35-for-35

35-for-35: 1986 – “What Have You Done For Me Lately” by Janet Jackson

November 6, 2016 by krisis

janet-jackson-control [Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]When 1986 began, most fans didn’t know Janet Jackson primarily as a singer.

Her 1982 self-titled solo LP gained minor notice, but her 1984 pop follow-up Dream Street was an umitigated flop. Instead, she was known as the sassy little sister from The Jackson’s appearances on variety shows (including their own) who had blossomed into a talented TV actress on shows like Good Times and Diff’rent Strokes.

I have to think that Control’s lead single “What Have You Done For Me Lately” hit radio like a bomb blast – especially in a Jackson void with Michael deep into a between-records lull.

Control was the perfect breakout album for 20-year-old Jackson – not mature so much as aware and outspoken with songs like “Control” and “Nasty.”

Also, the video for “What Have You Done For Me Lately” was Jackson’s first choreographed by Paula Abdul (who had choreographed Janet’s brothers on their Victory Tour), although I must emphasize that this is an early work.

Yes, the video is cheesy to the max – peak 80s with the slick cool of the 90s not yet in sight. Yet, it confirms Janet’s star power from her TV experience and presages her subsequent years of absolute video dominance. Her execution of Abdul’s choreography is tight and full of attitude.

And then there’s the sound.

what-have-you-done-for-me-lately This song introduced Janet’s collaboration with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, a sound dominated by layered, multi-octave vocals to make her voice sound bigger than it actually was. It’s driven by a two-note bass riff and relentless every-beat assault by drum machine snare and cowbell. The sparse, staccato keyboard chords barely register as anything but countermelody.

The chorus of “What Have You Done For Me Lately” is one of the most deadly earworms in pop music. It’s so simple. It pounds the 5th on “what have you do”, climbs to the minor 7ths “done for”, tickles the root on “me”, and descends. What solidifies the worminess is the “oo, yeah” – it ascends from a 6th to the major 7th instead. So, while neither line is as discordant with its surroundings as “always on my mind” in the verse, they combine to create a little mental dissonance for you as you repeat them back and forth.

Those aspects are so monolithic that I often forget the little touches of this song. Have you forgotten the hopelessly optimistic major-key bridge, so reminiscent of sunny 60s pop with its chiming synth bell rings, only to be deflated by the subsequent talk-rap? What about the later refrain of atonal jazz piano?

Then there is the control of it. While the lyrics are lightweight and almost a little silly, the delivery is anything but. This isn’t a young woman begging for attention. She’s demanding it.

Altogether, “What Have You Done For Me Lately” is a blueprint hat’s still followed today for a child star’s perfect pivot from a squeaky-clean, bubble-gum pop image into audaciousness supported by a hip, current sound. Compare Janet Jackson’s breakout here to subsequent moves by Christian Aguilera, or even Miley Cyrus and Ariana Grande – all bigger voices but each with the same problem as Janet.

A lot of other stars might have copied Jackson’s strategy, but none of them have come close to topping this as their breakout single.”

35-for-35: 1985 – “Everybody Wants To Rule The World” by Tears For Fears

November 5, 2016 by krisis

[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]First of all, let me point out that the most memorable song of 1985 for me is clearly “These Dreams,” but I’ve already blogged about that, followed by “How Will I Know,” which I’ve already covered, and also “Crazy For You,” which I’ve covered, too.

What a year! That meant for this post I had to go fishing for favorites not by that triumvirate of excellent women. The pickings are a little slimmer on the XY side of the fence, unless I want to go with laughing at Bowie and Jagger on “Dancing In The Streets.”

As I sifted through my music collection, I kept returning to this song, the sound of which evokes “80s” for me more than nearly any other song.

There’s something about the galloping bass and the plaintive melody of the chorus of “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” that still brings a positive swirl of butterflies to my stomach every time it begins. (Unlike their ponderous “Head Over Heels,” which still makes me sweat like a fever dream (seriously, I’m getting queasy just thinking about it).)

Maybe that’s because of the swirl of a two-note arpeggiated electric guitar riff that starts the song off fluttering in a major key before it settles into its two chord verse. everybody-wants-to-rule-the-world Whatever the reason, I’m always giddy and than the steady gallop of the bass brings me back to earth as Chris Hughes tells me, “Welcome to your life…”

There’s no turning back
Even while we sleep
We will find you

Acting on your best behavior
Turn your back on mother nature
Everybody wants to rule the world

There’s a dissonance between the cheerful D-major key of the verses and the ominous lyrics that suggest an ever-watchful big-brother. Only two phrases in the song begin minor – the start of each refrain, and the title of the song. Each time the line begins with Em, the minor second chord, rather than G, the major fourth (which is Em’s relative major).

(In fact, the bridge is approximately what an all-major chorus would sound like, replacing Ems and F#ms with Gs and As. That’s part of what gives it such an explosive, anthemic quality as it bursts from a chorus.)

I love that it’s a memorable song for a baritone-voiced man (and 1985 was a good year for them – it also gave us “Don’t You (Forget About Me).”) I also love its unmemorable guitar solo. There’s really nothing distinct or melodic about it that you might sing along to, but it’s a perfect amount of frantic rising action to create tension leading to the final refrain.

tears-for-fears-songs-from-the-big-chair Then there is the simplistic melody of the chorus, sketching little wedges across the stave on the minor lines as it leaps over and steps down across the tonic, b/ e \b \a, only treating us to a walk across the D on the single major line.

Taken altogether these elements give the song a haunting, almost melancholic quality. The chorus feels like a sudden, paranoid rant cast against the big break to minor. The title has always suggested to me something more sinister about everyone wanting to the rule the world. (The original title was “Everybody Wants to Go To War,” which definitely merited the minor chord!)

“Everybody Wants to Rule The World” was Tears for Fears biggest hit. While it has the same looming dread quality of their other tunes like “Shout” and “Mad World,” all of those songs were methodical and rigid where “Rule The World” shuffles and gallops.

It’s all the dissonance that makes the song memorable – major vs. minor, looseness paired with dread. Rather than plod or hammer, the song is filled with dozens of tiny moments of resolution – something none of the bands other hits can promise.

I think that’s why I still get butterflies.

35-for-35: 1984 – “When Doves Cry” by Prince

November 4, 2016 by krisis

[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]1984 was a year that included a Madonna record – one of my favorite records of all time, actually – Like a Virgin. I could go on and on about that album. Yet, as with yesterday, I have to pluck out a different song to highlight. Unlike yesterday, this song as quite a pedigree.

Why do we scream at each other
This is what it sounds like
When doves cry

“When Doves Cry” may have been the first time I noticed that songs imitated life. I was on the verge of my Madonna obsession that came the following year with endless spins of “Dress You Up” b/w “Shoo-BeeDoo” but it was also the period where my parents were moving towards their separation.

I don’t have a lot of memories from when they were together and together in the same place. There are only two that I can recall clearly, and one was standing on the landing of our staircase listening to them scream at each other.

I always wonder, is that memory so singular because it was the only time they fought in front of me, or because it was frequent?

(Please, mom and dad, don’t comment and ruin the mystery.)

(Due to Prince’s curious vendetta against any of his music appearing online, there are no embeds of the video of “When Doves Cry” to share! Instead, have this early rehearsal footage of him learning the song with his band.)

Despite the dirty electric guitar riffing in the intro and the jaunty piano chords of the refrain, “When Doves Cry” is a sparse song. Prince is singing to an unnamed partner, but to me the song plays out in a locked white room (“a world that’s so cold”) with several Princes, drums, a piano, and some phase effects. There is no bass. Nothing else will enter or depart.

Maybe it is the inside of Prince’s mind, him arguing maybes back and forth, the drum an echo of his heart beating from just below.

How can you just leave me standing?
Alone in a world that’s so cold? (So cold)
Maybe I’m just too demanding
Maybe I’m just like my father too bold
Maybe you’re just like my mother
She’s never satisfied (She’s never satisfied)

I think it says something about me that for over 30 years “When Doves Cry” has always been a song about parents when that amounts to only four lines alone in the context of the bottled lust of the rest of the song.

I have to consciously check in to hear anything else in the song as words other than noises. Like “animals strike curious poses” – I could recite the phrase to you phonetically, but every time I remind myself of the lyrics I quickly forget.

E said a thing to me last night to the effect of, “we’re all just machines executing code we wrote when we were eight years old.” We weren’t talking about “When Doves Cry,” but that’s absolutely what the song is about. At a point, all of the lust and heat in world can’t change your programming. You either add new functions to help correct the old code at the core, or you just keep executing the same mistakes again and again – either the mistakes of your parents or the mistakes you make in reaction to their actions.

All of that meaning is packaged in this hermetically sealed white room of a song with its sparse arrangement, three stanzas, and a chorus. Prince was a genius of both music and the human condition, and also of efficiency. Lines of musical code.

If he could have said it in any fewer words or notes he would have.

35-for-35: 1983 – “I’ll Tumble 4 Ya” by Culture Club

November 3, 2016 by krisis

[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug] culture-club-kissing-to-be-clever 1983 was an obscenely good year of the music I love. Seriously, check out this list of releases at the top of my personal iTunes charts:

David Bowie – Let’s Dance, Billy Joel – An Innocent Man, Cyndi Lauper – She’s So Unusual, Madonna s/t, The Police – Synchronicity, U2 – War, plus singles like “1999,” “Sweet Dreams,” and “Flashdance What A Feeling” – plus, the music video of “Thriller”!

(Sadly, they were all shut out at the Grammys by Thriller, which arrived on November 30, 1982, after the end of the 1982 Grammys eligibility period.)

How to choose? As much as my heart lies with Madonna when it comes to 1983, I’ve already done a lot of writing about her best songs. Cyndi Lauper’s album is an all-time classic, but I didn’t have ears for it until after I met Lindsay. I love the singles from An Innocent Man, but in 1983 we were still spinning Glass Houses.

After agonizing over the decision, I realize I was making the mistake of looking for songs that I love now, when really I should be searching my earliest memories for songs I loved then. And, after “Thriller,” the great love of my three-year-old life was “I’ll Tumble 4 Ya.”

Yes, by Culture Club. I was so addicted to that song as a kid. It was the earliest example of my childhood choreography, as I’d launch into a series of somersaults during the chorus.

But, what is this monstrosity? It begins with mariachi horns and castanets, it briefly turns into a sort of lounge song, before turning into queer calypso elevator music on the chorus. And, check out the lyrics to the verse:

Downtown we’ll drown
We’re in our never splendour
Flowers, showers
Who’s got the new boy gender?
I’ll be your baby, I’ll be your score
I’ll run the gun for you and so much more

Holy crap, tiny Peter, was your first favorite song really an ode to blurred gender roles and sexual innuendo? And, also, how was Culture Club so deeply weird yet also so incredibly successful?

I cannot answer any of those questions, so I turned to the next closest source of information: my mother. Yes, my beloved readers, you about to witness a Crushing Krisis first: A BLOG POST FROM MOTHER OF KRISIS.

Take it away, Mom:

I first heard and saw Culture Club on MTV, which was new at the time. We didn’t have a big income, but we did have cable TV. There was something about their sound that grabbed me.

You were a music lover from a very early age. You definitely had your favorites and I can safely say “I’ll Tumble 4 Ya” was one of them. You would become a little animated dancer when it came on. You were a little young for a full fledged somersault, but you gave it your best try.

We lived in South Philly, and I used to take you to the playground off of 13th & Oregon and push you on the swings while I sang you my newest favorite song, like “Electric Avenue” and “I Can’t Go For That.” Through the process of elimination, perhaps I bought Kissing To Be Clever at a record store on East Passyunk Ave? Sometimes, when the weather was nice I would take you for a walk there. [Ed Note: See, my mom was a hipster before all of y’all were hipsters, okay?]

As far as the club music I was exposed to, the most important aspects of a song were:

Does it have a good beat? and
Can you dance to it?

Calypso, Caribbean, reggae, soul, funk, etc … they generally have a beat and you can dance to them. “I’ll Tumble 4 Ya” fit those parameters.

I suppose I noticed Boy George’s way of being different, but I didn’t care one way or another. I just liked the music. I guess different was ok with me. Bear in mind, I had spent a considerable part of my young life being a huge Bowie fan, so I wasn’t phased much by Boy George’s gender-bending feminine look (though, in no way did Boy George remind me of Bowie).

Not to blow my own horn, but I don’t think I was ever judgmental about how people looked or acted. Perhaps I developed a tolerant attitude as it relates to gender and sexual orientation. I mean, I was about 10 years old when my parents took me to visit my cousin D and her partner [a woman]. This was 1965. Also my cousin W was gay. The family just accepted it. Even my parents.

(I am the same person who bought you no less than two baby dolls, Care Bears, Jem, and both He-Man and She-Ra.)

That was… actually pretty awesome. Thanks, mom! Perhaps we can tempt her into another guest appearance as the month presses on. I love that last little aside, in case any of you ever doubt me saying I was all about inclusivity right down to the toys I played with as a toddler.

35-for-35: 1982 – “Maneater” by Hall & Oates

November 2, 2016 by krisis

[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]When I was slightly older than EV I still did not have my own record player (I know – the injustice), so my mother was in charge of pulling out my favorite songs on vinyl and then dropping the needle into the groove.

One of my earliest musical memories is of her playing “Maneater” on repeat for us as we sat in our rocking chair. I know this was an early memory because the turntable was on a set of ramshackle shelves built by my father before my parents separated, rather than its later home on the other side of our living room.

Here’s what I understood about “Maneater” at the time: it was about a creature, like “Thriller.” She ate people! It had a throbbing bass line that was good for bopping along to. Also, it was on an LP called H20, which meant water but also meant Hall & Oates. Basically, it was the most clever thing anyone had ever thought of.

As a toddler, I may have missed a few entendres.

As with a lot of my early-in-life vinyl favorites, I completely lost touch with Hall & Oates as I grew older and amassed my own record (and, later, CD) collection. In fact, unlike Madonna and MJ, who I began spinning again in college, Hall & Oates didn’t make their return to my collection until 2010 inspired by the requests of my communications-buddy and cube neighbor, MK.

I was even listening to The Bird and The Bee’s H&O cover LP before I was listening to H&O again!

Revisiting “Maneater” as an adult and a musician, a whole new set of elements stick out for me.

The intro is a familiar Hall & Oates gimmick – a long minor-key instrumental that gradually adds additional instruments (bass, keyboards, a trickling water effect, and smarmy saxophone) and then pops into the relative major key for the verse.

The lyrics are as lurid as those of my other childhood favorite with an awesome bassline, “Billy Jean.” Here, H&O are unsubtly describing falling in love with a sex worker – or, at least a woman who is ready to devour any high-roller who enters her life.

What makes the song interesting to me today is this line: “If you’re in it for love you ain’t gonna get too far.” Who exactly is pursuing the Maneater, in the context of the song? Is it another rich boy, unware that he’s about to be drained dry? Or, is it someone who is genuinely falling for her.

If the latter, who are H&O to warn him off? Maybe he’s the true love that has been missing from all of Maneater’s conquests.

We’re not meant to know. Hall & Oates wrote fantastic songs, but they weren’t ever especially known for the complete narratives of their lyrics. If you don’t believe me, please share – what is the “That” for which “I Can’t Go For”?

Even without a coherent story, there’s no doubt that “Maneater” is one of Hall & Oates’ stone cold early-80s classics.