#637
Jive Bunny & The Mastermixers, 'Let's Party'
1989
Can't remember if we've explained the Jive Bunny 'thing' but he was definitely a rabbit with a 'thing' and that 'thing' was that he was not actually a rabbit but two men, a father and son team no less, who made party fodder medleys out of existing records that for a period in 1989 were all the rage. Whatever your take on the art of sampling and its position upon a tentative venn diagram of art and crime, it's quite apparent that the Mastermixers were none-too-subtle exponents of this technique. This is the Xmas edition of their 'thing': sleigh bells coat everything, and every segue features stock oompah music sped up to a tempo ideal for sherry-fuelled merriment with your aunt.
(2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77JEC0CnSh4
#587
Mel & Kim, 'Respectable'
1987
Whilst not liking the majority of the Stock Aitken and Cough Spit Fuck Off Pete Waterman and their corpus of arid brutalist dayglo pop interrogation techniques, sometimes, akin to Clarice Starling in the denouement of Silence of the Lambs, they will happen blindly upon the trigger of their gun and aim it square at the psychopathic skin-farmer chasing them through the dark.
Arguably it's the personalities of Mel and Kim that sold this one as much as the remorseless and familiar musical underpinning; they were bright, relatable, unapologetic and fun in a pretty understated way. 'We're never gonna be respectable', they sing in untruth. Credit to the producers for that awesome mangling of the vocal for the main hook, they 'tay-tay-tay-t-t-t-t-tay-tay' though
(6)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykDsmAqExH8
#596
Michael Jackson, 'I Just Can't Stop Loving You'
1988
It's high time that I faced up to the 'man in the mirror' (lol guys) admitted to myself that Michael Jackson is not an artist that I have much time for. Certainly [redacted] plays its part but what am I supposed to do with a man who has - at best - four pretty cool songs that I hear more often that I hear artists that I'm really into simply because of their cultural saturation? The man was a purveyor of schmaltz outside of these songs, smooth risible schmaltz, which this song epitomises. As a sucker for sincerity in music (stupidly, you might counter) it gives me pause to hear the title lyric sung; given what we know of the man, whom, or what could he simply not prevent himself from loving? It's a chilling thought.
(3)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tai2j3dVSUQ
#237
Englebert Humperdinck, 'The Last Waltz'
1967
Leicester's finest crooner with half-truth song title (it is in 3/4). My uncle is a bit of a crooner, he loves songs like this: smooth orchestration and a restrained vocal that progressively becomes a bellow to give the impression of climbing the musical scale.
(3)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0fQHSqoD9Q
#67
Elvis Presley, 'Jailhouse Rock'
1958
If I had been alive in the 1950s I would have thanked the lord above for Elvis Presley. Of course in retrospect his songs lack the musical sophistication of Slade or the sexual suggestivity of a Rick Astley but he was a vindaloo in the age of meat and potatoes three times a day, a Maserati in an Asda carpark. This playful rockabilly number recasts a prison as the centrepiece for a sudden outbreak of musicality, inaccurately I'll wager, but nonetheless cute and antic.
(7)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gj0Rz-uP4Mk
#358
Sweet Sensation, 'Sweet Sad Dreamer'
1974
A new one on me and yet crushingly familiar; a British approximation of the Philly soul sound of the time. Problematically, the soul sound of the time was beginning to sound corny and anathema to the things that made soul & RnB so vital, making the full transition from the edgy youth clubs to the supermarket intercom, otherwise known as 'The Feargal Sharkey'.
(3)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=788BOtx_-Nw
#1019
Sugababes, 'Push The Button'
2005
It says in my manual that we're sort of supposed to like Sugababes but the rationale section is curiously absent so I'll have to guess my way through this review. It's pretty clear to me after reading back a few of my reviews that I have hang-ups about production, structure and vocals: this song just about meets likeability in all three aspects; it sounds like a demo (I like things that sound like anyone could have done it), it's tightly packaged and wound (no section sticks around long enough to become boring) and the vocal run in the bridge ('after waiting patiently for him to come and get it' is really well phrased and done in a way that pays attention to the momentum of the song, rather than the technical ability of the singer) is exemplary. However, it's by no means a total banger: the last time it was heard was at its original time of landing, and if 7 years pass until the next one I won't mind.
(7)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJDGcxAf9D8
#706
Tony Di Bart, 'The Real Thing'
1994
My mum, as a fairly constant smoker, used to get these free CDs as a reward for maintaining allegiance with one brand of self-murder, though to facilitate this exchange she had to cut out the front of the package and send them back to the manufacturer. What did the cig companies used to do with all those cig packet fronts? Stick them on the wall?
Anyway, this song was memorably on one of those CDs, nestled right next to 'Love City Groove' by Love City Groove from the album Love City Groove. The song has Di Bart warbling about his desire to mate with only one person only and if that person is unavailable or unwilling then he shall depart from the sphere of physical encounters forthwith. Entirely appropriately, he chooses to voice this kind of tense dramatical situationism over a light Korg M-1 house piano and a very mild break.
(4)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MI4apNznQ4U
#1013
2Pac ft. Elton John, 'Ghetto Gospel'
2005
Though I'd never be accused of being the world's biggest fan of Mr. Shakur, I certainly have a great deal of respect for i. his predicament as a sensitive man cast in the world of machismo, a role in which he possibly acquitted himself only too well ii. his acting iii. his prolific output that not even his untimely death could halt iv. the following lyric:
And since we all came from a woman
Got our name from a woman and our game from a woman
I wonder why we take from our women
Why we rape our women, do we hate our women?
I think it's time to kill for our women
Time to heal our women, be real to our women
And if we don't we'll have a race of babies
That will hate the ladies, that make the babies
And since a man can't make one
He has no right to tell a woman when and where to create one
So will the real men get up
I know you're fed up ladies, but keep your head up
which pretty much cuts through all the bullshit (counter: lyrics for 'Hell 4 A Hustler') and why when I read Pitchfork I'm incredibly disappointed when they're all like "check this Tyler guy out" and I do and hear "Punch your bitch in her mouth just for talkin' shit / You lurkin' bitch? Well, I see that shit / Once again I gotta punch a bitch in her shit / I'm icy bitch, don't look at my wrist / Because if you do, I might blind you bitch" - and okay this could be a character or a portrait of a scene - but the lack of self-reflexivity in the lyrics around it make me think 'oh okay this is just idiotic' and furthermore those words don't even scan.
So this song by 2Pac featuring a sample of Elton John from 1971 when his voice was a little more reedy and thin, but his melodic ability was at its height, is a nice reminder that Big Rap doesn't need to be Personally Troubling Rap even though it strays into Formulaic Rap, as Tupac pleads for the end of street violence and the futility of intra-community conflict.
(5)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4nLzG7fsRM
#823
Backstreet Boys, 'I Want It That Way'
1999
'Poptimism' is this douchey recent quasi-doctrine in which people (casual observation: those whose major musical concerns actually lie in left-field) can hold out hope and seek joy in the giddy thrills of the pop sphere generally pitched in opposition with rock that declares itself to be authentic (which is stupid and someone needs to have a word with rock music but only in the way that a teenager needs perspective to become adult). There's nothing wrong with that in a sense except for the insincerity of the applied intelliectualism: eclecticism isn't for everyone and nor should it be. There are no prizes for liking everything or only one thing. It's okay to not move on as much as it is to embrace the zeitgeist. Both 'rock' and 'pop' are real and fake and stupid and smart. Everything is permissible and it doesn't need a name.
That paragraph has sidetracked me somewhat. This is the most popular and famous song of the Backstreet Boys canon, a lilting pop-meets-RnBallad, all gently swung drum machines and dreamy harmonies and nonsense lyrics. It touches upon these unspoken universals of western pop music even when set aside from the sexual aspect of how boybands sell records: everything is invisible, you never sense the hands of construction within, the song as a canvas to project desire upon, nothing too specific to be sung. It's feintly charming and completely functional and shall outlast the group as it is built upon the very DNA of pop music.
(6)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fndeDfaWCg
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