The Music of My Life – 1991

Welcome back to The Music of My Life, where I feature ten songs from each year of my life. In most cases, the ten songs I choose will be ones I like personally (unless I explain otherwise). The songs will be selected from Billboard’s Year-end Hot 100 Chart, Acclaimed Music, and will all be released in the featured year.

1991 saw big changes for me. In April, a former coworker called to ask if I wanted a full time radio job at his station. It was a small market on the west side of the state (In Ludington). My girlfriend at the time and I had just had a big argument and I figured “Why not?!”

I was all by myself, in a place where I really only knew one person, at a job that decided to pay less than what I was told when I moved. It was lonely and I struggled a lot. The day I turned 21, I went to the store to buy beer and they never even carded me!

That summer would be one of my favorite summers. Michigan’s West side is just beautiful. I had never seen sunsets like those before! They were breathtaking.

Musically, there were some powerful tunes released in 1991. Some of them wouldn’t play into the events of my life for a few years, but when they did …

The first pick from ’91 is a song that I have found people either love or hate. I’m not sure why. Personally, I love the guitar sound and the harmonies in it, and I love the lyrics.

More Than Words is a song that was written by Gary Cherone and Nuno Bettencourt of Extreme. Nuno says, “The word ‘love’ itself gets really diluted, so we just wanted to say, ‘It’s not really about saying it,’ because everybody gets really worked up when somebody says that to each other. They say, ‘I love you,’ and everybody goes, ‘Oh my God! It must be serious. It must be heavy.’ It’s like, ‘Eh… it’s easy to say that.’ It’s really about showing it constantly and continuously in a relationship. We knew that was the message.”

The song was a huge hit for them. People who rushed out to buy their albums were quite surprised when they heard that the band primarily played Rock music. The band has called the song “both a blessing and a curse.”

More Than Words

R.E.M. had released the very thought provoking Losing My Religion from their Out of Time album as their first single. Their follow up was a song that could not be more different! That song was Shiny Happy People.

Michael Stipe calls this “A really fruity, kind of bubblegum song.” In an interview with The Quietus, he said that he was a bit embarrassed when it became a big hit, but it’s an important song because it shows a different side of him. Said Stipe:

“Many people’s idea of R.E.M, and me in particular, is very serious, with me being a very serious kind of poet. But I’m also actually quite funny – hey, my bandmates think so, my family thinks so, my boyfriend thinks so, so I must be – but that doesn’t always come through in the music! People have this idea of who I am probably because when I talk on camera, I’m working so hard to articulate my thoughts that I come across as very intense.”

Kate Pierson from the B-52s sang backup. She was in demand for her distinctive vocals after the B-52s achieved mainstream success with Love Shack.

In 1999, R.E.M. performed this on Sesame Street as “Furry Happy Monsters.” Kate Pierson’s part was performed by a Muppet that looked like her, voiced by Stephanie D’Abruzzo, a Muppeteer who was also a huge fan of the band.

Guitarist Peter Buck has two daughters who were big fans of the show. “You just looked around,” he recalled to Mojo in 2016, “going, Man this is a weird way to make a living.”

I had heard the song on the radio but it wasn’t until I was sitting at home watching Sesame Street with my oldest that I gained an appreciation for it.

Shiny Happy People

My next one had been on my iPod for years before the lyrics really hit me. My ex and I were at a point where all we did was argue. It was a very unhappy situation.

It was after an argument that I was in the car and heard Mariah Carey’s “I Don’t Wanna Cry.” Those lyrics were something I could have wrote;

Once again we sit in silence
After all is said and done
Only emptiness inside us
Baby look what we’ve become
We can make a million promises
But we still won’t change
It isn’t right to stay together
When we only bring each other pain

It stung, but it was true. The end was upon us.

This was Mariah’s fourth consecutive #1 hit on the Hot 100, making her the first solo artist and female artist in Billboard history to have their first four singles top the chart.

I love her vocal and the guitar work in this one

I Don’t Want to Cry

Long before I stood next to a very drunk Hank Williams Jr at a urinal in Nashville, he had put out an album in ’91 entitled Pure Hank.

One of the singles that was released was If It Will It Will. It’s very easy for us to get caught up in worry, but worry isn’t good for us. Hank’s simple advice is something we should all remember,

“If it will, it will. If it won’t, it won’t.”

The weirdest thing about this song is the video. Right at the beginning, Little Richard shows up. To me, he’s out of place and isn’t utilized very well. Even when he does sing along, you can barely hear him. The song, however, is a favorite. It starts off with a bluesy vocal/introduction and then kicks.

If It Will, It Will

As I compile these lists for each year, I always seem to stumble on one that could be used for another feature. The next song would certainly work for my Movie Music Monday feature. It was a big hit from the Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves soundtrack.

(Everything I Do) I Do It For You was written to order for the movie. It was initially written by American film composer Michael Kamen. The middle eight, break, outro and arrangement added by Bryan Adams and producer Mutt Lange. Adams used a line in the movie, “I do it for you…” as the basis for the song, and they had it written in about an hour.

The song didn’t meet with Hollywood approval. The film company wanted the song to have an instrumentation that was in line with the film’s era. Can you imagine the song featuring lutes, mandolins, and the like? The film company eventually relented, but still buried the song midway through the credits. They were obviously unaware of the huge hit they had on their hands.

The reason it made my list is because of an ex-girlfriend. It is not because it was “our song” or anything like that. She asked me if I knew the song. Naturally, I did. It was a big bridal dance song. She told me to listen to it again, but to listen to it as if God was speaking the words (making changes to tense and such).

You can’t tell me it’s (your) not worth dying for
You know it’s true
Everything I do (did)
I do (did) it for you

I had never thought of it that way before. I always remember that conversation when I hear the song.

(Everything I Do) I Do It For You

I love Bonnie Raitt. I love listening to her sing and watching her play. She is blues. She is country. She is pop. She is folk. She is something!

She was no stranger to the music scene. Her first album came out in 1971! She also did some session work. She’s collaborated with artists like John Prine, Jackson Brown, The Pointer Sisters, Warren Zevon and Leon Russell. She finally had some success in 1989 with her award winning album Nick of Time.

The first time I heard Something To Talk About on the radio, it stuck out to me. It was so different. As a blues fan, I could hear that blues influence and I feel in love with the song. The song would go on to be her biggest chart hit in the United States, rising to #5.

She was never a singles act, but after her four Grammy wins for the album Nick Of Time, her songs started getting radio play. With radio play, they began showing up on the chart. “Something to Talk About” was the lead single to her next album, Luck of the Draw. Because of her prior success, the song was highly anticipated and radio jumped on it. The song won a Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. Bonnie beat out Oleta Adams, Mariah Carey, Amy Grant and Whitney Houston.

Sadly, it is also a karaoke favorite that is destroyed by many a “wanna be” singer in pubs everywhere! I’ll take the original, thank you.

Something To Talk About

The next song is on the list not because of the content, but the title. “Things That Make You Go Hmmm” became a sort of catch phrase. Arsenio Hall used it on his show all the time. I still hear people using it today!

C+C Music Factory was a dance floor staple when I was DJing. “Gonna Make You Sweat” is still one that I hear when I go to weddings. “Things That Make You Go Hmmm” was a huge dance song when it came out. It had a cool dance beat and some catchy lyrics.

Songfacts says this:

In the early ’90s, before gangsta rap took hold, rap songs were often lighthearted and clever, telling self-deprecating stories over dance grooves. Examples of this would be “Bust a Move” and “Funky Cold Medina.”

I think that is why that early 90s rap is still popular today. They really were very clever. They were also light on profanity. It isn’t odd to see “MF” and other profane words right in the titles as time goes on. That always made me laugh because how can anyone like a song where 75% of the lyrics are bleeped out? I guess that’s one of those … Things That Make You Go Hmmm….

Things That Make You Go Hmmm

The next song was one that was never released as a single. I became familiar with it after my grandfather passed away in 1994. I was extremely close to my grandpa and was heart broken when he passed. I received Reba McEntire’s For My Broken Heart album from my dear friend Allyson.

We both have birthdays in May and when life wasn’t so complicated, we’d meet for coffee or lunch to celebrate. She gave me this CD as a gift. She mentioned that she knew I was still grieving the death of my grandpa. She told me she thought of me when she heard the song, If I Had Only Known.

Quick background on the album. Reba recorded this album after losing many members of her touring band in an airplane crash. In her liner notes she says the album is “a form of healing for all our broken hearts.”

When I listened to this song for the first time, I thought about my grandpa (as Allyson had suggested). It moved me to tears. A decade later, I would hear it and think of my mom, too.

The lesson of the song? If we were aware that we were experiencing the “last” of something, we’d live life a bit differently.

If I Had Only Known

I always love to hear stories about how a song almost didn’t happen. That was the case for I Can’t Dance by Genesis. It came from a mix of a Jam session and writing session.

The lyrics are made up of bits that Phil Collins improvised in the studio. When they started working on it, they decided to just write spontaneously to keep from over-thinking it. Mike Rutherford first created the main riff of the song he called “Heavy A Flat.” Which led Phil to suddenly improvise the basic concept for “I Can’t Dance”. The riff was actually inspired by a Levi Strauss & Co. television commercial.

Originally, the band did not think of it as anything more than a joke recording that would be discarded quickly. They felt this way because the song was too simple, too bluesy, and unlike Genesis’ style. Tony Banks said, “It was one of those bits you thought was going to go nowhere. It sounded fun but wasn’t really special.”

When Banks decided to add keyboard sound effects to complement Rutherford’s playing, “I Can’t Dance” took on an entirely different feeling. The band came to appreciate the sly humor inherent in the song and chose to not only record it properly, but to put it on the album as a single.

The video created a lasting image thanks to the “silly walk” the three band members did. This walk was something Phil Collins did from time to time. He got the idea for it when he attended drama school and noticed that the worst dancers would always lead with the hand and foot on the same side. The dance has become sort of iconic.

I think that I relate to this song in that I can’t really dance. I sway when slow dancing. Fast dancing? HA! Forget it. I can’t. When I try, I look like Elaine from Seinfeld.

I Can’t Dance

When I was DJing at the local VFW, line dancing was a pretty big thing. There were all kinds of country line dances. At one point I had to make a list so I knew what dances people were doing to certain songs.

“Can you play Moo Moo Land?”

That was what someone came up and asked me one day. Moo Moo Land? What in the world was that!? Naturally, my dad knew it because there was a dance they did to it. It was called “Justified and Ancient” by the KLF and featured Tammy Wynette! What a weird pairing!

But it gets weirder! According to Songfacts:

The title “Justified & Ancient” refers to the KLF’s pseudonym and earlier incarnation, “The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu” (The JAMs). The JAMs took their name from Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson’s sci-fi tinged, conspiracy theory-laden Illuminatus! Book series in which The Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu are a fictional subversive cult who have been around since pre-history. The song lyrics describe the Justified Ancients making their way to Mu Mu Land in an ice cream van.

Huh?!

Even Tammy was unsure about it. She originally thought the song was called “Justified and ANXIOUS.” She said, “As it was, I didn’t understand what some of the words meant. I know about ice cream vans, but I’d never heard of a 99 before,” she added. “Bill explained it to me and now it makes perfectly good sense. I’m still not sure about Justified and Ancient though.” (A 99 is an ice cream with a flake in it).

Really, it is a great dance record. It’s neat to hear Tammy Wynette on it and it really revitalized her career.

Justified and Ancient

Last week I threw in that crazy Bingo Boys song at the end of my list. This week, I have to throw in another totally ridiculous song at you. Again, it is one that my best friend Jeff and I laughed about – a lot.

The group 2nu (pronounced “two – new”) was a pop group out of Seattle, Washington. When they first hit the scene, they has yet to come up with a name. A radio DJ said that the band was still too new to have a name, and they decided that worked. They have only released three albums, the first in 1991. What makes them unique (if that is the right word) is that their songs consist of sound effects, rhythmic beats, and a spoken word lyric. Their first single was “This is Ponderous.”

The song is more bizarre than ponderous. My buddy and I used to laugh at the “language the narrator doesn’t understand.”

Feel free to file this in the “What the heck was that?” folder…

This Is Ponderous

And with that silliness, we wrap up 1991. I mentioned that I can’t dance this week. Next week, as we dive into 1992, it contains the only fast song that I will dance to. It is an interesting list. It includes three cover songs, one parody song, three movie songs, a song about a royal feud, a song for the hard workers, and a song for the poor. I think you’ll enjoy it.

Did I forget one one your favorites from 1991? Drop it in the comments. I’d love to see if it was one that was on my radar.

I truly hope you are enjoying this series. Thanks for reading!

The Music of My Life – 1989

Before we get into the music, I have to take a moment to mark a blogging milestone. This blog will be the 1400th blog I have written since the Nostalgic Italian site went live.

1400 posts and here you are still reading. For that, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I am glad that you are here. Now, let’s celebrate by going back to 1989…. when I turned 19.

As I sorted through the singles from 1989, I noticed that there were a lot of duets recorded that year. After All from Peter Cetera and Cher, Don’t Know Much and All My Life from Linda Ronstadt and Aaron Neville, were just a few of them. No duets made my list, however, as I just didn’t feel any of them connected with me enough to bump the ten songs I picked.

I grew up listening to Roy Orbison. He was a favorite for a long time. I used to ask my dad to play his songs on the stereo all the time as a kid. In 1988, Roy saw his career take on new life. He recorded with George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty and Bob Dylan as part of the group The Traveling Wilburys (More on them in a moment) and had recorded a brand new album (Mystery Girl) in November of 1988.

On December 6, 1988, I was at the radio station when an “Urgent” Bulletin came across the AP Newswire stating that Roy had died after having a heart attack. I had never met Roy, but his music was such a big part of my life that seeing the story upset me quite a bit.

You Got It was the first single released from the Mystery Girl album in January of 1989. Orbison wrote the song with his Wilbury friends, Jeff Lynne and Tom Petty. Lynne produced the track and also played guitar, keyboards and bass; Petty played acoustic guitar and sang backup. It would reach #1 on the Adult Contemporary chart and #9 on the Top 40 chart.

Orbison performed this song just once: at the Diamond Awards Festival in Antwerp, Belgium on November 19, 1988. This performance was used as the song’s music video.

You Got It

Every interview I have seen with the guys from the Traveling Wilburys always has them saying how wowed they were by having Roy in their group. When Jeff Lynne was asked about the recording sessions, he said, “Everybody just sat there going, ‘Wow, it’s Roy Orbison!’ … Even though he’s become your pal and you’re hanging out and having a laugh and going to dinner, as soon as he gets behind that [microphone] and he’s doing his business, suddenly it’s shudder time.”

Roy was in the group’s first video (for Handle With Care), and was set to travel to London a couple days after he passed away. One of those videos was for The End of the Line. One of the reasons that I love this video is that the group gives a heartfelt tribute to their friend. When Roy’s vocal happens, we see Roy’s guitar in a rocking chair next to a framed photo of Roy.

The End of the Line

I have never seen the movie Road House. My mom liked it a lot, because she liked Patrick Swayze. Jeff Healey and his band were shooting scenes for the movie (and Jeff had many scenes with Swayze) and recording his See The Light album simultaneously. One of the cuts from this album was Angel Eyes.

I had never heard of Healey before this song. I had no idea that he was blind and marveled at the way he played his guitar (on his lap, like a piano). I was really blown away by his vocals and his guitar playing. He was discovered by two blues legends – Stevie Ray Vaughn and Albert Collins.

He toured and sat in with some fantastic people over the years including Buddy Guy, BB King, Eric Clapton, ZZ Top, The Allman Brothers and Bonnie Raitt (just to mention a few.) While he is mainly known for his bluesy style, by the year 2000 he actually was releasing many jazz albums.

He loved music and he was an avid record collector. He amassed a collection of well over 30,000 old 78 rpm records. Starting in 1990 he hosted a radio program of very early jazz on CIUT at the University of Toronto with Colin Bray. Later he went national on CBC Radio’s program entitled My Kind of Jazz, in which he played records from his vast vintage jazz collection.

Too many people write him off as a “One hit wonder” act. His music is fantastic and this song is so soulful … he was a talent taken too soon.

Angel Eyes

“Hey, man! Have you heard that new song by Marvin Young?” I can’t even imagine what type of music someone called Marvin Young would be singing! However, Young MC just screams rap music, right?! I’ve never been a big rap fan, but there was just something about the baseline and the catchy lyrics that made this a favorite for me.

Bust a Move was a song that whenever I played it, the crowd always new the words and sang along. The verse that every one knows is “Your best friend, Harry, has a brother Larry, in five days from now he’s gonna marry…” The whole rhythm of that verse and the baseline fit so well together. I also like the fact that while there is some sexual innuendo, there is no profanity in the song.

Interesting story from songfacts.com: Flea from The Red hot Chili Peppers played bass on this song and appears in the video, but he didn’t reap the rewards. He explained to Bass Player magazine: “I have a bitter taste in my mouth about that, because I feel as though I got ripped off. The bass line I wrote ended up being a major melody of the tune, and I felt I deserved songwriting credit and money because it was a #1 hit. They sold millions of records, and I got $200! Afterwards, my lawyer told them, ‘You should throw down Flea some cash,’ but the record company said, ‘We told him exactly what to play.’ No one was even in the room at the time but me and the engineer! It was ridiculous, but I learned from it.”

It was one of the first rap records to cross over to the mainstream charts. It went to #7! Young MC recalled to Rolling Stone: “People looked at rap and hard rock as the type of music that you slam your door after you argue with your parents, and bang your head in defiance. My record wasn’t necessarily rebellious, but it was clever enough to grab in a decent segment of people that didn’t listen to rap music.”

Bust a Move

The next song is one that I used to play for my prom date, Karen, after we started dating. This and Just You and I from Eddie Rabbit and Crystal Gayle were “our songs.” I remember the first time I heard Luther Vandross sing Here and Now. I remember how powerful the lyric was and just how perfect his voice was for the song.

Karen and I dated for a bit and broke up around 1990, only to get back together a year or so later before breaking up after another year or so. Somewhere during that time I had made her a mix tape of love songs. This was just one of many that made it to that tape.

It was hard for me after we broke up because I was DJing a lot of weddings and this was a very popular Bride and Groom song. I almost always had to put headphones on and listen to something else while it played. Today, I can listen to it and it doesn’t bother me, but at the time, it brought about a lot of pain.

Here and Now

My next tune is one that I have featured before and I wrote about how it was helpful to me post-divorce. You can read about it here:

Tune Tuesday – I’m On My Way

I’m On My Way

I have said many times that Willie Nelson always seemed to have one song on each album that I connected with personally. Many times it was more than that. In 1989, he released a fantastic album entitled “A Horse Called Music.” On the album is a cut that was co-written by Mike Reid (who played five seasons with the Cincinnati Bengals and had a brief country singing career) called There You Are.

I had heard the song many times when listening to the album, but it wasn’t until after the final break up with Karen (see above) that the song really hit me hard. At the time, I was still wrapped up in feelings and hated that we were not together. I found myself thinking about her more than I should have been, especially since she had moved on with her life. Then I heard this song…

I could have written this song! It literally was exactly what was happening to me. For no reason, she’d pop into my head. It was never bad things, it was always some good memory of when we were together. The string arrangement and Willie’s vocal convey those feelings in such a magnificent way. It is beautifully sad …

I had never seen the video for this song until I searched for it today. Willie cleans up pretty good…

There You Are

When you make a list of great songwriters – Leiber and Stoller always are on that list. The next song was written by Oliver Leiber, the son of Jerry Leiber of that aforementioned team. Oliver had already written a couple songs for Paula Abdul (Forever Your Girl and The Way That You Love Me) when he got a call saying that the label needed one more song for her album. That song would be Opposite Attract.

From songfacts: This song evolved into a duet with a cartoon cat named MC Skat Kat, who was actually the duo The Wild Pair. Oliver Leiber explains: “I wrote it all from the perspective of one person singing it. It wasn’t initially a duet. It was saying, ‘I like this and you like that.’ It was basically: I like potatoes, and you like po-tah-toes, all from one singer’s perspective. But I had these two singers I had been working with – Marvin Gunn and Tony Christian. They’re the guys that sang on Prince’s “Kiss” and they were incredibly soulful funky singers that I had been using as part of my sound on the first two tracks I did with Paula, helping to preserve the Minneapolis sound, because they sounded very Prince-y and it really added something to Paula’s vocals.

Basically, he had the Wild Pair sing the entire song and then got Paula to cut her lines later. He wasn’t happy with the original mix, which is why the album and the single versions sound so different.

In the video, the real Paula interacted with the animated MC Skat Kat. The concept of Paula dueting with a cat came from Anchors Aweigh, a movie where Gene Kelly dances with the mouse from Tom & Jerry. The video was directed by Michael Patterson and his wife Candace Reckinger, who also created the MC Skat Kat character and animation. Patterson said: “Gene Kelly loved it; he was a friend of Paula’s. Gene was also an inspiration to Candace and I.”

Fun Fact: Patterson and Reckinger got their start in music videos when they created the iconic clip for a-ha’s Take On Me

I loved the Gene Kelly and Jerry Mouse dance, so naturally, I loved this video (and Paula) too!

Opposites Attract

Before I knew the song was about Elvis, I really loved the sound of Black Velvet by Alannah Miles. It was considered a power ballad, but to me it sounded more like a good blues song. Miles’ voice had that bluesy and sultry voice that fit with the groove of the song perfectly.

The story of how the song came to be is a good one. Co-writer Christopher Ward, who was Myles’ then-boyfriend, was inspired on a bus full of Elvis fans riding to Memphis attending the 10th Anniversary Vigil at Graceland, in 1987. Upon his return to Canada, he brought his idea to Myles and producer David Tyson, who wrote the chords for the bridge. The song was one of three in a demo Myles presented to Atlantic Records, which eventually got her signed to the label.

Songfacts provides a bit of lyric analysis:

“Black velvet and that little boy’s smile” – You can buy a black velvet Elvis painting at any respectable yard sale. Early female fans were drawn to his “Little boy smile.”

“Black velvet with that slow southern style” – Elvis delivered some of his songs with slow, undulating hips. Check out “Steamroller Blues” live.

“Up in Memphis the music’s like a heatwave” – Sun Studios. The epicenter of early rock music and where Elvis recorded.

“Love Me Tender leaves ’em cryin’ in the aisle” – Love Me Tender was a huge hit for Elvis in 1956.

“The way he moved, it was a sin, so sweet and true” – Elvis’ legendary hips swivel, the Pelvis.

“Every word of every song that he sang was for you. In a flash he was gone, it happened so soon, what could you do?” – Elvis died suddenly in 1977.

Black Velvet

For me, the last song for this week is something that I continue to work on in my personal life. In my first marriage and throughout that period of my life, I just found it easier to back down and make everyone happy. I did this even if it made me unhappy. It is challenging to stand your ground and not back down from what you believe in or what you feel is right.

Tom Petty’s song was helpful to him as well. Before recording his Full Moon Fever album, an arsonist burned down his house while he was in it with his family and their housekeeper. They escaped, but Petty was badly shaken and spent much of the next few months driving between hotel rooms and a rented house.

Songfacts says that: It was on these drives that he came up with many of the songs for the album; the fire was a huge influence, especially on this song. Petty felt grateful to be alive, but also traumatized – understandable considering someone had tried to kill him. “I Won’t Back Down” was his way of reclaiming his life and getting past the torment – he said that writing and recording the song had a calming effect on him.

The song was used as a patriotic anthem after the September 11th terrorist attacks. Regarding that, Tom said: “The song has also been adopted by nice people for good things, too. I just write them, I can’t control where it ends up.”

The song has a Wilburys connection. The video features Ringo Starr on drums, with Wilburys’ George Harrison and Jeff Lynne on guitar. Harrison did play on the track and contributed backing vocals, but Ringo had nothing to do with the song itself.

I Won’t Back Down

That’s it for the 1980’s! We’ll dive into a brand new decade next week. 1990 was a good year for music. Starting in the 1990’s my music choices tended to lean a bit more country as far as new stuff. In 1990 alone, I could have picked 10 country songs for the list. I didn’t, but I could have.

Next week’s list will feature and interesting mix of music, largely due to the radio station where I was working at the time … some classic rock, some soulful songs, and big pants ….

Did I miss a favorite of yours from 1989? Tell me all about it in the comments. See you next week.

The Music of My Life – 1982

Let’s jump right into 1982. We start with a song that was released in January of ’82 in the United States. Believe it or not, this song would go on to have a special meaning for me and many others from my high school. More on that in a minute.

The Go-Go’s were one of those bands who wrote most of their own songs. “We Got The Beat” was written by guitarist Charlotte Caffey, who drew inspiration from some Motown beats, specifically one that mentioned the name of her group. She explains, “I thought it would be very clever to do ‘Going to a Go Go’ (by the Miracles). I thought, Well, let’s try working this out as a cover song. Which is really funny when I think about it. I was listening to it a lot one day, and later that night, the song came to me within five minutes. I don’t even know if it has anything to do with listening to that song, but this whole idea came to me. It was one of those things that just went right through me and came out my hand; I wrote it down, recorded it a little bit, and then brought it into rehearsal a few days later.”

The Go-Go’s released an early version of “We Got The Beat” in the UK as their first single. It was issued on Stiff Records, which was home to The Specials and Madness, both groups The Go-Go’s toured with in England to promote it. Sadly, it flopped, but the group fared far better in America, where they were signed to IRS Records by Miles Copeland, who managed The Police. In the US, “Our Lips Are Sealed” was released as their first single in the summer of 1981, followed by a new version of “We Got The Beat” in January 1982. This release was The Go-Go’s biggest hit, spending three weeks at #2. (I’ll include both versions below)

Band Camp – Summer 1985. We Got the Beat was a favorite of my high school marching band. I have no idea how long they had been playing it prior to my first year, but it was always played at pep assemblies and when our team won. It was a staple in the marching band music folder. It was the one song that we could play and just have fun. We danced, we jumped, we acted the fool while playing it. It was a celebratory song.

Our band director would say, “Let’s do the little Italian number” during rehearsals. We all knew what he was talking about because he’d often call it, “We Gotta Da Beat.” I want to say our alumni band was around for at least 10 or 12 years after I graduated and they were still playing it. We always joined it because we all had it memorized. I haven’t played my trumpet in years, but I can assure you that if I were to pick it up today, I could still play this song!

We Got the Beat

Real life once again inspired another big hit. Songwriter Wayne Carson, who wrote The Box Tops’ 1967 #1 hit “The Letter,” came up with “Always On My Mind” when he was working at a recording studio in Memphis. He lived with his wife in Springfield, Missouri, and the trip to Memphis had gone 10 days longer than expected.

When he called the missus to tell her he would be there even longer, she let him have it. He tried to assuage her by telling her that was thinking about her all the time – she was “always on my mind.” “It just struck me like someone had hit me with a hammer,” he told the LA Times, “I told her real fast I had to hang up because I had to put that into a song.”

Willie had never heard the song before the song’s co-writer, Johnny Christopher, brought it to him and Merle Haggard, who were busy recording the album Pancho & Lefty (Christopher was playing guitar on the session). “‘Always On My Mind,’ bowled me over the moment I heard it, which is one of the ways I pick songs to record,” Nelson recalled in his 1988 autobiography, Willie. “There are beautifully sad songs that bowl me over… haunting melodies you can’t get out of your mind, with lines that really stick.”

Nelson figured he and Haggard would do the song together, but Haggard didn’t care for it. After they finished recording their album, Nelson stayed in the studio and recorded the ballad solo, just to see what it would sound like. Of course, it sounded like a hit, but Nelson wondered, “We’ll never know what would have happened if Merle had really heard the song right.”

You may remember that Willie Nelson played a big part in my childhood. His Stardust album was played all the time by my grandfather. My grandfather passed away in 1981. Any song by Willie reminded me of my grandpa. My mom really struggled with his passing and I remember being in the car with her when Always on My Mind came on the radio. She had to pull over because it really hit her hard.

It hit me the same way. I know that it is far fetched to believe that grandpa sent a message from beyond the grave, but it felt that way. From Stardust to Always on My Mind and every Willie album that followed, there always seemed to be one song that fit into something that was going on in my life. This one helped me cope with the first death I ever experienced, even though it was more of a love/apology song.

Always on My Mind

One of the things that I noticed as I scanned over the list of singles released in the early eighties was the prominent use of the synthesizer. Rock bands like ZZ Top, Van Halen, and Yes added synthesizers to their mix in the ’80s and scored huge hits by adapting what songfacts.com called “the sound of the decade.” The Steve Miller Band started out as a blues band in the ’60s, evolving into a rock outfit in the ’70s. They often sprinkled electronic effects into their songs, so the keyboards and synth stabs in this song weren’t out of character.

“Abracadabra” was the last US Top 40 hit for the Steve Miller Band, and their third #1. The song was written by Miller and the lyrics were inspired by Diana Ross and the Supremes, whom he had met while performing together on NBC’s Hullabaloo in 1966. “‘Abracadabra’ started off as a great piece of music with really atrocious lyrics,” Miller explained to The Dallas Morning News. “One day I was out skiing in Sun Valley and, lo and behold, who did I see on the mountain but Diana Ross. I skied down off the mountain to go have lunch. I started thinking about the Supremes and I wrote the lyrics to ‘Abracadabra’ in 15 minutes.”

Honestly, I’m really not sure how the Supremes led to the song, but I remember it being a song that really stood out to me on the radio. I rushed out to buy the 45 and it was always a song that wound up on my “driving music” tapes.

Abracadabra

1981 was the year that many were introduced to Men at Work. Their debut single, “Who Can It Be Now” shot straight to #1 on the charts. The group started as an acoustic duo with singer Colin Hay and guitarist Ron Strykert. After a few years playing pubs in Australia, they were discovered by an American who worked for CBS records and signed them.

Colin Hay wrote the song and explained how it came about:

“I was up in the bush in Southern New South Wales with my girlfriend, just sitting outside at night. We had this little tree hut in the middle of the bush. It was a great place to kill the time, mess around with ideas. It was just an idea that popped out, it took about half and hour to write that song. I was living in St. Kilda in Melbourne, which is a great part of Melbourne. At that particular time it was a very interesting area, it was frequented by everybody from the high Jewish population, punks, drug movers, all kinds of different people. It was about six or seven hours drive away, sitting in the middle of the bush in New South Wales and that song just popped out. My girlfriend at the time said, ‘that will be your first hit, that song,’ and she was right.”

Their Business as Usual album was one that I played often.

Fun Fact: The famous saxophone part originally didn’t come in until the middle of the song, which suited when the band played it in bars. When they recorded it, producer Peter McIan identified the sax as a hook and moved it to the beginning of the song, also making it more prominent throughout. This opening sax riff made the song instantly identifiable.

Who Can It Be Now

Juice Newton had a few big hits between Queen of Hearts and Love’s Been a Little Bit Hard On Me. The latter is one of those fun sounding songs, even though it is about the hardships of a relationship. The song was released exactly one week after my 12th birthday.

Juice reminds me of Carlene Carter who had some jumpy, fun songs like this one. Even though she channels Neil Sedaka and sings harmony with herself on the song, that’s one of the reasons I love it. It’s nothing fancy, but it is just good harmony and it blends so well.

One of the things I have enjoyed while picking songs for this year was seeing the videos that were made for certain songs. Wiki describes the music video for this one perfectly. It says that it comically plays off the emotional hurt of love by showing Juice Newton being physically injured by her lover in a series of accidents. The final shot is of Newton singing in the hospital in a full-body cast with her broken leg in the air. The video was awarded Video of the Year by the American Video Association in 1982.

Love’s Been a Little Bit Hard On Me

There is an outdoor amphitheater in the Detroit area that packs in some fantastic shows every summer. I cannot tell you how many shows I have seen at Pine Knob (For some time DTE Energy paid to have the name and even though shows were at “DTE Energy Music Theater,” everyone still called it Pine Knob!). I’ve seen rock shows, comedy shows, country shows, and more there.

For many years, Eddie Money was ALWAYS the guy who played the first show there. He kicked off the summer concert season annually and it became a tradition. One year, I had the opportunity to interview Eddie on the air. It was the easiest interview in the world! Why? You never had to ask questions after he got on the phone. “Hey, Eddie! How are you?” Then Eddie would roll – he’d promote the show, promote an album, share some funny story, talk about the venue, and more. The “Money Man” was great!

I dated in high school who loved Eddie Money’s Music. She had the No Control album on cassette and we’d listen to it in the car. Think I’m in Love was on that album and I remember the first time I saw the video on MTV. Again, these early videos are fun to watch. Eddie plays a sort of vampire character in it. It was a very popular video.

Think I’m In Love

Growing up I listened to Elvis, Bill Haley, Carl Perkins, Eddie Cochran and other artists who played some rockabilly music. So when I heard the Stray Cats in 1982, it was like hearing stuff I was already familiar with. The Built For Speed album was one I played over and over.

Brian Setzer was born in New York and was exposed to a lot of genres of music. He learned to play the guitar at a young age, and when he was a teen, he formed a trio he called the Tomcats, That group would later change their name to the Stray Cats. They were influenced by all those artists I just mentioned and their group developed a fairly large following in the underground punk scene of New York City during the late ’70s. Their fan base expanded so quickly that they found themselves being courted by no less than a half dozen record labels in 1980.

Brian Setzer opted to record and produce the Stray Cats’ debut album in the UK Rock This Town was released there over a year before it was released in the US. Rock This Town was a Top 10 hit for the band. It’s crazy to watch the video and see Brian. He looks like a baby in it. Hard to believe he was only 23 when this video was shot.

Rock This Town

My dad and my uncle used to play old blues music on records and on the guitar. At my graduation party, they played stuff from Jimmy Reed, Bo Diddley, and other blues legends. Because of that, I’ve always loved the blues. Because of that, I was naturally a fan of George Thorogood.

Bad to the Bone is based on the Bo Diddley blues song “I’m a Man.” Bo Diddley was one of George’s heroes. His “version” has a much heavier guitar sound, which replaces the harmonica in Diddley’s recording. Songfacts.com says that “both songs are full of swagger, with the singers exuding lots of testosterone.”

Songfacts.com goes on to say, “With MTV coming on the air in 1981, Thorogood picked a good time to release a memorable video. The clip shows Thorogood playing pool against Bo Diddley in a place where there is no chance of a dance sequence breaking out. Pool champion Willie Mosconi also appears in the clip, which introduced Thorogood – and to some extent, Diddley – to the younger MTV crowd. Among the British New Wave acts that dominated MTV’s playlist at the time, Thorogood certainly stood out, and he created an image of a bad man. While Thorogood is a disciple of the blues, he was raised in a Delaware suburb and by most accounts is actually a pretty nice guy, despite what he claims in this song.”

I love the fact that Diddley is in this video! The song is one that has a life of it’s own. It is used as intro music for wrestlers, it has been used during the removal of the bride’s garter at weddings, and has been used in both movies and television in seriousness and for comedic effect. It is a classic.

Bad to the Bone

I love a great intro. Sometimes a great guitar riff or a neat drum thing is all it takes to hook me. The intro to Everybody Wants You was one of those intros. It appeared as the opening track of his multi-Platinum 1982 album Emotions in Motion.

The song itself didn’t do that great on the Hot 100 chart, as it only went to number 32. However, it was around this time that one of the radio formats that was big was called AOR – Album Oriented Rock. It had great success on these and rock stations. It reached number one on Billboard’s Top Rock Tracks chart. Naturally, the video did well on MTV, too. It remained in heavy rotation for quite some time.

The minute I hear this one, I think back to those nights of shooting pool with my buddies. It was always on the jukebox.

Everybody Wants You

The next song is one that is still applicable today. Perhaps even more so. What exactly is “news” today? Turn on any local news channel or entertainment news show – it is chock full of stories like the ones referenced in Don Henley’s first Top 40 hit as a solo artist – Dirty Laundry.

Again, the intro of this really stood out for me. The lyrics take it to an entirely new level. They are so good and perhaps that is because Henley had plenty of real life to draw from. This song is about unscrupulous news people doing anything for a story. Henley values his privacy, and hates it when reporters pry into his personal life. He had to deal with increased press attention when his girlfriend at the time, Maren Jensen, came down with Epstein-Barr Syndrome. She recovered, but they broke up soon after.

Songfacts.com states: “Henley sings from the standpoint of a news anchorman who “could have been an actor, but I wound up here”. The song’s theme is that TV news coverage focuses too much on negative and sensationalist news; in particular, deaths, disasters, and scandals, with little regard to the consequences or for what is important (“We all know that crap is king”). The song was inspired by the intrusive press coverage surrounding the deaths of John Belushi and Natalie Wood. It was also inspired by Henley’s own arrest in 1980 when he was charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor and possession of marijuana, cocaine, and Quaaludes after a 16-year-old girl overdosed at his Los Angeles home”

While Don’s version is the best, Lisa Marie Presley (who had to deal with a lot of press intrusions on her personal life) also does a really neat version of Dirty Laundry.

Dirty Laundry

There were plenty of great songs in 1982, I’m sorry if I missed one of your favorites. Next week, we’ll move ahead to 1983 where there will be a good mix of rock, country, pop, soul and a movie song that will forever be associated with summer vacations ….

See you then!

The Music of My Life – 1979

1979 is a year where I was surprised to find many of the songs that wound up on my mom’s ballad 8-track tape. I could easily have posted all of those songs in this blog, but then you would fall asleep listening to them, just like my brother and I did on our way up north. Instead, I will list them at the end of this blog, and if you wish, you can search them on YouTube.

So let’s begin with the first of two “out of place” or “odd” songs….

The first song is part of the soundtrack of my summer of 1979. The song seemed to be playing in a very hot rotation and was always on the radio when we were up at my grandparents place.

Frank Mills wrote and recorded “Music Box Dancer” in 1974, but it did not become a Canadian single until December 1978. By Christmas of that year, it was in the top ten of many European and Asian pop music charts. It was released as a single in the United States in January 1979 and got up to number three on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart.

In 1974, Mills released an album that featured the song, but it was not initially a hit. When he re-signed with Polydor Records Canada in 1978, the label released a new song as a single, with “Music Box Dancer” on the B-side. Because of a mistake, a single of “Music Box Dancer” found its way into the hands of a pop station in Ottawa – the single was only supposed to go out to adult contemporary stations. The station’s program director listened to the A-side and wondered why it was sent to him. He played the B-side and liked what he heard anyway and began airing it in rotation. Next thing you know, the album’s gone gold in Canada.

Music Box Dancer

The next song makes the list because it was on the iPod of my ex. My oldest son used to take it and listen to it all the time and I can still hear him in his toddler voice singing the chorus of this one.

Hot Stuff is a single that was on Donna Summer’s 7th studio album, Bad Girls. The song is unique in that while many consider it disco, many others consider it rock. As a matter of fact, when the Best Female Rock Vocal Performance category was added at the Grammy Awards in 1980, Donna Summer won for “Hot Stuff.”

The song has ties to other music as well. It was written by Pete Bellotte, Harold Faltermeyer and Keith Forsey. Bellotte co-wrote a few other hits for Summer, including “Love To Love You Baby” and ” Heaven Knows.” Faltermeyer had a solo hit in 1984 with the theme from Beverly Hills Cop, “Axel F” and Forsey’s credits include “Don’t You Forget About Me” for Simple Minds and “Shakedown” for Bob Seger.

This was Summer’s second #1 hit on the Hot 100; her first was her disco cover of “MacArthur Park.”

Hot Stuff

Here is a song that is missing one of the things the band is known for. Don’t Bring Me Down was the first ELO song that did not use strings. According to Songfacts, after recording it, they fired their string section, leaving four members in the band.

ELO leader Jeff Lynne wrote this song late in the sessions for the “Discovery” album. He came up with the track by looping the drums from a song he recorded earlier in the session, then coming up with more music on the piano. The words came last, as Lynne put together some lyrics about a girl who thinks she’s too good for the guy she’s with.

Here’s a fun fact: Wanna know why Jeff Lynne repeatedly sings the word “groose” after the song’s title line? Apparently it was a made-up place-keeper word to fill a gap in the vocals when he was improvising the lyrics. When the German engineer Reinhold Mack heard the ELO frontman’s demo, he asked Lynne how he knew “gruss” means “greetings” in his country’s language. Upon learning the German meaning, Lynne decided to leave it in.

Don’t Bring Me Down

“Hey Ringo, play something hot!”

Those are the words that Rodney Dangerfield’s character in Caddyshack says to the band at the snobbish country club as he throws money at them. As the money falls, the band plays the opening 5 note stings from Boogie Wonderland from Earth Wind and Fire (With the Emotions). I’ve always loved that song because of the movie connection.

The song, while it is upbeat and happy sounding, it really isn’t. Songfacts calls it one of the more complex and misinterpreted songs of the disco era. Written by Jon Lind and Allee Willis, it was inspired by the movie Looking For Mr. Goodbar, which stars Diane Keaton as a lost soul who goes to clubs every night to dance away her misery.

Willis says, “When I saw Mr. Goodbar, I got kind of fascinated with people who did go to clubs every night, whose life was kind of falling apart, but they lived for the night life, though it didn’t seem to be advancing them as humans in the end. So if you really look at the lyrics of ‘Boogie Wonderland,’ unlike ‘September,’ it’s not a happy song at all. It’s really about someone on the brink of self destruction who goes to these clubs to try and find more, but is at least aware of the fact that if there’s something like true love, that is something that could kind of drag them out of the abyss. So ‘Boogie Wonderland’ for us was this state of mind that you entered when you were around music and when you danced, but hopefully it was an aware enough state of mind that you would want to feel as good during the day as you did at night.”

Boogie Wonderland

The second “out of place” or “odd” song is also a movie song. It may seem like a very simple kid song, but if you listen to what the songwriter says about it, the song is deeper than you can imagine.

This was written by songwriters Paul Williams and Kenny Ascher for The Muppet Movie, which came out in 1979. In the film, it is sung by Kermit The Frog as the Muppets set out to find adventure. In a interview Williams said: “Rainbow Connection was the first number in The Muppet Movie. It’s the one that establishes the lead character. We find Kermit sitting in the middle of the swamp. Kenny Ascher and I sat down to write these songs, and we thought… Kermit, he’s like ‘every frog.’ He’s the Jimmy Stewart of frogs. So how do we show that he’s a thinking frog, and that he has an introspective soul, and all that good stuff? We looked at his environment, and his environment is water and air – and light. And it just seemed like it would be a place where he would see a rainbow. But we also wanted to show that he would be on this spiritual path, examining life, and the meaning of life.

It tells you that he’s been exposed to culture: ‘Why are there so many songs about rainbows?’ Which means, obviously, he’s heard a lot of songs. This is a frog that’s been exposed to culture, whether it’s movies, or records, or whatever. And I also like the fact that it starts out with the negative: ‘Rainbows are only illusions, rainbows have nothing to hide.’ So the song actually starts out as if he’s going to pooh-pooh the whole idea, and then it turns: ‘So we’ve been told, and some choose to believe it. I know they’re wrong, wait and see.’ And again, he doesn’t have the answer: ‘Someday we’ll find it.'”

Now, with that in mind, give this masterpiece a listen!

Rainbow Connection

Next is my “go-to” Karaoke song. I’ve always loved the line, “You had me down 21 to zip, the smile of Judas on your lip.” What a great line. Bad Case of Loving you was written by Moon Martin who released the original version on his 1978 album Shots From a Cold Nightmare. Martin is a singer/guitarist/songwriter with his band Southwind. When the group broke up in 1971, he took on studio work. He paired up with Linda Ronstadt, and played on her self-titled album. He nearly joined some of Ronstadt’s other backing musicians in a little band called the Eagles, but ended up a solo artist and signed a deal with Capitol Records.

Martin’s album got some good reviews but went nowhere on the charts. A song called “Hot Nite In Dallas” was chosen as a single, but “Bad Case Of Loving You” was only given limited release in Europe. Enter Robert Palmer. He heard the song when he was being driven to one of his shows by a rep from his label, who played it for him. Palmer included it in his set and got a great response, so he recorded it for his Secrets album.

Bad Case of Loving You (Doctor, Doctor)

In 1989, Palmer released a remix of this song for his Addictions: Volume 1 greatest hits album. “Looking back at the 1978 original the performance was there but someone was asleep at the mixing desk,” he wrote in the liner notes. “The original mix in comparison sounded like a band rehearsing in a garage and this sounds like the finished song.” I can’t listen to the original cut much anymore. The remix is SO MUCH better!

I LOVE good harmonies. This song kicks right off with a cold open and the amazing a cappella harmony of The Little River Band. Most of the band’s hits were written by founding members Graham Goble, Beeb Birtles or Glenn Shorrock, but “Lonesome Loser” was written by guitarist David Briggs, who joined in 1976 after the band’s second album.

The lyric uses a lot of gambling imagery to tell the story of the lonesome loser, who staked his heart and lost. His adversary is the “Queen of Hearts,” who will always win this game of love. The same year this song was released (1979), Dave Edmunds had a UK hit with a song called “Queen of Hearts” that used the same metaphor. That song, of course, became an American hit when Juice Newton covered it in 1981.

Lonesome Loser

Speaking of great harmonies and the Eagles, the next song features both. Heartache Tonight was written by Don Henley and Glenn Frey with Bob Seger and J.D. Souther. Songfacts says: When Frey was a 19-year-old in Detroit, Seger took him under his wing and got his music career started. Souther, who is sometimes considered an “Unofficial Eagle,” was the first person Frey met when he moved to Los Angeles in the late-’60s. J.D. Souther, told us how this song started: “Glenn Frey and I had been listening to Sam Cooke records at my house. So we were just walking around clapping our hands and snapping fingers and singing the verses to those songs. The melody sounds very much like those Sam Cooke shuffles. There’s not much to it. I mean, it’s really just two long verses. But it felt really good.”

Bob Seger’s contribution to this song was the chorus. JD Souther says, “We didn’t get to a chorus that we liked within the first few days, and I think Glenn was on the phone with Seger, and he said, ‘I wanna run something by you,’ and sang it to him, and Seger just came right in with the chorus, just sang it and it was so good. Glen called me and said, ‘Is four writers okay on this?’ And I said, ‘Sure, if it’s good.’ And he said, ‘Yeah, it’s great. Seger just sang this to me,’ and he sang it to me and I said, ‘That’s fantastic.'”

According to Seger, he was in the room with Glenn Frey when he came up with the chorus. He told Entertainment Weekly: “Glenn had the verse: ‘Somebody’s gonna hurt someone before the night is through.’ We hadn’t been sitting down for more that five minutes and I just blurted out, ‘There’s gonna be a heartache tonight!’ His eyes lit up huge.”

Heartache Tonight

The next song is one that I used to hear on the way home from elementary school. I had a buddy who got a ride home every day and his mom would often give me a lift, too. Keep in mind the ride home was 5 to 7 minutes tops, but it always seemed to be on the radio when we were in the car.

Freddie Mercury wrote Crazy Little Thing Called Love while Queen was recording The Game in Germany. He wrote it while taking a bubble bath in his room at the Munich Hilton. Peter Hince, the head of Queen’s road crew, recalled to Mojo magazine September 2009: “The idea for the song came to him while he was in the bath. He emerged, wrapped in a towel, I handed him the guitar and he worked out the chords there and then. Fred had this knack of knowing a great pop song.”

Freddie acknowledged that perhaps his limited talent on the guitar helped shape the song:

On stage, this was an important part of the show. Brian May often used three different guitars during the song: the first verse was played by Freddie alone with his guitar, then Brian joined with another Ovation Acoustic; before the third verse he had already switched to a Telecaster on which he performed the solo. During the singalong part (famous for its “ready Freddie” line) Brian again changed instruments to his homemade Red Special. From 1984 onwards Mercury replaced the acoustic with another Telecaster.

Crazy Little Thing Called Love

The final selection comes from a band who was formed on Valentines Day of 1977 in Detroit. That is what inspired their name – the Romantics.

Believe it or not, the band have only two US Top 40 hits, and “What I Like About You,” now their best-known song, isn’t one of them. ( Their two Top 40 hits were “Talking In Your Sleep” and “One In A Million”). It attracted little attention and was only a minor hit when first released in 1980 on their debut album. This song’s resurgence had a lot to do with MTV. The band made a simple performance video for the song that MTV put in rotation when they launched in 1981. It fit the criteria the network was looking for: American band, rock, catchy song, acceptable production quality. Since few American artists made videos at the time, MTV made do with lots of European imports when they started.

Since then the song has also become a fixture at sporting events, bars and nightclubs, and parties and celebrations of all kinds, and has taken its place as one of the most popular rock anthems of all time. It’s nice to wrap up the last year of the decade with an uptempo, fun song!

What I Like About You

I’m sure I have missed a few favorites, and the more I look ahead, the more I wonder if I need to expand to more than ten songs. I’ll tackle that issue if I have to later on.

Next week, we ring in a new decade – 1980! The 80’s sound certainly can be heard in some of these late 70’s songs and from here on out, the sound progresses quickly!