tune. Longer songs were edited to a 45-friendly length, creating a pretty much new song, such as chopping out more than 14 minutes of Iron Butterfly’s “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” for the thrill of reaching number 30 on Billboard.

Don McLean’s opus “American Pie” wasn’t edited: it was sliced (roughly) in half, with 4:11 of the 8:42 song on the 45’s A side and the rest on the B. I had that 45, and it was annoying, though not so annoying that I went so far as to just buy the whole album. As the tune grew in popularity, radio stations started to play the album version, and that’s the one I – and probably most people alive today – heard first (ownership of the 45 came later, from deep diving a discount bin at K-Mart, Woolco or some other bygone department store chain).

An entire cottage industry was built up around trying to figure out what McLean was singing about, and the songwriter himself was often coy or offered misdirection, although in recent years he’s started to come clean. It’s a song that’s drenched in nostalgia, in the recall of those key moments that marked his development as a person. It begins with an air of sadness over the death of Buddy Holly (“bad news on the doorstep”), with only piano under the vocal. Acoustic guitar jumps in, the tempo picks up, and now we’re racing through the landmarks of a young life. There’s unrequited love, as the “lonely teenage broncin’ buck” sees the object of his affections dancing with another in the school gym. (I always think of the dance scene from “It’s A Wonderful Life” during this part.) It’s an oddly disjointed song, with a peppy sound diluting the slashing of its words. There are questions about god and country and of the part that music can play in nurturing your soul. The song is hopeful, but those hopes frequently falter (“the levee was dry”, “no verdict was returned”). We keep coming back to music, to dancing, and to the celebration of what is good. It’s about being young, when everything is possible, of an unearned hopefulness that can go sour, ending in a slowed down coda, where the news is not happy, and the loss is real, and cuts close.

I think the ambiguity has been good for the song’s longevity. It doesn’t matter that the references that McLean makes are very personal and connected with his life experiences. Because what “American Pie” means to him isn’t what it means to me, or what it might mean to someone 10 years older, or 20 years younger. For McLean, “the day the music died” refers to Buddy Holly, but for someone else it could mean Joplin, or Presley, or Cobain, or any artist, musical or otherwise, who moved you, inspired you, terrified you. And it is, after all, merely a metaphor for the loss of innocence, of McLean’s innocence to be sure, but also of his country’s, mired at the time in an unwinnable war for no good reason and a lot of bad ones. What he is really getting at – specific references to the likes of James Dean, John Lennon, Charles Manson and the fear of nuclear destruction be damned – is timeless. Youth always feels lost, always feels like it’s figured shit out and things will get better, always ends up disappointed, and ALWAYS recalibrates to the new reality. This song is about the ‘60s, but adjust some of the references a bit and it can be about the ‘80s, or the ‘00s, or last week. That’s partly what makes it a classic: it’s a choose your own adventure song.

Classic Songs of My Youth Revisited #57

MacLean & MacLean – F**k Ya

If you’re offended by foul language, stop reading right here. You might not want to click any of the links either. I’m not shy about using the occasional obscenity to make a point, but the guys I’m writing about below are on another level. They have song titles that would make George Carlin blush! Consider yourself warned.

It’s pretty unusual to celebrate a song from my youth that I do not, in fact, know for certain that I ever heard the originators perform before I began this journey down memory lane. Such is the case with MacLean & MacLean, the guys who gave the world a musical F- you more than 30 years before Ceelo Green.

In spite of my failing memory, I know I heard this song when I was in high school. Somebody in my circle had access to a copy of their album because we sure as hell weren’t hearing these tunes on CJCB. But on listening to it now, I realized that the tune I’ve had in my head for more than 40 years came from someone else. The voice I’ve been hearing all these years is Robert Barrie’s. Which is good, because Robert is and has always been a singer. God forbid it was Sandy Nicholson or Sandy Fraser – yes, I had two friends with the same first name, who we creatively called Nick and Fras – or some other guy’s voice in my head. Gads, it could have been my own voice.

But it was Robert’s, and I remember his take on the song being less bouncy than the original. Before we get to that, let’s actually talk a bit about MacLean & MacLean. A pair of Cape Bretoners who relocated to Winnipeg, the heyday of brothers Gary and Blair was from 1974 to 1985, over which years they released six albums and allegedly had to go before the Supreme Court of Canada to earn the right to swear on stage in Ontario (it in fact appears to have gone no further than the Ontario Court of Appeal, which is still an impressive commitment to what is essentially a bit, though their entire careers were built on that bit). Before that, they were pals with The Guess Who, and were even credited as co-writers on the band’s live-only 1972 track “Glace Bay Blues”. Their oeuvre was unabashedly obscene: the song titles alone – “Dolly Parton’s T**s”, “Dildo Dawn”, “You Set My D**k On Fire”, and others I don’t dare repeat – tell you exactly what you need to know about the brothers’ act. It was puerile, gloriously stupid, and enormously appealing to the kind of guy who howls with laughter when he sees another man get hit in the testicles for comic effect.

“F**k Ya” was one of their many rewritings of existing tunes, another one being “I’ve Seen Pubic Hair”, which spun out from fellow Nova Scotian Hank Snow’s 1962 number one country hit “I’ve Been Everywhere”. This one was from a number called “Ja-Da”, which I had never heard of but is actually a jazz standard, with covers by such artists as Frank Sinatra, Oscar Peterson, Louie Prima, Count Basie, Al Jarreau, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons (!) and Sharon, Lois & Bram (!!!). My friend Robert’s take on the MacLeans’ parody was harder edged than the original’s finger-snapping, a cappella, standing-on-a-street corner sort of sound. It was a very adaptable tune.

Look, I don’t have much to say about this song, or any of the brothers’ other tunes: it’s a parody, and not even a clever one. But it matters to me because my enjoyment of it shows a side of my personality that might surprise anyone who doesn’t know me all that well (which I think is most people I encounter – I’m a good compartmentalizer). To the world in which I work, and (I think) most family members and more dignified acquaintances, I’m a fairly buttoned down, conservative living and generally decent fellow. I read a lot of books that you would call literature, enjoy foreign and classic movies, listen to a lot of really smart music (and some not-so-smart stuff, too), and have zero interest in “dumb” popular culture like reality TV (except cooking shows). My wife, however, has long commented on her surprise over the things that I find funny. I will happily watch a movie like “Dodgeball” for the umpteenth time and still howl like a maniac at what I’m watching. (If this scene doesn’t make you crack up, I don’t know if we could be friends.) I am that guy who thinks that a kick in the testicles is hilarious – they’d just better not be my testicles. Generally, any kind of comedy that uses low-level violence or bad words to get a laugh is in my wheelhouse. If it would feel awkward to watch it with my mother or daughters, you know I’m turning it on as soon as they leave the room.

MacLean & MacLean are a part of that grand tradition of doing or saying stupid things to make people laugh. I can’t remember the last time I heard anyone mention them, and the under 5,000 monthly listeners on Spotify shows that whatever minimal relevance they had to the culture during their run has long since disappeared. These songs aren’t meant to endure: the best they can offer is a howl while you down another beer and try to forget what’s hurting you. That’s still a pretty noble pursuit in my book, no matter how foul the words are that get you there.

Classic Songs of My Youth Revisited #56

Sister Sledge – We Are Family

There are lots of good reasons to dislike a song. I don’t need to list any of them here, especially since there are more good reasons than songs, as two people can dislike a song for equally valid and entirely personal bases. I am firmly in the “there is no bad music” camp if someone – anyone – likes it, so I stand just as firmly with you when you don’t like something. Without being guided by our own taste, what’s the point of art?

But I do know one objectively dumb reason to dislike a song: Because of a baseball team.

Let me explain. I first started following baseball in 1972, which was the year I turned 8. My team was Canada’s one major league entry, the Montreal Expos, and I was soon religiously watching their nationally televised Wednesday night matches. This was not a good time to be an Expos fan: it was their fourth year in existence and the team was not very good. After a brief flash of relevance in 1973, they took a step back, and by 1976 were again the worst team in baseball.

But in this mess, there was hope for the future. That 1976 team included a bunch of youngsters – most notably future Hall of Famers Gary Carter and Andre Dawson – who would be among the leaders of the organization’s first great team in 1979. And when that day came, I was even more glued to my television. When they entered September in the hunt for a playoff spot, our local FM radio station started broadcasting all their games, and I ended up watching or listening to 34 games in 30 days – basically, four days of my life spent drinking tea, eating buttered popcorn (yes, I had rituals) and keeping my own box scores. The Expos ended up being the third best team in all of baseball that year. Unfortunately, the best team was in the same division, so they fell short of the postseason. And I hated that other team. The team was the Pittsburgh Pirates, and they had a theme song: “We Are Family” by Sister Sledge. So, naturally, I had to hate the song. That’s just how these things work.

I had nothing against Sister Sledge before this. Earlier that year, “He’s the Greatest Dancer” had been a disco hit for the four Sledge siblings, and while I have no specific recall of how I felt about the song at the time, hearing it now causes no bad vibes to resurface from my subconscious. It’s actually the opposite, since a pre-cuckolded, Chris-Rock-slapping Will Smith built the verse of “Gettin’ Jiggy wit It” around a sample from the sisters’ first hit, and who wouldn’t be happy to get jiggy?

But “We Are Family” causes a form of PTSD, as I remember one of my first truly intense sports fandom disappointments. Sports was incredibly important to me at the time, and my sense of self worth was ridiculously tethered to some degree to the success or failure of the teams I rooted for. (It was absolutely my father’s fault that this was going on, and I’m not going to let him off the hook just because he isn’t here to defend himself.) Any threat to my team’s winning was an existential threat to myself, and if our rivals drew inspiration from a song, then that song was on my no-play list. It was that simple.

But I did it: I listened to “We Are Family”, and then I listened to it again, and again. It was more than needed for the music, as it isn’t a very complex song, but it may have been good as exposure therapy. Written and produced by Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards of Chic, it’s like a less interesting Chic record. A syncopated disco beat underlain with metallic piano and a subtle bass line from Edwards, with equally unobtrusive drumming from his bandmate Tony Thompson. It’s a pretty relaxed beat for a dance hit, but that was not unusual for disco tunes: Chic’s own “Good Times” has a drugged-out sluggishness. Yet, despite there being nothing particularly unique about this recording, music critics have regularly ranked it among the best songs of its year (#4 on the Pazz and Jop), decade (some guy named Steve Crawford has it at 101) and all-time (currently ranked at 967 at Acclaimed Music). I don’t hear it, and it can’t just be leftover petulance from 15-year-old me. There’s nothing wrong with the record, and it’s even sort of grown on me since starting to write this post: I just don’t hear greatness anywhere.

My Expos remained a good team for a few years but never managed to win a championship before falling apart over drugs and money, and the stars fell away one by one. After a decade of mostly average and occasionally bad play, they were the best team in baseball in 1994, but a players’ strike ended those hopes, and the franchise never recovered, relocating to Washington after the 2004 season. I remained a loyal fan to the end, but I couldn’t follow them to their new home: my heart had been broken too many times. I had also learned long before then not to get too tied up in things I had no control over, like sports, and to let go of those grudges. That reckoning had come at the hands of a New York Yankees catcher named Butch Wynegar, whose team didn’t have an obnoxious theme song, so that’s all I’m going to say here about that son of a bitch.

Pazz and Jop 1974 #14

Bryan Ferry – These Foolish Things

I’m not a fan of early Roxy Music, and to go by his first solo album, frontman Bryan Ferry may have been having some issues of his own with the band’s quirky and often uninviting output. His apparent solution was to do an album of nothing but cover versions, and if you’ve been playing along at home, you know that’s catnip to this tabby. I love this album from wackadoodle beginning to heartfelt ending, but it doesn’t mean it all works equally well. To truly appreciate a cover, you need to also know the song that’s being reinterpreted, and that doesn’t always go to Ferry’s favour. (Here’s a little playlist that I made if you want to do your own comparison.)

Let’s get the misses out of the way first. To adopt my late Uncle Brad’s comment on something reckless I had done, it takes more balls than brains to cover a Smokey Robinson song, and maybe he’d have been wiser to stay away from the luscious perfection of The Miracles’ “The Tracks of My Tears”. His innate eccentricities likewise get the better of him when he tackles The Beach Boys’ “Don’t Worry Baby”, losing the simple romanticism of the original. Finally, on “Piece of My Heart” he is competing not only with the well-known Janis Joplin version, but the blistering, heartfelt, tear the MFing roof off original from Erma Franklin, and Ferry’s kind of goofy take is no match for the vocal chops of Aretha’s older sister.

Another weird thing that shows up on some of these covers is a sort of vocal vamping, like it’s “Rocky Horror Picture Show” night for the bottom two queens on “RuPaul’s Drag Race”. It’s really noticeable on Lesley Gore’s “It’s My Party”, which – sidebar – I now see as an empowering tale of a young lady with an IDGAF attitude who is owning her right to be publicly miserable because she’s been screwed over by a jerk, no matter how awkward it is for everyone else.

Some of the songs that work best have a tempo that is sped up from the original. Bob Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall” goes from stately protest song to rollicking madhouse rant. The Everly Brothers lite of The Crickets “Don’t Ever Change” is turned into a dance tune, with handclaps and dramatic piano. It will put a smile on your face, but also leave you questioning his intent: it is never entirely clear when Ferry is being serious or putting us on, when he’s being a romantic or a dick. And the wispy sweetness of The Paris Sisters’ “I Love How You Love Me” becomes a raunchy, sexual doo-wop: instead of letterman jackets and fraternity pins, there’s dance floor groping and couples being pulled apart by watchful teachers.

Some of these songs just seem to fit Ferry better than their originators. It is blasphemy to say this about one of my favourite Rolling Stones tunes, but Ferry’s weirdness makes for a believably slick Satan as opposed to Mick Jagger’s seductive version in “Sympathy for the Devil”. His more mature sounding voice strips away the sweetness that Paul McCartney brought to “You Won’t See Me”, making for a more accusatory tone that better fits the lyrical content of a messy romance in its endgame. Likewise, there is a deeper tone and a more desperate vocal in his version of Four Tops’ “Loving You is Sweeter Than Ever”, so that Ferry does a better job of drawing the listener in to the celebratory tale of finally finding real love by dropping his cool for a moment to show the emotion he feels. Finally, the album ends with the oft-covered title track, which starts out like a piano bar lament, with the tempo rising as Ferry ticks off the little things that remind him of his lost love. But it’s a jaunty tune, and never maudlin: he misses his lost love, but has no regrets about it.

In the end, Ferry followed his muse, and while I don’t think it’s entirely successful, it’s still a lot of fun, just a guy singing songs that he loves the best way he knows how. There are two Roxy Music records coming up when I reach 1975, and dear God, I hope some of that fun stuck around for those albums.

Pazz and Jop 1974 #13

Raspberries – Starting Over

My first awareness of the musical genius that was Eric Carmen came via the Bay City Rollers. On the Rollers’ 1976 album “Dedication” – the one with Ian Mitchell – the opening track is a catchy number called “Let’s Pretend”. One evening, 12-year-old me was playing the album when our baby-sitter – likely only a few years older than me in classic John Mulaney fashion – said the song was by Raspberries. “Who?” I wondered.

Now, before long, Carmen would become a big part of my musical childhood. Shawn Cassidy’s covers of “That’s Rock and Roll” and “Hey Deanie” were part of my 45 collection, as was Carmen’s own “She Did It”. He had other hits, of course – at times, “All By Myself” has been pretty much inescapable – and if I was then who I am now – and had access to a Spotify account – I absolutely would have given Raspberries a listen.

It’s a little more complicated now. These days, you can’t consider Carmen without acknowledging the bloated orange elephant in the room. Yes, he became a Trump supporter, and while I prefer not to dive too deeply into that foetid pool, I remember him getting into Twitter pissing matches with Peter Frampton and the always delightful Richard Marx, plus Amy Lofgren said he was “rabid”, and that’s good enough for me. It became even more complicated when Carmen passed away last week. His story has been written, and the later chapters have some clunkers, with no time for another edit.

For me, all of this makes Carmen another one of those litmus tests about separating the artist from the art. Some of those choices are easy – my life is no less, and probably a lot better, for not having the likes of Ted Nugent and Kid Rock in it. I do not miss R. Kelly, Woody Allen movies, “Dilbert” comic strips or “Love Connection” reruns. Michael Jackson is a bit trickier, and I just can’t quit Kanye. (I’m really hoping he gets some therapy. Redemption is still possible!) Carmen supported a man who has said and done awful things and is making it clear he’ll do much worse if he gets another chance. But this is about 25-year-old Eric Carmen, and I’m giving that guy a chance. So while he may have become a piece of shit in his later years, maybe he wasn’t a piece of shit then, or at least he had the decency to limit the damage caused by that shittiness to his inner circle. Either way, I tried to put the later version out of my mind while listening to this record. I needed a good long shower after, but I did it, because I am a serious person.

By the time “Starting Over” came out in September 1974, the band was running out of steam as a commercial force. Their single top 10 hit had been two years earlier, and their previous album hadn’t cracked the top 100 albums chart or produced a top 40 single. Strife had resulted in two of the four members being replaced over the previous year. They were clearly a band in transition, though they were in fact in their death throes: they never released another studio recording. But, as evidenced by its position on the Pazz and Jop, their collective creative juices still had one last blast of power pop to set free into the world.

Except it isn’t really a power pop record, is it? That’s how we usually think of Raspberries, but this is without a doubt a rock record, and more specifically a “rock band” record. There are songs about being on the road, about the pressure to succeed, about figuring out your path as an artist and as a person. And, of course, there are songs about romantic entanglements, where difficulties are often connected to that life on the road. It’s an album that is infused with the travails of the artist’s life, and the desire to have the freedom that comes with that but also the stability of success.

The lyrical content of the romantic side of this pairing highlights challenges in matters of the heart (the bitter I-don’t-want-you-back screed of “Cry”, or the delicate beauty of the album’s closer, “Starting Over”, which evokes the image of couples holding hands, swaying on the lawn at an open air show, as they explore a new love) and groin (the hoped-for threesome of “Hands on You”, the “please leave” afterglow of a drunken hookup in “All Through the Night”). But these are all secondary to the pull of creating music: to the thrill of hearing your song on the radio, of being on stage, of creating and dreaming. In the end, there are heartbreaks and failures along the way, but no one would ever willingly give up the rockstar life: the perks are too high to be lost in the noise of the lows. If there is an overarching theme, it’s freedom – to go where you want to go, do what you want to do, sleep with who you want to sleep with without commitment or consequences: the hippie ethos. The spirit of the Summer of Love still alive seven years later.

Musically, what stands out is that on a number of tracks – notably “Overnight Sensation (Hit Record)”, “I Don’t Know What I Want” and “I Can Hardly Believe You’re Mine” – the drums are prominent, not buried in the backbeat but crystal clear and as critical to the sound as any other instrument. Piano is also an important element, tinkly here, honkytonk there, and it lends a southern rock vibe to some of the tracks (“Party’s Over” could have been a Lynyrd Skynyrd B-side). Cribbing from other artists is frequent: there are sweet Beach Boys-esque harmonies on tracks like “Overnight Sensation (Hit Record)” and “Cruisin’ Music”, the goofy acoustic singalong “Hands on You” feels like a Beatles throwaway, and I’ll just have to take the word of the many, many, many more knowledgeable music writers who are hearing Elton John and The Who in these songs. Maybe what they are hearing is the sonically dense, epic feel of many of the tracks: it’s a busy record, the instruments sounding sometimes like they are competing with each other, but completely harmonious in its execution.

There isn’t a weak song here, and though “Overnight Sensation (Hit Record)” is justly praised as the record’s spiritual centrepiece, my favourite track is probably “All Through the Night”, with its dive bar chug and frank statements on the sexual mores of the scene: “Don’t you tell me your last name / I won’t recognize you after tonight” and “Now that I’ve already had ya / I’m gettin’ bored with the idle chitchat”.

Carmen wasn’t a one-man show – band mates Wally Bryson and Scott McCarl also contributed songwriting chops and lead vocals, and then there are Michael McBride’s epic drums – but he’s the person most associated with Raspberries, and the only one who had any sort of commercial success outside of the band. There is the kind of optimism that only the young have: he sings that he wants a hit record, not the money that might come with it. I suspect that if 2024 Eric Carmen had a time machine, he would have gone back and slapped his 50 years younger self. Hopefully, 1974 Carmen would have slapped him back twice as hard.

SoundTracking #4

”And the Oscar goes to . . .”

Rob Lowe is a very good looking man who is aging so gracefully that you can’t even dislike him for it. He’s also an excellent comic actor who for some reason keeps appearing in dramas. What he is not is a singer or dancer. Yet, in a decision that can never be truly understood, he was called upon to do both as the blind date of Snow White in the opening number at the Academy Awards on March 29, 1989. The results were glorious.

I am a regular Oscar ceremony watcher (though these days I rarely make it to the end unless I’m invested in a particular film’s prospects, like last year), but I missed the 1989 show, so I had not watched this video until just this week. I certainly knew the legend of the botched opening. But I assumed that Disney, who were so upset by the unapproved use of their intellectual property that they (1) sued the Academy and (2) had Snow White portrayer Eileen Bowman agree not to speak about the show for 13 years, made sure that this clip was buried. I wouldn’t be surprised to see it taken down at some point, so, please, take the 11 minutes right now and watch the video. It is so undeniably awful that you can’t help but feel embarrassed for (almost) everyone involved, yet you are also compelled to keep watching, to see what fresh horror is coming up. It’s supposed to be a tribute to old Hollywood, and I guess the amount and variety of cheese on display is consistent with that. But what is the cheesiest part? The dancing stars? The dancing tables? Snow White’s voice? The rewritten lyrics to familiar songs? Rob Lowe shimmying? The gigantic hat – I guess it’s a hat – that Snow wears towards the end? The mere presence of Merv Griffin? The only one for my money who comes out of this a winner is Cyd Charisse: just past her 67th birthday and more than 20 years since her last major film role, she turns up at 3:37 and shows that she still has moves, and looked awfully good in the process.

Now, it’s Oscar time again, and it is certain that nothing so gloriously camp will turn up in tonight’s ceremony. Unless, of course, it’s on purpose. Which brings us to “I’m Just Ken”.

There are five tunes up for best original song this year, but three of those have no chance of winning, despite contributing honourably to a strong nominee slate. “It Never Went Away” (from “American Symphony”) has beautiful piano, and is a lovely and moving elegy to enduring love. “The Fire Inside” (from “Flamin’ Hot”) is yet another Diane Warren anthem, but with a faux Latin beat, and I can’t deny that it had me moving my head and shoulders along with the music in a way that my wife would instantly recognize and, hopefully, be embarrassed by. And, last but not least of the also-rans, we come to “Wahzhazhe (A Song for My People)” (from “Killers of the Flower Moon”), which I can’t even begin to pretend to understand but which also dug under my skin and made my heart race.

But this is “Barbie”’s year, and it is probably 99% certain that Billie Eilish and her brother will be walking off the stage tonight with their second little gold man. And it’s hard to deny that it would be a deserving victor. “What Was I Made For?” is a delicate lament, light and airy sounding but with lyrics that display an existential questioning of purpose that is also grounded in the film’s through line. An Oscar winning song should ideally be connected to the movie itself, and not just a pretty trifle played over the closing credits. Eilish’s song touches on the emotional centre of the film, and of Barbie’s journey.

And yet, nothing is certain until someone says “And the Oscar goes to”, and in that tiny 1% of space that remains, I will be rooting for Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt – two of the folks behind “Shallow” – to win their second Oscars with “I’m Just Ken”.

My love for this song is a little irrational, but I’m okay with that. It, too, is connected to the story, as Ken grapples with his insecurities and confusion over why Barbie doesn’t appreciate his awesomeness. That it is accompanied by a massive production number, in which dozens and dozens of Kens (but no Allans) battle each other with beach toys and, I don’t know, charisma, I guess, organically ties in to the problems with the patriarchy and toxic masculinity that the film addresses. I prefer to watch the movie clip so I can appreciate its full glory, with Ryan Gosling in beach god mode and fellow Canuck Simu Liu as his preening nemesis, but the song on its own is great, switching from power ballad to ‘80s dance track to grungy techno then back to power ballad. And the lyrics: “a life of blonde fragility”, “the man behind the tan”, “Am I not hot when I’m in my feelings?” and, my personal favourite, “I’m great at doing stuff”. Plus, this song gave the world Kenergy. Give these geniuses another Oscar, damn it!

Okay, that’s absolutely not going to happen. For one thing, Hollywood, despite being a place that has churned out great comedic entertainments for over a century, has never had a sense of humour about itself, and rarely has awarded those comedies its highest honour. So the emotional turmoil of “What Was I Made For?” is more on brand for the Oscars than the absurdist humour of “I’m Just Ken”. Also, everything Eilish touches turns to award-season gold – she has already won the Grammy for Song of the Year for her track, an award for which “I’m Just Ken” was egregiously not even nominated. But what would it say about Hollywood if Barbie’s moment of triumph was stolen away by Ken? It would fuel thinkpieces for days on every feminist (and anti-feminist) Substack, every website and magazine, every culturally oriented TikTok, Instagram, Reddit, X, blog, vlog and whatever the heck else is out there. If nothing else, it would take our minds off Trump and the American apocalypse in the making for just a few more days.

Do it, Academy. We demand that you step up in this moment of need. Give “I’m Just Ken” the Oscar. The world is counting on you.

Songs of My Divorce #2

Keith Urban – Stupid Boy

You don’t always get to be, as David Copperfield intuited, the hero of your own life, and that can be especially true when going through a breakup. Sometimes, you’re the Joker, not Batman. In that spirit, I’m going to tell this part of the story now, because I’m sort of the bad guy here, and I would like it if you’re still on my side by the time we get to the end of this part of my musical story.

My wife and I often kid about my complete obliviousness to things that are obvious to her. (My catchphrase is that I am “a keen observer of the human condition”.) My observational skills are hit and miss: I pay attention to things in direct correlation to how much I give a crap about them. (So, yes, gentle reader, I am a man.) This isn’t a new development – and it seems to be getting worse as I age – I had just never had anyone in my life who could be bothered to point it out to me. I wonder now though whether my ex was, in her own less direct way, trying to tell me something similar. As our relationship was circling the drain, two things became clear to me. First, I wanted to save our marriage a whole lot more than she did. Second, and naturally relating to the first, she had come to believe that I was holding her back from becoming all that she wanted to be in life. I won’t get into all the history that led us to that point – that’s mostly her story to tell – but at its heart was that what I thought was encouragement to be the best version of herself was being received as browbeating, that my coaching was seen as more Woody Hayes or Bobby Knight rants than (insert your favourite coach here – I could find lots of examples of violent, racist and asshole sports figures, but no universal opinion on who the nicest ones were – let’s go with Andy Reid, since he at least looks like a Zeddy bear and had the restraint during the “Big Game” (this post is not NFL-approved) not to drop Travis Kelce onto his overhyped ass).

Not unexpectedly, I finally understood what was going on thanks to a song. I don’t for a fact know that her attachment to this song had any connection to me – I wasn’t the only stupid boy in her life by this point – but the way you experience music is always deeply personal, and in the context of everything that was going on at the time, it felt like “Stupid Boy” was a mirror. And I did not like what I was seeing.

From the first time I heard him speak, Keith Urban has felt like a bit of a gag to me. How did a guy from Australia become, of all things, a country music star? Well, like myself, he started out listening to country music because that’s what his parents listened to. Talent and hard work took him from there. It’s a niche stardom: after punching just his first name into Google, he was the sixth suggestion, after Moon (would be a solid #2 option), Emerson (I guessed he was the Emerson, Lake and Palmer guy, but this is too high), Haring (3rd seems about right), Richards (there’s our top guy) and Morrison (the power of being on television all the time, I guess). (Keith David was 7th. Not relevant – is any of this though? – I just like that he came up.) And I can’t honestly recall now if I had even heard of him before the fall of 2007. He was only on my radar because I was trying to save my marriage through the magical power of country music.

I listened to a fair bit of Urban over the next few years, and “Stupid Boy” is probably my favourite of his songs, followed by “You’ll Think of Me”. There are two versions, and I always preferred the six minutes plus take over the under four minutes radio release. It gives Urban a chance to really show off his guitar playing chops, which definitely felt anomalous in country music at the time: that his major influences when he started out were Mark Knopfler and Lindsey Buckingham may explain the rockier approach.

The song, co-written and originally sung by a woman, Sarah Buxton, is a pretty harsh indictment of its target. It’s the story of a girl who has a beautiful spirit and the potential to do great things, but finds herself trapped by a boy who is threatened by everything that makes her special. The guy is definitely a dick, and lines like “She never even knew she had a choice / And that’s what happens when the only voice she hears is telling her she can’t” and “I guess to build yourself up so high / You had to take her and break her down” don’t give him a lot of wiggle room to make a contrary case. No knock on its originator, but the switch in perspective gives the song more power – where Buxton is telling a story of liberation, of her escape from the stupid boy, in the male voice it becomes a tale of pain and failure, which, if we’re being honest, is a damned sight more country. He is coming to grips with every mistake he ever made, and that pathos elevates the song.

There is some naturalistic strumming to start, with nothing but guitar for almost a minute, turning mournful on the chorus. There are no drums until the second verse, when the entry of a firm, steady thump heightens the intensity of the song. The guitar run at 2:38 is chilling and an absolute rock star moment. It builds to the finale – “It took a while for her to figure out she could run / But when she did, she was long gone, long gone” – and her freedom at 3:45 is celebratory, and a natural end point to the song.

But Urban keeps going, and the last two and a half minutes become an existential howl against the fates that had broken him. As much as I love the first part of the song – and it’s really a damned near perfect pop single (genre be damned) – it’s the ending that kept gutting me again and again as I played it. Because when you are in the middle of a disaster, you can’t see the end. In the days of “Stupid Boy”, I worried about what would happen to my daughters, about being alone, about all my narcissistic tendencies that had brought me to that point (another ex had often said “George will do what George wants to do”, and this was so not a good thing), about being a fundamentally unhappy person incapable of experiencing joy because I had spent so much of my life avoiding pain. I was so desperate to preserve something that wasn’t working for anyone (except, perhaps, our children, though I knew from my own experience of being around two adults who no longer loved each other that that shit wore down everybody real fast), that I didn’t see it as a trap. She, at least, was able to see that, and acted. I reacted.

Now, I don’t think I’m THAT bad. But in my utter lack of awareness about what I had been doing, and maybe to no small degree out of her need to not be the bad guy for being the one who broke up our family, she repainted me as a villain who had prevented her from becoming all that she was meant to be. She needed me to be the stupid boy, because the alternative was accepting her own part in things going wrong. I won’t fault her for that – at the time, I was doing a fair bit of finger pointing myself.

In the end, none of this mattered. We were a poor match, and I could have been as solicitous and nurturing towards her as she thought she deserved and it wouldn’t have prevented either of us from being deeply and irresistibly dissatisfied with our lives together. By the end, even a stupid boy like me could figure that out. And, fortunately, I was a whole lot less stupid about such things the next time love found me – though maybe not any less oblivious. Right, honey?

Cover Version Showdown #6

The Beach Boys, “God Only Knows” – David Bowie v Claudine Longet

Probably the first Beach Boys song that I have a clear memory of hearing is “Surfer Girl”, which turned up on “Flashback Fever”, a 1975 K-tel compilation of 1960s songs that also included such classics as Jan & Dean’s “Surf City”, Ronettes’ “Be My Baby” and Bee Gees “(The Lights Went Out in) Massachusetts”, which is also possibly the first Gibb brothers track that made a real dent on my attentions. Over the nearly 50 years that have followed, I have heard a lot of Beach Boys music and saw them live a few times, though I never really got on board with the idea that they were anything special. They had a lot of really good singles, but it wasn’t an output that could stand comparison to the Beatles or Stones, and anyone that said otherwise was delusional.

After starting my Pazz and Jop project, I finally began listening to their albums, and my appreciation blossomed. This included “Pet Sounds”, which, while brilliant, also has a bit too much of a “Look at me, Ma, look at me!” vibe. Sure, it’s cool that you can do all this interesting stuff, but should you? It has “Wouldn’t It Be Nice?” and “God Only Knows”, which are two of my three favourite Beach Boys songs (“All Summer Long” is the other), “Caroline, No” and “Sloop John B” are also classics, and there really isn’t any dead air. It’s just very busy.

“God Only Knows” certainly isn’t free of Brian Wilson’s artistic fever dreams, but it’s the lyrics that have always pulled me in anyway. Though the opening line is “I may not always love you”, it’s framed in such a way – immediately followed by “But as long as there are stars above you / You never need to doubt it” – that you know instantly that it’s a lie, that the narrator is so besotted that there is no coming back from this. When he sings “God only knows what I’d be without you” it is both a declaration and an entreaty: please don’t let me find out. It is a song of undying love, and though he will carry on if she leaves, he will be a shell. It’s also a song that is deeply personal for me. I felt lost when I met my wife, not knowing what was coming next, and every time I hear this song – which was about 50 or 60 times today – I think of her and feel like she rescued me from an unknowable darkest timeline. So, of course, it’s not only my favourite Beach Boys song: it’s probably one of my 5 or 10 favourite songs period. Thus diving into cover versions was not without some risk, though I felt confident that my love of the original would preserve me in the face of whatever fuckery people got up to in the name of artistic expression.

Sometimes, finding two distinctive and listenable cover versions can be a struggle, but when it comes to “God Only Knows”, there are riches beyond the dreams of avarice. Not that all are created equally. Too many versions – Captain & Tennille (the Captain should have known better given his history with the Beach Boys), Neil Diamond, Michael Buble, Bryan Adams, Holly Cole, Joss Stone – slow it down and by doing so suck all the life out of the song. Yes, it’s a love song, but it’s celebratory, not the mourn-fest that these artists seem to think it is. Similarly, John Legend and Cynthia Erivo have lovely voices, of course, especially hers, but the orchestration is a complete slog. Other versions miss for different reasons: Andy Williams’ mannered and melodramatic singing ruins some lovely piano; Glen Campbell’s is pure cheese (though the opening appears to have been ripped off in 1978’s Superman movie tie-in “Can You Read My Mind”); Joey Hetherton is too bombastic; and Edith Whiskers is painful to listen to (though at least it’s sort of intentional). The backing track on Olivia Newton John’s version is annoying, and she seems to be trying to be sexy when that was definitely not the brand of pre-“Grease” Olivia. Brandi Carlile’s version is guitar forward, but it sounds like a guy in the corner at a party fiddling around with an instrument he’s still learning how to play. And, finally, Pentatonix are, well, Pentatonix, and you either like this overwrought a capella or you don’t, and I do not – it’s exhausting to listen to, all mannerisms and no subtlety, and no joy. Hard pass.

There are also a lot of whimsical versions, picking up on the baroque side of “Pet Sounds”: She & Him’s version is lighter than air, and just what you would expect from a manic pixie dream girl; Imaginary Future slow it down but still have some bounce, and it feels like the husband and wife that make up the band are singing to each other; and Lilia Tracie gives it a sort of tinkly bossa nova take. There are also some versions that don’t try to reinvent the song but just do a stellar job of showing their respect and love for it: Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr., Avenged Sevenfold (which starts out quietly, and sort of low energy, like they aren’t really sure why they’re even playing this particular song, until the tempo picks up and they rock out the rest of the way), Jars of Clay (as wholesome as you would expect from a Christian band, but unexpectedly one of the more purely enjoyable listens), and Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem, which is faithful, but with The Muppets, which has to be worth something.

Finally, before we get to our contenders, three unique versions that stand out. The Nylons bring a joy to a capella that Pentatonix lacks, and while the song works well in this style, it does go on much longer than it should considering how repetitive it is. Although I love Elvis Costello, classical music is not my thing, so I rarely revisit his work with the Brodsky Quartet, and while their version of this, as Elvis says, old California folk song is lovely, I just cannot get into it. Finally, we have Daniel Johnston, whose singing voice is a taste I have not yet acquired, but it’s still charmingly minimalist, which is a real challenge with a Brian Wilson composition.

The first of these covers that I listened to was from David Bowie, who quickly established himself as the front runner. Bowie never waters things down: to call it epic may not do it justice. It’s like the centrepiece of a gothic musical: the Phantom crying over his Christine, a tortured soul howling into the darkness. He stretches the song out, slows it down, accentuates the pain and fear at its heart. Swelling strings, heartbeat drums, a gloom-inflected vocal that rises to despair. But, like the Phantom, a dark lord obsessing over an unreachable desire, there is certainly an air of creepiness, which Bowie also excels at. There is something of the stalker to its presentation, like a guy watching someone through slightly parted (stage) curtains.

So, who is he watching? Well, how about Andy Williams’ ex, Claudine Longet. Full disclosure: I did not know she was a “singer”, and the quotes are entirely in reference to this recording. What I knew about Longet came down to two men: Williams and Spider Sabich, the boyfriend who she may have murdered but escaped justice thanks to some dreadful police work. And while this is really talking musically instead of singing, it has the kind of breathless sexiness that never fails to charm (well, men, at least). Maybe it’s the accent, like a druggy “Zou Bisou Bisou”. The baroque feel of the original is retained, though subtly: you certainly would not have heard this playing in the court of Louis XV while Rousseau stood by waiting for his monarch’s response. The only problem is that you never really believe what she’s saying: you’d be fine without him, Claudine, but he’d be a mess. But the whole thing somehow works, drifting on a cloud of Gallic grace and charm.

The Winner: David Bowie

This was never a fair battle. While Longet’s version is a lovely distraction, Bowie’s has gravitas, and is a more worthy descendant of the original. If both songs were encountered without foreknowledge, I think it would take you longer to recognize the Bowie track as a cover, and that matters to me. But both are honourable, neither tied to the past nor neglectful of it, original without being destructive.

The end of Brian Wilson’s time as a creative force seems to be close based on recent reports that he is suffering from dementia and being placed in a conservatorship. He has been part of that decision making process, so more music may yet come, but those days are certainly numbered. He has given the world a body of work that is breathtaking in both volume and quality, especially in view of the many interruptions to his career from challenges with his mental health. And his California folk songs will continue to brighten many a day in gloomier climes.

Classic Songs of My Youth Revisited #55

Rupert Holmes – Escape (The Pina Colada Song)

I don’t have a personal story about “Escape (The Pina Colada Song)”. I just want to talk about how completely bonkers this song is.

Not that writing bonkers songs was new to Rupert Holmes: in 1971, he made the Top 20 (and the Top 10 in Canada, because we are more comfortable with weirdness than our American cousins) with a song about cannibalism. After reaching the Top 40 for the first time in 1969 as part of The Street People with the very catchy “Jennifer Tomkins”, Holmes moved on to a band called The Buoys, for which he wrote the aforementioned song, called “Timothy”. The tale of three men (or two men and a duck, according to one sketchy theory) trapped in a mine, we aren’t told exactly how Timothy became an entree. (Peking duck, anyone?) We hear that Joe “would sell his soul / For just a piece of meat” and that there is only enough water for two. When Joe and the narrator are finally rescued, the narrator notes that his “stomach was full as it could be”, and poor Timothy was never found. The song was banned by some radio stations, of course, and it didn’t matter, because the popular will wanted to hear it on their airwaves.

It would be eight years before the public at large paid much attention to another Holmes song, though he kept busy in the interim, writing and producing for others (including Barbra Streisand) and releasing four barely noticed albums under his own name. Then came September 1979 and the release of “Escape”, which became the final #1 song of the decade.

You know the broad strokes of the story: the narrator is bored in his relationship, goes looking for some side action in the personal ads, and discovers his partner (Wife? Girlfriend? He never really defines the nature of their connection.) has the same plan. In fact, she had the idea first: the personal ad that he answers was placed by her. Hilarity ensues. It could be the plot of a particularly weak episode of “Three’s Company”: You just need to work in a character misunderstanding a conversation on the other side of a closed door.

I trust my memory that when the song first came out, people for the most part thought it was adorable. (Later, when it was everywhere, it became annoying, but that’s true of many hit songs eventually.) How sweet: they don’t realize that they’re perfect for each other.

But hold on. Both of them were ready to cheat on the other. (Holmes has said the narrator is supposed to be the bad guy in this story, since at least the woman is trying to do something. Yeah, “something”.) How do you come back from that? “Oh, hi, honey. Fancy meeting you here at the place of my planned infidelity.” And they both immediately admit what they’re up to. I know that neither has any reason to be upset with the other at this point – they’re both cheaters – but people aren’t always rational. Did either consider the possibility of pretending it was coincidental that they both went to O’Malley’s at the same date and time? Of not owning up to what was going on, thus leaving the other wondering if this boring old ball and chain was screwing up their chance at finding true love with an exciting new partner? “How do you know O’Malley’s?” “Oh, I just saw it mentioned in the newspaper and thought it would be worth checking out.” We’re talking 3D chess level mindfuckery.

Anyway, that’s not what happens. Over a gussied up tropical beat (the whole album that it came from, “Partners in Crime”, is classic late 1970s AOR, with elements of light disco, blue-eyed soul and piano bar), they laugh at how little they know each other, and – I guess – start down a path of rediscovery of what drew them together in the first place. (Let’s assume that both can set aside the sour truth that neither can be trusted.) Or – hear me out – nothing changes. Oh, they try. But he finds piña coladas too sweet and they give him monstrous hangovers, so he goes back to champagne. They both catch pneumonia after being caught in the rain, and neither cares much for the scratchy feel of sand against their genitalia when they make love “in the dunes on the cape”. Eventually, they understand that what was wrong with their relationship wasn’t how they spent their time together, it was who they were spending that time with. And they part over one last drink at O’Malley’s, which they very civilly agree is “his place” going forward since he discovered it.

Though this was the bigger hit, my favourite song from “Partners in Crime” was the second single, “Him”, which also made the Top 10. This is another song about infidelity, and I love how the narrator learns he’s being cheated on: a package of cigarettes that aren’t his lover’s brand. It’s a sweetly melancholy song about being part of a triangle and wanting no part of it, even if the cost is losing the one you love.

Holmes hasn’t charted a song as a recording artist since 1982, but he’s never stopped working. He’s released more albums, wrote hits for other folks, created a television show and wrote its music, and wrote a novel, but mostly he’s worked in musical theatre, even winning a pair of Tony Awards in 1986. “Escape” is a bit inescapable – Holmes figures, likely correctly, that it will be the lead line in his obituary no matter what else he might do in life – and it had a nice nostalgia boost in 2014 from the first “Guardians of the Galaxy” movie. My guess is that there are still an awful lot of people who love hearing this song. I recognized how ridiculous it was a long time ago, but when that opening drum kicks in, I know I’m in for four minutes worth of comfort food. Just like Timothy was for his friends.

Classic Songs of My Youth Revisited #54

Steve Perry – Oh Sherrie

Starting in June 1979, when the ridiculously titled “Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin’” (a perfect stripper song musically, though lyrically problematic if a patron tried to test that invitation) began its climb up the charts, to the late spring/early summer of 1987, when “Why Can’t This Night Go On Forever” sputtered to its peak at #60, there were few voices that we heard coming out of our radios more often than that of Journey frontman Steve Perry.

Despite owning two of their albums thanks to Columbia House, I was never much of a Journey fan. They certainly sounded pleasant enough, a sort of mushy guitar-forward AOR. They were making power ballads before those were really a thing: I slow danced with a succession of failed hoped-for romantic partners to hits like “Open Arms” (a childhood friend told me she lost her virginity to this song, so at least it worked out for someone) and “Faithfully” (which, listening to it now for the first time in years, is quite a lovely tune – it gave me chills). And their rockers, like “Any Way You Want It” and “Don’t Stop Believin’” (which remains a damned good song despite becoming a pop culture cliche), were made for being blasted from a car stereo by restless teens on the make on a warm summer night.

I had stopped paying attention to the band before its run came to an end, so while I have a hazy familiarity with their 1986 hit “Be Good to Yourself”, the last of their singles that I clearly remember hearing in real time is late 1983’s “Send Her My Love”. It was at that point that Perry decided he needed to spread his wings and make a solo record. Working primarily with songwriter Randy Goodrum, in April 1984 he released “Street Talk”, which showed enough new tricks that you can get why Perry wanted to play in a different sandbox for a bit. But it was preceded a month earlier by the lead single “Oh Sherrie”, and that had to have caused some doubt: why go solo if you’re just going to make a record that sounds like the band you’re already in?

I have a fixation with what I like to call “good bad songs”. That is, songs that are, well, not bad, because I don’t really believe there is such a thing, but not good, in the sense that if you looked at them on sheet music, you would shrug or worse. “Oh Sherrie” is such a song. There isn’t a single quote-worthy lyric, and that it sounds so much like a Journey record shows that no boundaries were being broken with the music either. Yet, I loved this song from the first time I heard it, and still do almost 40 years later. What’s up with that?

The song opens (and eventually closes) with a synthetic baroque vibe, leading into Perry singing the first few lines a capella. It’s basically about a couple who keep hurting each other, but they have a love that always comes back stronger after those wounds heal. It’s a nice sentiment, the idea that bad times can preserve a love rather than destroy it. But I have listened to this song over and over and over while writing this, and I still really have no clear idea why I love it so. It has a nice backbeat that gets my foot tapping, but nothing else really stands out, and the guitar bits are nothing that anyone (other than Perry in the video) even once considered air guitar worthy. The thing I keep coming back to is the chorus: every time my interest starts to lag, the chorus kicks in, and, almost against my will, I find myself singing along – “Oh Sherrie, our love / holds on, holds on” – making rockstar faces (you know the ones) at this affirmation of commitment. I’ve always been a cheap romantic, and music that pushes those buttons will usually have its way with me. (I just did a test on this point, and, yes, “My Heart Will Go On” still guts me.)

It’s hard to separate the song from its ridiculous music video. The ridiculousness is initially intentional, with the opening two minutes a prick to the bubble of the video excesses of the era, with hip British directors, often from the world of commercials – John Self, the loathsome hedonist at the centre of Martin Amis’ 1984 novel “Money”, is maybe the worst case scenario of the brand – turning simple pop songs into treatises on contemporary society and culture. Perry wanders off to get his bearings amidst the set’s turmoil, and then we get other bits of ridiculousness – air guitar with a broom, an awkward walk down some stairs – mixed with neat bits like the shot of a young actress in Elizabethan garb puffing away on a cigarette. The stuff with Sherrie (a real person who plays herself in the video) is confusing: she’s initially happy to see him, then seems sheepish, then laughing, then sheepish again. (Hmm, maybe she’s the problem in this relationship – give poor Steve some clearer signals, lady.) In the end, the couple united, Perry blows off the video shoot, leading to off-camera recriminations and possibly litigation, while the director goes on to become an even bigger dick who makes every set a horror show until he finally returns to England and takes his rightful place in the House of Lords.

In a way, songs like “Oh Sherrie” are the most fun, because they don’t need context to be appreciated. I can’t remember the last time I encountered it in the wild, but if I heard it in a retail setting or a bar or even from a car driving by, I would be happier for the encounter, and would absolutely sing along for a moment before moving on to the next thing. Just a little blast of endorphins to give you a lift as you go about your day, like all the best pop music does. The “why” is never less important than in such moments.