Crushing Krisis

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Paula Abdul

35-for-35: 1991 – “Vibeology” by Paula Abdul

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[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]Oh, yes, we are going there. I have another Paula Adbul song on this list of all-time favorites from the same year Nirvana released Nevermind. Come ahead and fight me.

Spellbound is a much stronger LP than Forever Your Girl. It signaled this clearly on each of its first two singles – “Rush, Rush,” a ballad with Abdul’s finest recorded performance (crazy, since it’s reportedly an early scratch vocal) and the unpolished and new age-y “Promise of a New Day.” The third single was the marginal ballad “Blowing Kisses In the Wind.”

That meant that the core of this album had yet to be heard by the general listening public. It included a sexy, sultry, witty set of songs that paired well with Prince’s 1991 effort Diamonds and Pearls. Songs like “Spellbound” or “U” would have made terrific singles that could compete on the radio. (“U” was even written by Prince! How do you pass that up as a single?!)

So, of course, the fourth single was “Vibeology.”

This song… I really have no words. I love it so much. How can I possibly express my feelings to you other than through dance?

“Vibeology” sort of takes the position of, “What if Paula’s duet with MC Skat Kat was the best thing on that first record?” And, well, “Cold Hearted” aside … maybe it was? While Spellbound was pretty evenly split between ballads and more sultry numbers, paula-abdul-1991-spellbound-album-cover“Vibeology” alone stood in the center as the one batshit crazy dance-capade full of horns and also Paula Abdul screaming “horny horns!” to introduce said horns.

If you listen to it next to the Prince-penned “U” it seems to be imitating the New Jack Swing sound with dancehall flourishes. It’s just so damn manic it’s hard to take it as anything other than a novelty song. I mean, all the different voices, the lack of a discernible verse, the croaked slam poetry section, the “Go Paula!” chants, the horny horns.

Yet, there is something I unabashedly love about this song. It’s basically built from the same pieces as “Vogue” – check out the bounding low bassline and the clanging piano chords. If you stripped away some of the silliness here and moved the “you got the vibeology” rap further into the song, it would actually feel a lot like “Vogue.”

Only, you know, with horny horns.

Honestly, I think this song single-handedly killed Paula Abdul’s career – maybe specifically her low-rent “Express Yourself” video, sexy frumpy circus-with-feathers aesthetic, and subsequent pitchy MTV Music Video Awards performance. When she came back with an even sultrier follow-up in Head Over Heels it seemed like a desperate grab for attention in a post-pop, rock-oriented world – but, that’s only because it was never set up with the right singles from Spellbound.

Here’s that so bad it’s bad MTV VMA performance: [Read more…] about 35-for-35: 1991 – “Vibeology” by Paula Abdul

35-for-35: 1988 – “Cold Hearted” by Paula Abdul

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[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug](Since Mondays were previously my #MusicMonday posting day, I’m giving you a double-dose of 35-for-35 to start the week and to fit all the songs into one month!)

Much of Paula Abdul’s debut Forever Your Girl is a cotton candy assemblage – whatever sugar they could spin around an inexperienced singer with an approximate relationship with singing in tune.

Don’t get me wrong – I love Forever Your Girl. I know every word on it. But, if you held it up to today it would be less Arianna Grande and more … I don’t know, who is a fake famous person who put out a record to maintain the illusion of their popularity? Julianne Hough? I’m not down with all the artists that kids like these days.

That’s besides the point. The point is that on this album filled with conventional spun sugar sounds (like title track “Forever Your Girl”) there are two singular, break-out moments that no one other than Paula Abdul managed to record.

One is the stark, funky “Straight Up.” The other is “Cold Hearted,” or as people more commonly know it, “Cold-Hearted Snake.”

Listen carefully to the sounds in the intro. It combines the same synth bass as “Straight Up,” the same 2s-and-4s snare hits, paired with with whining guitar bends not too different from the infamous wah on that song. What mades “Cold Hearted” stand out is the frantically sawing sampled string section that is subtly doubled by computerized blips.

When the intro chorus hits the song would be nearly identical to “Straight Up” if not for those strings, which stop their sawing to carry a counter-melody that makes Abdul’s clipped, staccato phrases form a single legato melody.

paula_abdul-cold_heartedThat’s it, really. Otherwise it’s just “Straight Up, Part 2: Faster and About Someone Else’s Lover.”

Were the strings alone enough to turn this into the massively memorable hit it became? Probably not. I tend to think it had a little something to do with the video – released almost a year after the LP originally dropped.

I was eight years old when that video hit. I wasn’t the kind of little boy who thought girls were gross – I was deeply in love with a girl in my class. I always wasn’t the kind of boy with prurient interest in scantily clad women – maybe because I was being raised by a cadre of women myself.

So please understand when I tell you that, even as an eight-year-old, I knew this video was heart-poundingly sexy.

Honestly, I think it kind of defined sexy for me. The moment that sticks in my mind is from the four-minute-mark, the image of the throbbing mass of limbs expanding and contracting around Abdul.

(Also, it was directed by David Fincher, who would go on to direct the video for “Vogue,” and later the films Se7en, The Game, Panic Room, Benjamin Button, and so on.)

Between the special alchemy of the song and the sexed up video, “Cold Hearted” was a memorable track that dominated my eight-year-old life. It seems like it’s slightly faded in the eyes of pop culture in favor of “Straight Up” and the whimsical “Opposites Attract,” but it remains among my favorite Paula Abdul songs.

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

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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-latelyThis 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.”