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!
Various Ramblings of a Nostalgic Italian 