Month: May 2019

This song gets slightly more hate than it deserves, at least in the context of its era and genre, but the fact that it’s still completely without merit of any kind makes it hard to bemoan its mildly unfair status as a focal point for rage with any sincerity. Certainly, there is no shortage of legitimate reasons to hate this song: Peter Cetera, who was the band’s frontman at that point in their career, had one of the most irritating falsettos in the history of Pop, right up there with early Justin Bieber and post-Autotune Adam Levine, and he insisted on histrionic showboating in the vein of Michael Bolton on most of their songs, including this one. The lyrics are vapid, trite cliches that sound like they were taken directly from a Hallmark card, and the music itself has the prepackaged staleness associated with honest-to-God Muzak…you could honestly imagine hearing this while waiting on hold when phoning a Doctor’s office or a tech support line. The only reason this song is just a bit overhated is that Soft Rock was in a very dark place in the Eighties, and this actually looks like a masterpiece compared to “Hello” or “Party All the Time” or “All Out of Love”, to name just a few examples. And the truth is, Chicago cranked songs exactly like this out like an assembly line throughout the decade, and many of them were considerably worse than this, but because this was their biggest hit, it’s the one that became the by-word for bad manufactured Soft Rock for long after it was relevant as anything other than a punchline.

Verdict: It gets a little worse than it deserves, but only in comparative terms. Bad.

This band carries a certain stigma just for being both popular Soft Rock hitmakers and a major part of the Corporate Rock movement in the Seventies, but none of the scorn they receive is really justified by their actual music. For one thing, they’re pretty gutsy for Soft Rock, about on the same level of intensity as Phil Collins-era Genesis; for another, they were extremely strong songwriters. Their other two signature hits, the driving “Hold the Line” and the snappy “Rosanna”, are both fine songs, but this has to be one of the greatest Soft Rock songs of all time. It’s breathtakingly rhapsodic, full of memorable melody from introductory vamp to verse to chorus, and displays an elegant perfection of construction that neither of Toto’s other big hits even approach.

Verdict: Quite possibly one of the greatest Soft Rock hits of any era.

Jason Mraz would really hit his stride when he dropped the Rap influences and complex lyrics of his early career to focus on his natural gift for sunny Folk-Pop, but even his early work was certainly interesting and valid. His distinctive combination of acoustic Folk and Rap on songs like this was a direct influence at Ed Sheeran’s wildly successful attempts at the same thing in later years, and while this song’s lyrics may not make a lot of sense if you parse them literally, they still have a certain fascination as pure stream-of-consciousness sound. This may not be an achievement on the level of “I’m Yours” or Mraz’s other late-career work, but it’s still a genuinely unique stylistic experiment that broke important ground in terms of blending two seemingly incompatible genres, and it proves that Mraz had obvious potential even at the beginning of his career.

Verdict: Good.

Now, as my regular readers know, I am actually quite fond of Easy Listening music as a whole, and have a particular partiality for the early forms of the genre from the 1960s, so when I acknowledge that even I am not inclined to defend Lawrence Welk, that should carry some weight. Let’s leave aside his asinine television mannerisms, because they admittedly don’t have much to do with his actual music, and look at him in the context of his genre. His two closest peers in the field of true Easy Listening of that era were Percy Faith and Mantovani. Like him, they were leaders of high-profile Easy Listening orchestras popular among older audiences at the time, but they were phenomenally gifted orchestraters who actually put an enormous amount of effort and care into their orchestral arrangements. While they may still have reputations as punchlines among those who’ve never actually listened to them, their actual music has in reality aged extremely well. Welk’s arrangements, on the other hand, just sound laughable today…in fact, they sound exactly like the stereotypical picture of early Easy Listening most people today imagine when they think of the genre. They alternate between being sickeningly syrupy and obnoxiously perky, and always leave lots of room for Welk’s trademark accordion, which only serves to remind one of why that instrument is now largely limited to parody performers like Weird Al Yankovich. This piece, the theme song to his infamous television show, falls into the ‘perky’ side of his output, and is probably the worst thing Frank Loesser ever had a hand in writing. Even among people who listen regularly to Liberace, Mantovani, Percy Faith or Henry Mancini, you’ll find virtually no-one willing to admit to liking Lawrence Welk, and there’s a reason for that beyond the ridiculous persona.

Verdict: A complete and utter embarrassment in any time period.

This song would be easy to write off as more of the self-centered bitchiness Lily Allen has developed a reputation for, like “Hard Out Here” or “URL Badman”. But a closer look reveals it as one of her smarter and more interesting songs, and one with a valid point to make. I’ve heard this song described as ‘humiliating an otherwise perfect boyfriend for being bad in bed’, but if you listen closely to the lyrics, you’ll realize that she’s not complaining so much about that, but the fact that he doesn’t seem to care. For all the ‘perfect guy’ act he puts on the rest of the time, it doesn’t seem to bother him at all that he’s the only one being satisfied. This doesn’t sound like a sweet guy with a problem he can’t help…it sounds like he isn’t trying to please her because he doesn’t think it matters, and Lily Allen’s point that that’s not okay is actually one of the smarter points she ever made.

Verdict: Much, much better than it seems on the surface.

I maintain that the Disney movie Pocahontas is an underrated masterpiece, but I think part of the reason for said underrated status is that so many people saw the “Colors of the Wind” sequence of the film out of context as a music video without actually seeing the film as a whole. On its own, the song can make it seem like the movie’s message is about how much wiser and closer to nature the Native Americans are than the White man (in other words, a variation on the same ‘Four legs good, two legs bad’ message found in films like Ferngully), which would be condescending to both races if it were actually the message of the film. In reality, the film is about two different cultures that have to understand each other; the audience is encouraged to sympathize with characters from both sides, and responsibility for the conflict is more evenly divided (note that on the climactic song “Savages”, both sides are singing about their hatred and xenophobia). While this is undeniably a ravishing song, releasing it as a standalone music video did a lot of harm to the movie’s reputation, and this is where Vanessa Williams’s Pop cover actually improves upon the original, at least out of context. Judy Kuhn is arguably the better singer of the two, but Williams’ evocative, almost mystical delivery is much easier to take on its own than Kuhn’s ultra-earnest near-harangue, which, while it makes perfect sense in the actual scene in the film, can come off as pretentious and self-righteous when divorced from the situation that leads to it dramatically.

Verdict: The Judy Kuhn version is glorious, but it comes off much better if you’ve seen the film. If you haven’t, the Williams pop cover is a much better introduction.

This song is probably the quintessential archetype of the weepy, sappy Easy Listening ballad that everyone seems to envision when they think about the genre. Yes, the tune is reasonably pretty, but the lyrics are hopelessly pretentious and embarrassing, with a hyperbolic level of emotion that was probably supposed to come off as nakedly honest but just winds up seeming simpering and pathetic. On top of that, Dan Hill was the direct predecessor to Michael Bolton in his ludicrously overwrought singing style—he sounds more like he’s in an enormous amount of physical pain than in a state of romantic anguish. There’s actually a recording of Barry Manilow singing this from one of his later albums, and while he still has to contend with the ridiculous purple prose that is this song’s lyrics, Manilow’s subtler, more natural performing style does make the song at lot easier to tolerate.

Verdict: Bad

Jimmy Buffett is one of those artists who are easy to underrate. It’s understandable why he has so many detractors…to the casual observer, his total lack of artistic pretention can make him seem like little more than a corporate shill, and his most famous material, like “Margaritaville” or “Why Don’t We Get Drunk (And Screw)”, while it certainly has its pleasures, doesn’t really display much depth. The sad truth is that you have to already be a fan of Buffett to know about most of his best material, but for the record, Buffett is perfectly capable of depth, and shows it beautifully even on some of his second-tier signature hits. For all the raucous uptempos he’s become famous for, Buffett actually has a real gift for poignant and haunting melodies and philosophical lyrics, and this song brings up both in spades. The song just sounds like a gentle acoustic Soft Rock ballad unless you’re paying close attention, but the placid melody is subtly haunting, particular on the verses, and the lyrics express a surprisingly deep philosophical worldview. But Buffett is never cerebral or pretentious; he makes his profound insights sound casual, so if you’re not listening closely you might never catch them. Buffett has more overtly moving, even gut-wrenching songs (if his detractors ever actually heard “He Went To Paris”, they might have to revise their arguments), but this song, the title track off his most acclaimed studio album, is quietly thought-provoking in a way that few casual listeners would associate with Buffett.

Verdict: Good, and worth checking out if you want to really understand Jimmy Buffett’s artistry.

Dave Barry implicitly accused this song of misogyny, placing it in the “‘Songs Women Really Hate” chapter of his famous book of bad songs, but I think that’s missing the point. It’s clear from Vikki Carr’s tortured delivery (which, by the way, is one of the all-time great performances in pop music history) that this is not supposed to be even remotely romantic. It’s a heartbreaking and disturbing look at a woman with a serious neurosis (I believe today we’d use the word ‘codependency’) who can’t stop herself from blindly ‘loving’ a man who has clearly treated her horribly. I actually see it as kind of obliquely feminist in that it’s portraying this mindset as a serious and frightening problem. It’s also quite ahead of its time: we wouldn’t start routinely getting these openly unhealthy obsession songs in popular music until the Alternative Rock era.

Verdict: Good.

As ridiculous Easy Listening oversingers of the Nineties go, Peabo Bryson is, for my money, far worse than the genre’s most common whipping boy Michael Bolton. The only time I’ve ever enjoyed his singing was when he played Lun Tha in The King and I opposite Lea Salonga, a situation that apparently inspired him to turn down the vocal showboating, and even then the part had been done much better by others. Apart from that, he generally sounds more unintentionally comic than smooth and romantic, and the problem is particularly severe on songs written for a musical-theater vocal style (like this, or his overblown “Beauty and the Beast” with Celine Dion, or, as a more obscure example, his embarrassing part in “You Are My Home” opposite Linda Eder on the Scarlet Pimpernel concept album). Regina Belle is a far more legit vocalist than Bryson, but her soulful contralto doesn’t sound right for a wide-eyed ingenue, which given the content of the lyrics is about the only thing the female part in this song can possibly be even outside the context of the movie, so she doesn’t make a great deal of sense in the part. The song itself is so ravishing melodically and lyrically that it manages to shine through to some degree even in this awkward rendition, but you’re much better off seeking out the Brad Kane/Lea Salonga duet from the actual movie.

Verdict: Great song, very disappointing performance (especially since there’s an obvious better alternative).