i know what you’re thinking: good G-d. we’ve already sat through eddie murphy and bruce willis, wreke. now this?

lordy lordy.  it’s sonny crockett doing a clips show! or is it? well, it looks like sonny crockett doing some sort of stylized miami vice clips show, but in fact, it is just don johnson singing about a heartbeat.  is someone going into code blue? is he an anti-abortion activist? is he looking through the wreckage of a disaster, looking for survivors?

look at that intensity of feeling! look at that perfect hair! look at that sweet suit. look at that… DEAR LORD, it’s a KEY CHANGE!

seriously, there are so many shades of wrong in this effort that it’s hard to know how to start…or even whether to. it doesn’t matter that johnson has recruited all sorts of heavy hitters into his musical sphere (dicky betts, tom petty, etc.) he even has dweezil zappa and his little gumby green guitar, but it doesn’t matter. in short: this dog can’t sing.

johnson actually made a second album somewhere along the line. fortunately, it isn’t something i have ever heard. i suspect it was DOA anyway.

i’m screaming, and i don’t know WHY!

(no, he’s not a spelling-impaired relative of  those nevilles.)

robbie nevil knows his way around a pop hook — he has spent time writing for the pointer sisters, el debarge, babyface, and such. in 1986, he shared this hook-laden ditty with the world; and lo and behold, it became his one-hit wonder. the song makes me wonder — it meanders pointlessly, tunelessly, and employs people shouting THAT’S LIFE! as a last-ditch effort to get someone to notice that this here song is going on. i’ve listened to death metal and colicky babies that hurt my head less.

you watch the video and you ponder what the high concept was. hmmm… a demolition crew meets the cast of the grapes of wrath? was it also a set for a fruit of the loom wifebeater commercial? if video killed the radio star, then i think idiocy like this killed the video star.

oh, and to bring it all home — apparently, nevil is somehow connected with the hannah montana and high school music efforts. that alone pretty much seals the deal for me. anyone leading my children down a path of musical ruin is probably not going to be my pal.

that’s life.

i wonder whether mavis staples smacked bruce willis upside the head for disrespecting her song.

now, in case you’re wondering whether i’m about to go on one of my cover-song rants, i am. here’s exhibit a: the way the song ought to be sung.

why oh why is bruce willis singing a song that implores african americans to respect themselves? what the hell does he know about it? cos that’s what the song was all about when it was written in the early 1970s. i know many other groups trying to stand up for their rights took the song on, but there’s something oddly disturbing about willis, smiling broadly while singing to some skimpy blondey Take the sheet off your face, boy, it’s a brand new day.

gah.

don’t get me wrong — i lurved willis in moonlighting. i could gush for days about how my college pals and i would watch that show religiously. the chemistry between willis and cybil shepard was strong and almost hypnotic. but, like eddie murphy, apparently, willis had aspirations beyond acting.

too bad for us.

now, i don’t give a good cahoot that willis enlists ruth pointer to bring some sort of gritty reality to the song. and nevermind the fact that she sings rings around him. if he had any respect, he would have just handed the song over to her instead of interloping with his non-expressive voice.

in other news, what is a good cahoot, and how can i give one?

unce…tice…fee times a mady…

it probably didn’t help that i hatedhatedHATED the eponymous film, but the theme song to 1981’s endless love always makes my stomach turn. actually, most of lionel richie’s output in the ’80s does as well. i always have the urge to throw my hands all over BS’s face whenever hello comes on. i usually smoosh his face around and say this is what you look like to me. ah, those magical days of video… anyway, as for the movie, nothing says romance like a boyfriend who burns down his girlfriend’s house (even when john lennon proposes it as a capital idea in song.)

endless love pairs the king of soulful schmaltz with the queen of divadom, miss diana ross. former supreme mary wilson has written aplenty about miss ross and her selflessness so i won’t tread there myself. suffice to say, pair these two together and you’re going to have a hot mess on your hands, musically speaking. endless love always sounded like it was destined for elevators everywhere. while it was the biggest hit of diana ross’s career, it sounds like one of the worst songs she’s ever sung. she ends up sounding like a yappy dog, barking to be freed from a sweater and a handbag.

and lionel richie just makes me sleepy.

for me, it’s an endless song. pity.

happy birthday, BS. you take my breath away. but if you play this song in this house, i’ll take your remote away.

i know, i know. you all think i’m the scrooge of romance. i ding songs that probably are part of the soundtracks of your love lives.i’m so mean. boo effing hoo. of course, nothing could be further from the truth. i am a giant mushy marshmallow when it comes to these sorts of things. take my word for it.

that being said, berlin was not historically a band about romance. check out this video for sex (i’m a.)

(not you, dad. i know you’re out there. pass right over it with your eyes closed, please.)

yeah. so much romance there, you can cut it with a knife.

follow-ups the metro [with my favorite misheard lyrics: you were waiting there, swimming through a pile of cheese. sorry!] and no more words were equally cool songs: stylish, clever, and catchy, blending punk and new wave sensibilities. it was a great combo.

fast forward a couple of years. suddenly, terri nunn’s formerly wild appearance is tamed down, and only she and founding member john crawford are still with the band. clearly, they were looking for a hit, and they looked no further than synth king giorgio moroder. voila! moodymoody synth piece that takes my brain away, it’s so freaking slow and ponderous. the fact that it’s affiliated with tom cruise doesn’t exactly endear it to me, either — i have never been a fan, not since risky business anyway. and, like cruise in the movie, the song takes flight. such a wonderful song for the ages, it was covered by jessica simpson, as it spoke to her of her and her now ex-husband’s relationship.

something got taken out of that relationship, and i don’t think it was just breath.

anyway, for me, this song constitutes some sort of artistic sellout. it has nothing to do with the band berlin was. it has everything to do with the commercial band they wanted to be. i’m sure their royalties keep them warm at night, but this song pretty much cut them out of my life.

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…

plus que ca change, plus que c’est la meme chose.

i just died in your arms tonight… must’ve been something i ate.

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.

one-hit wonder coincidence? i think not.

i grade this one an F.

glen frey could do so much better than this.

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.

this song belonged in the trashcan.

…just like every aging rocker has his hair extensions…

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 forget rock 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.