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  • Infatueighties #65: I Keep Forgettin’

    Much like fellow blue-eyed soulsters Hall & Oates, Michael McDonald has only recently started to get his propers. The episode of What’s Happening?! featuring McD and his fellow Doobies is regarded as a cult classic, fellow karaoke-ers have discovered what a freaking difficult song “What a Fool Believes” is to sing, he got a spot on the “South Park” soundtrack some years ago (proving that he has a sense of humor), Justin Timberlake gave him a shout during his recent spot on SNL’s “Weekend Update”, and over half a century after jumping off the Doobie Express and onto the Solo Train (not to be confused with the Soul Train…I’m not sure if he ever made it there), you’ve gotta admit that almost all of McDonald’s work is fantastically sung, and he had at least a five-year run of good material.

    Even if you don’t count the 66,000 pop songs that he sang backup on during the Eighties, there’s still “Yah Mo B There” and “Real Love”, “Sweet Freedom” and “On My Own” (both from the McD-heavy summer of ’86). There’s also lesser-known gems like “I Can Let Go Now” and “I’ll Be Your Angel”. Of course, there’s also “I Keep Forgettin”, the song that kicked off his solo career back at the end of ’82. This sorrowful ballad (which charted Top 10 pop and R&B) is sung so passionately that you can’t help but feel for poor deluded Michael by song’s end. Some folks listening may find it to be soft-rock pablum, I consider it one of the decade’s best heartbreak songs from an underrated album-“If That’s What it Takes” was essentially the American answer to Phil Collins’ similarly underrated solo debut “Face Value”.

    This song alone makes me forgive all of those crappy Motown covers compilations. It also makes me forgive the God-awful video. C’mon Mike, you know like I know that there ain’t one note of acoustic piano anywhere in that damn song.

    Now would you expect so much soul from a guy who looks like he would win a “bear” competition at your local gay bar?

  • Friday Throwback – Rub You The Right Way

    I was thinking about what to use for this week and it hit me like a ton of bricks. A friend had sent me Ralph Tresvant’s video for Sensitivity and I figured that if Ralph looked silly, I remember Johnny Gill looking even more silly. He’s workin’ it in this video.

    – A shirtless Johnny wasn’t too impressive. Dude could’ve got in the gym a bit and hit the bench press.

    – Was he shiny suit man before Diddy was?

    – Check out JG’s moves. He’s got some frenetic moves.

    – Whenever I see his haircut, I think it looks like someone was building stairs.

    – His dance moves are like a wannabe Janet in the Rhythm Nation era, with MJ’s pelvic thrusts.

    – This might be one of the greatest lines in pop history – “Whenever I need to rub, I run her happiness.”

    – Why is he saluting and then crotch chopping all at the same time?

    – Is he wearing a leather tank top with that leather jacket and leather pants?

    – That’s an angry running man.

    Johnny’s Wikipedia page says that he, Ralph T, and Bobby B created a group called Heads Of State. Huh? Can’t they just get back with the rest of the New Edition fellas?

  • Infatueighties #66: Fast Car

    Story-songs peaked in the early Seventies with songs like “The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia”. It might be diluting “Fast Car”‘s overall message by classifying it as a “story song”, but it’s very easy to see Tracy Chapman’s 1988 breakthrough hit as a TV movie the way “Ode to Billie Joe”, isn’t it?

    The premise is simple: a couple aims to improve their surroundings by leaving their thankless, luckless ife behind. Beneath all that, though, “Fast Car” is a very simple love song. “The city lights came on before us/And your arms felt nice wrapped ’round my shoulders”. Tracy’s impassioned vocal makes you believe that those surroundings will be escaped by sheer force of will…and the power of love. Aw, shit. Hand me a tissue.

    Seriously, Chapman arrived in the summer of ’88 as an anomaly…not only a folk singer, but a BLACK folk singer. An explicitly political artist in a world of Taylor Daynes and Paula Abduls, someone who didn’t have model looks, but got video play anyway. Everything about her was different from what was popular at the time. Nevertheless, her self-titled debut hit #1 on the charts, won a shelf full of Grammys, and “Fast Car” became a Top 10 pop single, setting off a career that’s still going strong twenty years later.

    It’s hard to imagine someone like Tracy Chapman becoming a superstar in today’s musical climate, isn’t it? Makes one pine even more for the good old days.