15 June 2023 - Everclear - I Will Buy You A New Life

You probably know Everclear's biggest hit.

Anyone who answered anything besides "Santa Monica" can sit down.  It legitimately was.

You've probably heard their 2nd biggest hit, and might be surprised to know that that song - this song - was really not that far behind "Santa Monica" in airplay - Santa Monica popped into the top 30 on pop radio, whereas this song bubbled just under - and actually did BETTER on alternative music charts.  

The song was written by the band and co-producted by Neal Avron (this was something of a breakthrough for him) and lead vocalist Art Alexakis, whose last name I had to literally look at three times to make sure I spelled it correctly (I did).  Alexakis was the primary lyricist here, and he wrote this as a romantic song - which it is. Released in 1997, it became a fan favorite in a hurry.  

Because it's a great song.  

The West Hills he is referencing in this song are the Southwest Hills neighborhood of Portland, Oregon, which happens to be in the Tualatin Mountains, also known as the West Hills.  We hear it's a really nice neighborhood.  

Everclear is a band that is still touring and still making music.  This video is from a show in Harrisburg, PA, recorded in March 2023.  Two things of note:

1) Art makes it very clear this song is about love, and it is.  It absolutely is.

2) Art was disagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2016 - that's a disease that statistically hits women more but hits men much harder.  It likely took a lot of energy to perform, and he did so without compromise, which I greatly respect.  

More impressively, they performed the song twice that day.  Here's an acoustic performance of the same song during a meet and greet on the SAME DAY.   I've always loved acoustic versions of this song, because I think its strength is in the raw and loving emotion of its lyrics, and they shine more here.  

14 June 2023 - Andy Gibb - I Just Want To Be Your Everything

This post has been sitting in draft for over three years.  It was by far our oldest draft.

The song, however, is too good to stay in draft forever. 

Andy Gibb, the younger brother of the Bee Gees, passed away in 1988 at the age of 30.   He was 19 when this was released and 18 when he recorded it.  Written and co-produced by his brother Barry, the song features Joe Walsh of the Eagles on guitar and a clear Barry background vocal.  The song was Grammy-nominated for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male (which it lost to a James Taylor song).

Andy Gibb himself recieved a Best New Artist nomination in 1978 on the strength of this song - another award he lost, this to Debby Boone (which we get. "You Light Up My Life" was the biggest theft of a hit song of all time and NO, Kasey Cisyk was NOT nominated, and that's not really Boone's fault, which we already said here.). The song spent 16 weeks in the Billboard Hot 100 - a record at the time - and four non-contiguous weeks on top of the charts.  He was also a frequent subject of the covers and centerfolds of the teen magazines of the time, like Tiger Beat.  He was the Johnathan Taylor Thomas or whoever the kids like nowadays of his time.  

Unfortunately, with his fame came the temptations of drug use - which he defeated, but not before they damaged his heart.  He passed away of natural causes in 1988, while attempting a comeback, and his huge voice, which impressed most who heard it, is missed.   

13 June 2023 - Kris Kross - Warm It Up

It's been said it is nearly impossible to follow up a gigantic hit debut single with anything nearly as successful.

Kris Kross had a monstrous debut single with "Jump" and faced the nearly impossible.  They followed it up with a top 20 worldwide hit that got a ton of airplay and sold more than a half million copies. They did it not simply by wearing their pants backwards, but by dropping dope rhymes written by Jermaine Dupri, who also produced their track.  

The Daddy Mac and the late Mac Daddy had skills.  They were better at dropping rhymes than people twice their ages (they were 12 when they recorded this).  They brought pride to Atlanta, and their music, even their second single, endures to this day.

They were 12 when they recorded this, but they didn't stay 12, and their voices changed, and, as can be seen by this video, they didn't change at the same times.  One Chris had his deeper voice already here - but the other didn't really.  

That did not impact their mad skillz.

12 June 2023 - Jax - Victoria’s Secret

On June 12, 1977, Victoria's Secret was founded by Roy Raymond and his wife, Gaye, in Delaware.  The first store was opened in Palo Alto, California.  The Victoria in the name is a reference to Queen Victoria (because her undergarments would be classy, right?).

In 1982, the Raymonds sold Victoria's Secret to Leslie Wexner, founder of both Bath & Body Works and clothing company The Limited.  

Leslie Wexner is a dude.  

From Ohio.  

Who, by the way, was a friend and associate of Jeffrey Epstein (who didn't kill himself) and the subject of an not-so-complimentary documentary on Hulu, Victoria’s Secret: Angels and Demons.

Victoria's Secret is one of the few retail chains that has been the subject of scolarly research, but they probably wish they weren't.  For example, in a 2008 article sponsored by the University of Waterloo and authored by Erin J. Strahan, Adèle Lafrance, Anne E. Wilson, Nicole Ethier, Steven J. Spencer, and Mark P. Zanna, they state, ""Women's body dissatisfaction is influenced by socio-cultural norms for ideal appearance that are pervasive in society and particularly directed at women." Their study was quite interesting.  Participants were randomly assigned to the experimental or control condition. In the control condition, participants viewed four neutral commercials containing no people. In the experimental condition, participants viewed the same four neutral advertisements intermixed with two additional commercials conveying sociocultural norms. One commercial featured supermodels wearing Victoria’s Secret bras, and the other featured a very thin, attractive woman promoting Dove soap.  Their clear conclusion, based on their study, was that "[e]xposure to societal messages that reflect the socio-cultural norm for ideal appearance has a negative effect on women."

The article was titled "Victoria's Dirty Secret: How Sociocultural Norms Influence Adolescent Girls and Women" and yes.  I read it.  You can, too.  

So, fast forward to 2022.  3rd Place finisher on American Idol Jaclyn Miskanic, known professionally as Jax, co-wrote a song that was rather critical of body image projection by companies like Victoria's Secret. She made a lot of solid points about Victoria's Secret - Roy Raymond wasn't from Ohio, but a lot of their modern marketing sure was made up by a dude from Ohio - and it was Les Wexner who was Jax's clear target.  

Her larger target, of course, was the culture, not a brand.  It resonated, becoming a top 40 US hit in the summer of 2022, and also charting worldwide.  That is no surprise - the song is catchy and witty.  

Flash mobs featuring the song popped up in front of Victoria's Secret stores everywhere.  This one, led by Jax herself, may be my favorite. 

Of course, Victoria's Secret has tried to do damage control caused by the song, praising Jax for raising these issues, and has distanced themselves as far from Les Wexner as possible, but the damage is done.  And by damage, I mean their sales are up since this song came out.  That's true.  They dipped slighty year over year in the 4th quarter of 2022, but, really, this song was a net positive for them. 

9 June 2023 - Lionel Richie & Diana Ross (& Shania Twain) - Endless Love

What is the greatest song duet of all time?

Well, that something that I would call "subjective" but Billboard Magazine has other ideas.   In 2011, they named today's song, "Endless Love", a song written for a movie of the same name starring Brooke Shields, as the greatest duet ever recorded.  

They've got a pretty solid case.  Penned by Lionel Richie, it ended up being the biggest hit of his career.  It was also the biggest hit of Diana Ross's career, and it wasn't close in either case.   In a time before SoundScan, this song spent nine weeks on top of the Billboard Hot 100, and surpassed "Wake Up, Little Susie" by the Everly Brothers as the biggest hit by a duet in the rock era i.e. post-1955, spending six MONTHS on the charts. 

It was even a bigger hit than the movie, which was a modest but not blockbuster hit. The song was a blockbuster.   It was nominated for the 1981 Oscar, losing to "Arthur's Theme" - but it was nominated from a movie that was nominated for six Golden Raspberries (none for the music), which is kind of like the opposite of the Oscars.  Richie was also part of a nomination for the 1982 Grammy for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media - losing to the team from Raiders of the Lost Ark, which, admittedly, deserved it even though it didn't have a love theme.  

The song is a monster, a ballad of epic proportions, a love song sung from both sides.  At the time, it was the most successful soundtrack single ever (The Bodyguard put that to rest).  There aren't enough superlatives for this song, which is a powerful duet showcasing two huge voices.

It is, of course, Lionel's song, and he has rerecorded it a couple of times.  Most notably, he recorded it in 2011 with country music superstar and noteworthy Canadian Shania Twain - and ended up turning it into an adult contemporary hit.   

8 June 2023 - The Naked And Famous - Young Blood

I'm not going to be able to do this blog forever.  Let's all be honest.  I'm nowhere near done, but sometime, I have to slow down.

I wanted to make sure I didn't forget this song before I did that.  This song was released soon before this blog started, and got a free US distribution in 2011 on iTunes, soon after we started.  I am embarrased to say I didn't know the song or artist name.

One day, a few weeks ago, I got this song stuck in my head.  So it became my goal - my mission - to figure out what this song was called and post about it.   Clearly, I was successful.

"Young Blood' was a big hit for The Naked and Famous, a 2-piece electronic band from New Zealand that relocated to Los Angeles after the success of this song and its follow-up single.   Their success hasn't been as stratospheric as this song, but it hasn't been non-existent, either.  

7 June 2023 - The Black Keys - Everlasting Light

This is the story of an RIAA Gold-certified song with a long shelf life.

In 2010, Ohio duo The Black Keys released an album called Brothers.  It had the best cover artwork.

I wonder who made this album or what it's called.

That album also won a Grammy.  So did this album packaging.  That's a true story.  

They released three singles off that album.  The first was a minor hit, making it to the Billboard Hot 100 and achieving Gold status - a notation celebrating 500,000 sales of the single by the Recording Industry Association of America (the aforementioned RIAA) in late 2011.   

That song was, of course, called "Tighten Up" - itself a Grammy-winning song - and was not this song. In fact, none of the three singles was this song.  

  

This song was the leading track on the Brothers album but not released to radio as a single.  And, in 2010 and 2011, since singles (mostly digital at this point) got radio airplay, and that was what determined song longevity, as well as chart performance, that was that.   

Two years later, that was different.  Billboard put less weight on single sales - no longer making a physical single a requirement - and more on streaming, with YouTube streams and others including the song being included in the charts. This means that songs could hang around longer, and different songs could get attention.

In late 2014, Electronic Arts released their yearly version of their NBA video game.  This game was NBA2K15 and it was a hit.  

I figured at this point, you'd want to see the Dunk of the Year from that game.

Yes, this song featured prominently on that soundtrack, and videos from that game got shared to YouTube, which means this song got listens, which translated to listens on services like Spotify and iTunes, which led to sales of the single.

In 2019, "Everlasting Light" was finally certified gold (a year after "Tighten Up" was certified platinum) and remains a fan favorite song.  

Let's talk about this song.   It's a bluesy three-chord masterpiece, with a lot of fuzzy guitar.  But what is the song about?  Some people think it's a love song, and I can see that intepretation.   I see it differently.  I point you to Isaiah 60:19

The sun will no more be your light by day,

    nor will the brightness of the moon shine on you,

for the Lord will be your everlasting light,

    and your God will be your glory.

The song is about God.  In fact, many of the songs on Brothers were clearly about the band's faith.  

However you see the song and its meaning, it's an absolute masterpiece.