4 August 2021 - Aerosmith - Sweet Emotion

Classic music videos for songs released in 1975 don't often exist.  

But then again, the male protagonist in this video would have been 1 in 1975.....

The song peaked at #36 on the Billboard Hot 100, making this the first top 40 hit for the band and kicking off a string of hit songs.  I'm not going to talk about that.  I'm going to talk about the drums.  Now, you hardcore musicians know that, in a song in 4/4 time, the drum usually hits on the 2nd and 4th beat.  In this song, it hits on 1 and 3.  It's upside down, and it works, brilliantly.  

The band broke up in the early 1980's but reformed in the mid 1980's and enjoyed a resurgence, leading to a release of this single, alongside this video, in 1991.  

All these years later, the band still tours and still brings high energy.  Here they are in a 2011 performance.  Joe Perry's unusual background vocal is more pronounced here.

3 August 2021 - Moby - Honey

Sure, this is probably the second best known song by Moby, and it was released three years after I saw him live, which means he didn't perform the song. 

(This song, people.  This song.)

This song is pretty heavily reliant on a sample - "Sometimes" by Bessie Jones - to the point that the the writers of that song are listed as co-writers on "Honey".  It is very clearly Bessie Jones singing all the lyrics on this song.  A later remix of the song included vocals from Kelis, but Jones is still central to the song.  It doesn't exist without her.

To his credit, Moby adds a lot to the samples with his forte, and that's electronic music.  

2 August 2021 - Madonna - Beautiful Stranger

On days when we run out of ideas, we post about Madonna.

But she has had such a long career and so many guilty pleasures.   So it's hard to avoid her.  

Maybe we should have made her a Hall of Famer, instead.  Oh well. 

This song is from the soundtrack of the movie Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me and ended up being a pretty big worldwide hit.  Ironically, because we were entering a digital era that the Billboard Charts had not yet accounted for, this song only reached #19 in the US, but that was WITHOUT single sales, which were a large aspect of the chart at the time.  It was a much bigger hit in almost every other country.

On a personal note, I've been a fan of Madonna since her first album, and this was a high water mark for her, in my view.

The song has become something of a staple of hers live, even to this day. Madonna does not alter her voice much in studio (and it's a little on the huskier side so hitting notes isn't usually an issue).

1 August 2021 - The Buggles - Video Killed The Radio Star

40 years ago, at 12:01am on August 1, 1981, a new cable television station went on the air.  That channel was, of course, Music Television, or MTV, for short.  

You remember.

Famously, this was the very first video played on MTV.  Although a 1979 release by Trevor Horn's project, The Buggles, it did have a small resurgence in 1981 because of this.  

Technically, we posted this on the wrong blog.  Here's why I'm giving it a pass.   It was written by Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes, and Bruce Wooley - who were The Buggles.   Wooley left to form Bruce Wooley and the Camera Club and released his version of the song FIRST.  It's not the only song he took, but in the end, the Buggles version persisted.

Here is the Bruce Wooley and the Camera Club version of the song.  The recording features another "one-hit wonder", Thomas Dolby, on keyboard. 

Trevor Horn is still making music.  Here he is with his band The Producers in 2014, performing the hit that made Trevor Horn a worldwide star.   He's showing a bit more expression in this performance......

30 July 2021 - Basia - New Day for You

In the late 1980s, Basia Trzetrzelewska was the hottest thing on adult contemporary radio, thanks largely to the rise of VH1 in that period.  What a lot of people in the US audience DON'T know is that Basia was previous vocalist for a popular UK jazz band called Matt Bianco.  She left that group not acrimoniously, but to pursue the very solo career that would define her internationally. 

This song, a top 5 AC hit in the US, was also a huge rallying song as apartheid was ending in South Africa.  Basia's style has been described as a mix between samba, bossa nova, and jazz, and you can hear that shine through here.  She has a three-octave range that is tested in this vocal exercise.   

The video above, for the worldwide audience, shows how comfortable Basia is with a band.  However, US music marketing dictates that a female vocalist must be the focus of ANY music video.  Also, a wind machine is required by US Code.  Look it up.  It's true.  

So, her record label commissioned a new video for the US market.  

29 July 2021 - ZZ Top - Sharp Dressed Man

ZZ Top bassist Dusty Hill died this week, aged 72.  

We pay tribute with a feature of their breakthrough song/video from 1983, the lead single form their Eliminator album, which brought them to a new audience.  Fun fact:  the guitar solo is a guitar DUO, played on two different guitars with different tunings.  

This song was really my introduction to ZZ Top as well.  And what an introduction!!!

28 July 2021 - Lita Ford - Kiss Me Deadly

You don't usually affiliate hard rock music with keyboards.  However, that's exactly what Lita Ford did, when she moved from hard rocking music with the Runaways to her more glam-rock solo career, and it helped the song gain crossover appeal.  The song itself starts slow and builds quickly to a chaotic, energetic conclusion.  

This song, a breakthrough for her in 1988, came after a management change to Sharon Osbourne Management - yes, that Sharon Osbourne.  It hit #12 on the US charts and kicked off a period of generally strong success.  Lyrically, the song is somewhat sexually charged - she's singing about getting laid - or not - which wasn't a typical subject women tackled in 1988.  

It was Ford's boldness that made her something of a feminist icon - and probably contributed to this song being featured in the movie Captain Marvel.  

Ford did take a long hiatus from the mid-90s until about 2010, but she is back and still performs this song.....