In an era where traditional rap music was going the way of the dinosaur. I consider C+C Music Factory one of its last gasps.
Founded by producers Robert Clivillés and Robert Cole - the C+C in the Factory - the guys hired several studio musicians, including Zelma Davis, the later-credited Martha Wash (who is the huge female voice in this song) and Freedom Williams, who is clearly a clean-cut and dapper guy..... oh. Wait. That's another song.
Anyway, I dare you to try not to get up and dance when this song is on. It's really difficult. The words are simple and catchy, and the bass is thumpin'. In fact, I'm dancing to it right now.
I got really sick of this song being everywhere when it was new. But there was so much about this song that I didn't understand back then. It was kind of a dirty song. At least, by 1984 standards.
Produced by the legendary Trevor Horn, the song slowly reached #10 on the US charts and topped the UK charts. This video is the 2nd version of the video - a cleaner version that was made especially for the BBC so they wouldn't ban them for indecency. It didn't work.
In 1984, this is what passed for indecent. Pretty tame stuff.
Who says I can't be timely when it comes to my Wicked Guilty Pleasures posts? Twenty-seven years ago today a cool little John Hughes flick called Pretty in Pink was released and the world was introduced to Andie, Blaine and of course the always off-the-wall Duckie. The soundtrack was pretty rad too. It featured one of my favorite Suzanne Vega songs (Left of Center) as well as songs by Echo and the Bunnymen, The Smiths, INXS, New Order, Psychedelic Furs and of course this OMD hit.
Admit it. You forgot about this song, even though you loved it when it was new.
I admit it. I did. Until I heard a cover of it yesterday (that we will be featuring on Totally Covered tomorrow). I really loved this song when it was a hit in 1986, and, although it has a dated 80's sound, the energy of the tune still endures.
Now, the question is, is the song a protest against Reagan-era foreign policy or a plea to a girl to "go all the way"? We can say one thing for sure: zhum zhum zinny zinny.
Where to begin? I am a huge Ashley Monroe fan. HUGE. I loved her first album Satisfied and of course I adore her girl group The Pistol Annies (with Miranda Lambert and Angaleena Presley). "Hippie Annie's" new album Like A Rose comes out next week and I'm fairly certain that it will be one of my favorite records of 2013.
. . . And then there's Train. Blech. Boring. I tried to give them a chance last summer when I saw them with my wife at a music festival in Virginia Beach. I mostly just drank crappy beer and impatiently waited for to them to end their set so we could rush 20+ blocks down the boardwalk to go catch Jamey Johnson.
And now to the present. I recently saw today's video on the CMT Countdown. Needless to say I was conflicted. I wanted to love it, because it was Ashley. I wanted to hate it because it was Train. It took me a few months to admit it, but I freakin' love this song. Enough to give Train another shot? We'll see.
A simple song, or so it seems. Really, it's a densely layered song with horns, guitar, piano, and drums, with ten seconds of striking silence (at the 2:14 mark). Yael Naim had never had a big hit in the US, and she hasn't had one so big since. And, even though it's a dense and complex song, it's sung sweetly, earnestly, and simply by the artist.
The video, in which she moves into an apartment, only to push on the walls and find that her apartment is in the middle of a lake on a raft, is kind of fun and sweet, too.
A lot of people think that this ad made the song a big hit. Actually, the song had already peaked on the US pop charts - it peaked in the Top 10 and fell very very quickly - when this ad came out. The song had a 2nd life from this ad, racing back up the pop charts. MTV's heavy rotation, however, is what made this song a hit, not Apple.
You all remember when you first saw this video. Sure. It was this commercial.
But, before it was an iPod Nano commercial, it was really a video. It wasn't just made for the commercial. And, because of the commercial above, Leslie Feist scored the biggest hit of her career, based mostly on the strength of downloads, and won a Juno award for Single of the Year. It deserved it, too - the sweet, jangly, yet melancholy folk-pop that brings bits of piano and banjo into the mix and builds to an exciting ending is truly compelling.
Plus, you can tell they had a lot of fun making this video.
Little known fact: the song was a cover. Originally written by Sally Seltmann for her New Buffalo project, it was shelved before release. When New Buffalo toured with Feist's band Broken Social Scene, Sally brought the song forward..... and here it is, performed live well before it was recorded for the above video. At this point, it was still called "Sally's Song". The arrangement is a little different - more horns, slightly different lyrics - but it's clearly the same song.
One thing that this Canadian indie singer-songwriter got that most Canadian indie singer-songwriters don't get (not even Carly Rae Jepsen) is a trip to Sesame Street. I mean, she did record a song about counting......
