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Pop Rock Nation

Tag: Friday Throwback

  • Friday Throwback: "Leave a Light On"

    Garrett has kindly allowed me to commandeer the Friday Throwback this week, and in gratitude, I’d like to offer up this juicy bit of eye-and-ear candy from a former Go-Go:

    Here’s where I love Belinda Carlisle best: the very first notes she sings, in her 1989 single “Leave a Light On” where she goes from full voice to a tremulous whisper and makes the very act of singing feel like something indulgent and sensual, as if, with each note she sings, she’s biting into a big, messy, and oh-so-delicious chocolate-covered strawberry. It’s simultaneously innocent and indulgent, girl-group wholesome and black-and-white movie glamorous. But mostly, it’s just a hell of a long way from the gawky adolescence of her Go-Go years when her voice was as thin as her body wasn’t. But by the end of the decade, defying a nasty penchant for substance abuse as well as the artistically unwarranted mega-success of her sophomore solo record Heaven on Earth, Belinda Carlisle finally arrived as the woman of her own dreams with this single and video, and a wonderful, but highly underappreciated album called Runaway Horses.

    “Leave a Light On” was the first single from Runaway Horses, and if the song signaled Belinda’s emergence as a newer, more self-assured, more adult artist, its achingly romantic story of a woman bidding a reluctant goodbye to her lover and imploring him to keep her in mind while she’s away proved to be just as achingly prophetic about the fate of Carlisle’s solo career. Though she continued to record and release albums intermittently throughout the 90s (her most recent effort, 2007’s lovely Voila found her covering French pop standards), “Leave a Light On” marked the last time she would see Billboard‘s Top 20 (the song peaked at #11, according to Mr. Whitburn), and almost twenty years later, it’s a largely forgotten gem in the shadow of Carlisle’s bigger solo hits.

    The video’s a forgotten gem too. There’s nothing special about it, but it’s still a beauty to behold, if only because whoever directed it realized that both Las Vegas and Belinda Carlisle photograph extraordinarily well (my first draft of this little post veered dangerously close to pornography – heterosexual pornography, even) and had the wisdom to mostly leave well enough alone. Plainly speaking, Belinda is a knockout here, and the whole thing evokes a breezy, wistful nostalgia for old school Hollywood glamour, only with none of the harsh religiosity that Madonna would bring to “Vogue” just a couple months later. These four minutes hold all the delicious promise of an ice cream truck chugging through the middle of the Nevada desert, and seeing and hearing this song again feels as refreshing to me as a juicy, melty popsicle on the first day of summer. Slurp!

    Thanks again, GG… it’s been fun!

    -P. Lorentz

  • Friday Throwback – Ownlee Eue

    In 8th grade, one of the dance crews was performing at our junior high school rally. One of the members of the crew was a good friend of mine, so I was excited to see them dance. I honestly don’t remember much about their performance, but mostly because I was mesmerized by the song that came booming out of those speakers that day. In junior high school, kids are easily influenced and start liking things they may not have liked because of who introduced it to them. Well, I can’t say that I wasn’t influenced because one of my friends was dancing on stage and it was very cool, but when music hits you, it just hits you.

    – Yep, those are polka dots. That was his signature look.

    – Dude just busted out with a keytar.

    – “Love, cherish, respect and always be there for you”

    – Is he ever going to play the keytar?

    – This was the first song I’d ever heard where someone told a girl he would drink her bath water. It was disgusting then and still is now.

    – Ah, the old hump the floor dance move.

    Kwame isn’t all that well remembered even though he had 3 songs chart in the top 10 on the rap charts in 1989 and 1990. He actually stopped rapping by the mid 90s but recently came back as a producer and has worked with some main stream folks. I don’t think we’ll see the return of the polka dots, but this is what happens when rap stars go to die. If they have a good understanding with how the music is put together, they become producers.

  • Friday Throwback – You Make Me Wanna

    It seems like this week has been “Usher week” on our blog. But really, why not? Usher is a star and these days, there are so many fly by night artists that we should celebrate the artists that continually fill the appetites of their fan bases. Though Usher’s first CD (way back in 1994) didn’t really make an impact, his second did in a big way, thanks to this single, You Make Me Wanna. I actually remember going to a record store with my then girlfriend and buying the single because she was so crazy for it. How many times do you remember buying a certain song or album? That’s the impact this one made.

    – How much money do you want to bet that dude isn’t playing one lick of that guitar?

    – Is he wearing the Jordan XIs?

    – This song made every guy question any male friends their girlfriends had. It was like, “You like this song, ok, you can’t have anymore guy friends.”

    – What do the fish in the aquarium have to do with this song?

    – Ha! If you squint a little, I think you can see Jermaine Dupri.

    – Based off this video, you can tell dude has some dance skills, but I didn’t think he’d be the closest thing to MJ that he became. Wait, I think Chris Brown might’ve taken the closest thing to MJ on the dance floor mantle.

    – Why did they all take off their shoes? Was it to tell us that they were dancing with their laces untied?

    – What kind of speed bag dancing was Jermaine Dupri doing at the end of this video?

    The man is still singing and dancing 11 years later. And he probably won’t be stopping anytime soon.