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Pop Rock Nation

Tag: Michael McDonald

  • 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?

  • Infatueighties: “Yah Mo B There”

    Chances are, if you were anywhere near a radio station from roughly 1980-1987, within thirty minutes you’d hear something from either James Ingram or Michael McDonald. The two Midwestern guys (Ingram was from Akron, OH while McDonald repped St. Louis) were very fond of the duet and/or the background support vocal, and their list of collaborators reads like a laundry list of Eighties hitmakers: Michael Jackson, Shalamar, Kenny Loggins, Donna Summer, Kenny Rogers, Kim Carnes, Nicolette Larson, Linda Ronstadt, Patti Austin, Anita Baker and Toto, just to name a few. It was inevitable that the two would eventually collaborate.

     

    Actually, it wasn’t that eventual. “Yah Mo B There” was the second single from Ingram’s debut solo album “It’s Your Night”. Of course, Ingram was already a Grammy winning success story at that point, due to “Just Once” and “One Hundred Ways”, his featured spots on Quincy Jones’ “The Dude” album. McDonald was only a year or so removed from his lead singer’s spot in the Doobie Brothers and had only released his own debut solo album a few months before. The result was a smash: “Yah Mo B There” reached the Top 15 on the pop charts, Top 5 R&B, and won the pair a Grammy for “Best R&B Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group”. It was Ingram’s third Grammy as a solo artist, McDonald’s second.

    The song itself screams “Eighties”, with a hypnotic, synthesized beat. Rod Temperton, the former Heatwave member who wrote many of The King of Pop’s biggest hits, co-penned this track, while the legendary Quincy Jones produced.  Both men were at this time riding high off the success of “Thriller” (in which Ingram was also a participant, having co-written “P.Y.T”. Thematically, it comes thisclose to being gospel. “Yah”, of course, being shorthand for “Yahweh”. Ingram purposefully fudged with the spelling of the title phrase so as not to scare off pop listeners from it’s fairly explicity spiritual message.

    One person they definitely didn’t scare off was me. Ingram and McDonald both give phenomenal performances, full of passion. They’ve not always given themselves the best material, but they scored here. Over twenty years later, this song still moves me. Not to sermonize at all, but even as an occasionally lapsed Catholic (maybe even more because of that) this song’s message resonates with me especially when I’m going through dark patches. Both the song and it’s video make clear that there is some light at the end of the tunnel.

    Although this video version is of a slightly inferior remix (what’s up with the percussion tracks?), the power of the song’s message rings as clear as the voices that sing it. Well, maybe those voices aren’t so clear. I can never figure out what the men are singing after they vocalize the title (folks say it’s “up and over”, but it sure doesn’t sound like it)

  • New Releases 3/11/08: Snoop, Fat Joe, Rick Ross, "Now 27" and More!!!

    Hey, what do ya know? A pretty decent-sized week for releases!! Sorry for missing out on last week, when Alan Jackson, The Black Crowes and Michael McDonald all released highly anticipated albums. But moving on…
    Remember when Snoop Dogg was just a young pup? Well, Long Beach’s #1 gangsta is releasing his 10th album today. “Ego Trippin’” is preceded by the smash hit “Sensual Seduction”, which finds the D-O-Double G singing T-Pain style over an Eighties-tastic groove (if you haven’t seen the video yet, hit YouTube now)! “Trippin’” features no involvement from Snoop’s longtime mentor Dr. Dre, but is executive produced by New Jack Swing founder Teddy Riley, so there’s a good chance that the results will be more interesting than 2006’s underwhelming “Blue Carpet Treatment”.
    Hip-hop fans will also delight (maybe) in new releases by NYC hardcore stalwart Fat Joe (the album’s called “The Elephant In The Room” and I refuse to make the obvious joke here) and similarly rotund Miami rapper Rick Ross (“Trilla”). Neither is my cup of tea, but hey, both guys sell records, so what do I know?
    With “American Idol” mania in full swing, it was only a matter of time before one of the judges released an album, and today brings the release of “Randy Jackson’s Music Club Vol. 1”. This compilation contains a who’s-who of pop music, from the long-awaited (I’m being sarcastic in case you couldn’t tell) return of Paula Abdul to “Idol” finalists Katharine McPhee and Elliott Yamin to pop royalty like Mariah Carey. Should be an interesting listen.
    “Now That’s What I Call Music” has become a musical institution in the past 10 years or so, and the 27th installment in the series arrives today. It features the latest hits by Rihanna, Chris Brown, Janet Jackson, Taylor Swift and many more. A wise choice if current Top 40 radio is your thing. As a companion piece, “Now That’s What I Call Music-80’s” also arrives today, bringing you classic smashes ranging from “Billie Jean” to “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go”.

    Also hitting stores today, singer/songwriter Kaki King, 2-disc greatest hits compilations from Barry White and The Cranberries, and the return of mid-Nineties two hit wonders The Presidents of the United States of America!! I’m in if they remake that “Peaches” song!!
    A full list of this week’s new releases can be found here: