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Pop Rock Nation

Tag: Mike Heyliger

  • 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 #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.

  • Pink’s Funhouse: So What? She’s Still a Rock Star!!

    When Pink came onto the music scene almost a decade ago, did anyone think we’d still be talking about her a decade later? After making her initial entrance as a reasonably anonymous R&B singer, Pink remade herself with 2001’s Missundaztood and has rolled along ever since, with a sound that straddles the line between pop and rock much like Pat Benatar did twenty-five years ago.

    Pink’s fifth album, Funhouse, follows in much the same path as 2006’s I’m Not Dead. The songs are hooky as all hell and Pink wails her behind off (someone should really start giving this girl props for her singing voice…even if she can’t act,someone at least needs to have her sing the vocal parts in any Janis Joplin biopic). The difference is that, for the most part, this album is themed around Pink’s recent divorce from motocross racer Carey (not Corey) Hart. Every song centers around bitterness, heartbreak or defiance. Actually, Funhouse reminds me a lot of Kelly Clarkson’s 2007 album My December. Difference between the two? Pink has a sense of humor, and that makes Funhouse go down a lot easier.

    Of course, by now you’ve heard So What, a swaggering rocker in which Pink (sarcastically?) shrugs off losing her husband by claiming “I’m still a rock star!”. You can almost see her laughing with her middle finger in the air during songs like this and Bad Influence (a song with a devil-may-care attitude that someone really needs to use in a rock musical), although there’s a catch in that throaty voice that makes you feel like maybe Pink’s not having as good a time as she says she is. The track Sober indicates as much, as she wonders sings “No pain inside/You’re like perfection/But how do I feel this good sober?”

    The album’s title track has a deceptively upbeat dance/rock flavor (think Franz Ferdinand). However, listen to the lyrics, and you’ll find that Pink isn’t exactly discussing a circus or carnival. “This used to be a fun house,” she sings, clearly directing her venom towards the end of her relationship. At one point, she growls “I’m gonna burn this f*cker down”. The rage is palpable. The acoustic Crystal Ball is another winner, as is Mean, on which Pink tries on a new hat with a song that would sound right at home on country radio…although I don’t think the cuss words would get past the censors. She only takes one break from the breakup talk with the rockin’ (but lyrically somber) Ave Mary A, this album’s one attempt at a socially conscious tune.

    My one quibble with Funhouse is that it’s a bit overproduced. Listen to a song like the beautiful piano ballad Glitter in the Air and think of what a great record Pink could potentially make with a simple guitarist, bass and drums. That minor detail aside, Funhouse is one of those rare albums that manages to be achingly personal and also pop-friendly. There are enough danceable tunes to keep the kiddies satisfied (and just about every song on the album has a killer chorus), but there’s a confessional singer-songwriter album lurking just beneath the shiny exterior. The ability to combine all of these elements into one coherent-and solid-album is what makes Pink one of the few to come out of the late-Nineties teen-pop boom to deserve the title of “artist”.