It opened up my eyes

For no particular reason, Ace of Base's "The Sign" has been showing up more and more in my listening habits. I think it's because it is on the genius playlist that I mentioned in my last post. On my way back from taking a friend out to dinner for his birthday on Friday night, it shuffled up and listening to it got me to thinking about how well it holds up, nearly 20 years after its initial release.

I bought The Sign (the album) based on the strength of the initial single "All That She Wants." It was inescapable on the radio in the fall of 1993. Looking back now, it was kind of an anomaly amongst what was getting played on the radio back then. I had all but abandoned most Hot 100 fare for country-pop as the Nirvana/Pearl Jam/grunge that was played ad nauseum back then was just not my thing. I certainly wasn't expecting Swedish pop to take hold again. I mean, this was NOT Roxette or ABBA and this was the early 90s. But to no one's surprise, I lapped up the sound of "All That She Wants." My sister, who was in junior high at the time, also got into the song, buying the cassingle if memory serves.

However, the purchase of The Sign was a bit of a let down. It just didn't click with me. Some of that might have been because the instant I bought it, my sister commandeered it and I barely got to listen to it all of Christmas break. In any event, I was resigned to Ace of Base being a one-hit wonder. I heard of the impending release of "The Sign" as a single and figured it would peak at #83 and that would be the end of it. I couldn't have been more wrong. "The Sign" spent 6 weeks at #1 and was the freaking best selling single of 1994! The Sign sold 9 million copies (many of which, no doubt, as in used CD stores.) I still own mine, having warmed up to it substantially. Once I got back to school after Christmas break, I couldn't stop listening to it.

So here's my question - which single holds up better? "All That She Wants" or "The Sign"? My money is on "The Sign" if for no other reason than it contains my oft-quoted line "life is demanding, without understanding."

Revisionist Ray

I was looking at Slant Magazine's 100 Best Singles of the 90s with quite a bit of interest today. The biggest reason for this is I've been on a huge 90s kick recently, which culminated the other day in the purchase of Deee-lite's World Clique album. Famous for the infectious (and #11 on Slant's list) single "Groove Is In The Heart," I'm happy to report that the rest of the album is just as good. It'll sit along side the La Bouche, Corona, and Real McCoy in my iTunes library quite nicely. The whole list is a fascinating read and while I more appreciate the #1 song than enjoy it, I certainly can't argue with its right to be at the pole position for the decade.

There are - count 'em - FIVE Madonna songs on this list, more than any other artist on the list. I found this really odd because, for all of her longevity, I tend to think of Madonna as an 80s artist. The Immaculate Collection, released in 1990, contains some of her best known hits and some of the best known hits of the 80s - period. I tend to think of her 90s work as more mature but less popular and certainly less well-remembered as the songs from her glory days of the 80s. A lot of this was self-inflicted as the Sex/Erotica/Body of Evidence backlash really hit her hard at the beginning of the decade and she never really recovered from it until Evita and Ray of Light. The five songs listed on Slant's list are as follows:

#42 - Secret (1994)
#36 - Deeper & Deeper (1992)
#34 - Erotica (1992)
#16 - Ray of Light (1998)
#10 - Vogue (1990)

Looking at that list, it's hard to deny "Vogue" the #10 spot and the highest ranking of any of Madonna's 90s singles. It's practically an 80s single anyway and there's no denying the lasting impact its had on pop culture. You need look no further than Glee's shot-by-shot reenactment of the "Vogue" video to see this. I was a senior in high school when "Vogue" came out and I was **this close** to getting our class motto changed to "Strike a pose!" (we ended up with "today we follow, tomorrow we lead." BORING.) I also loved this line from the "Vogue" entry in the Slant article: If disco died a decade earlier, what the fuck was this big, gay, fuschia drag-queen boa of a dance song sitting on top of the charts for a month for? Because it was 1990 and Madonna was at the top of her game, that's why!

I also think that "Deeper & Deeper," "Erotica," and "Secret" are all deserving of their spots, but my big gripe is that "Ray of Light" outranks all of them, and true classics like "Frozen," "Rain," and "Human Nature" are omitted completely. While I have no quarrel with the Ray of Light album aside from the fact that sometimes it took itself a little too seriously and was a little too earnest in spots, was "Ray of Light" the song really that popular? As I recall, the record company had to work especially hard to get this song to chart as high as it did. The first week that it was on the Billboard chart, it debuted at #5 and went no higher. It is lauded as "Madonna's highest Hot 100 debut" but the late 90s were a time during which #1 debuts were more the rule than the exception. It was also the time in which singles were deeply discounted as record companies blew their wad all in the first week of chart eligibility to guarantee a huge splash on the Billboard Hot 100. If I recall correctly, "Ray of Light" was the first of Madonna's singles to receive this kind of record company PR push. The week it debuted at #5, I distinctly remember thinking to myself "there's no way this song is the #5 song in the country right now." Pretty sure its radio airplay was abysmal (Chart people, feel free to back me up or refute me on this.) So if this is the case, why is this song so fondly remembered when "Frozen" doesn't even get a nod?

For what its worth, much like Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit," "Ray of Light" is a song that I more appreciate than actually enjoy. It's always been a little too spastic for my taste and for all the awards that the video won, I find it to be one of her least inspired of the decade, certainly from that album. I think its elevation in the Madonna canon may be in part due to efforts of Madonna herself. She can't seem to resist an opportunity to haul it out on tour, probably because it serves as one of the "okay breathe now" songs during which she plants her feet and plays the guitar for 5 minutes. It was great to hear on the Drowned World Tour, a surprising choice on the Confessions Tour but an appallingly boring choice for Sticky & Sweet, especially since it was basically a retread of the Confessions Tour performance. It was also performed at both Live 8 and Live Earth. The one live performance of "Ray of Light" that I really love is the one from The Oprah Winfrey Show. Although clearly singing with a backing track, has she ever sounded better? (not to mention that she looked fantastic.)



Watching that performance and listening to her belt it out make me want to reconsider my harsh position of "Ray of Light" but no. I only need rewatch the Sticky & Sweet performance of it and I'm reminded all over again.

But really, for my money, this is probably my favorite version of "Ray of Light." When Anna was in preschool, we watched this over and over and over again. I thought of it again as I was getting ready to write this post. "The Wheels on the Bus" vs. "Ray of Light."



So Madonna fans, casual and not-so-much and especially those that really don't follow her career - I'm curious. Am I alone in my assessment or is "Ray of Light" really not all that?

SAW (non-Kylie)

I was on my way home this morning after dropping Anna off at school and a song came on my iPod that got me to thinking about Stock, Aitken & Waterman. Most of those who read will immediately recognize SAW as the UK songwriting and production team that was responsible, most notably, for Kylie's first four albums. When I was in high school, it was amazing how much SAW I gravitated towards, most of the time not even realizing it. The song that I heard on the way back this morning was a SAW song and it got me to thinking about my favorite non-Kylie SAW songs. There are so many to choose from, but I narrowed the field pretty successfully. There are four and if I really wanted to subject Matt and Bess to unfiltered Dan music, I would submit all four for the next DMB CD. (speaking of, when are we doing that?)

Donna Summer / This Time I Know It's For Real
This is the song that prompted this post, so I guess you can thank 1989 Donna Summer for it. I was always impressed that Donna Summer got radio airplay in 1989 as it was well past her disco heyday. She was a natural fit for SAW and her bigger than life voice complemented the rather simple melodies and songs surprisingly well. Say what you will about SAW, but can they write a chorus or what?



Boy Krazy / That's What Love Can Do
Released in 1993, I always thought that this sounded like Kylie. You see, I was completely oblivious to Kylie's continued success overseas so I figured she had completely disappeared. I don't think I actually figured out it wasn't until many years later, although I think I knew in my heart of hearts that it wasn't - not squeaky enough! (said with love and affection.) I always loved this song but don't think I got my hands on it till the Napster free-for-all.



Laura Branigan / Shattered Glass
I think this was probably the first SAW song I ever heard. I bought Laura Branigan's Touch album on the strength of "Shattered Glass." Too bad it ended up being one of only two SAW tracks - the other being "Whatever I Do." I always felt kind of bad for Laura Branigan. The record company really never knew what to do with her. Was she a power ballad belter? Was she a dancefloor, high NRG diva? Regardless, "Shattered Glass" is a highlight even though it stalled out just outside the top 40.



Bananarama / I Can't Help It
Fresh off the success of "Venus," Bananarama turned their follow-up album WOW! over to SAW. The best track off that album is still the first song and kick-off single "I Can't Help It." Containing my classic misheard lyric "I got debated by your heartache" (it's really "I'm captivated by you honey"), the cheesiness is sealed by the line "Boys say, they say I'm good enough to eat (manger)" How can you resist French in a song? Watching this video now, I'm amazed at how much they were clearly playing to their main demographic even in 1989.



Did I miss anything? I'm sure ChartRigger might have a thing or two to say.

The OTHER Chumbawumba song

Anna has recently discovered (by virtue of yours truly) the wonders of Chumbawumba's "Tubthumping." Since it's been 13 (!) years since that song was played into the ground popular, I think I'm just about ready to start listening to it again. My sister claimed that it was played at least 3 times an hour on the local top-40 radio station back in 1997. What started out as pretty infectious and cool sounding (I GET KNOCKED DOWN...but I get up again...) became massively annoying on the millionth listen. It's been in my iTunes library since the advent of iTunes and I'm sure I had the mp3 long before then. Ignored and unloved, it languished.

Well, it ended up on the story soundtrack of one of Heidi's NaNo novels and now it's like it's 1997 all over again.

I always did quite like the dichotomy of the song - the loud and boisterous guys and their aforementioned knocked down portion, followed by the sweet female voice of the verses. It's kind of everything that's right about a novelty pop song. Trust me, a novelty song is one of the hardest things in the world to pull off and still sound good once the novelty has worn off. I never liked it enough to actually purchase the Tubthumper album. In hindsight, I am so glad I resisted that urge because believe me, it was totally there. How many people bought that album based on the strength of "Tubthumping" only to have it end up in a used CD store or a library 3 months later? I remember seeing multiple copies at just about every used CD store I frequented in the late 90s/early 00s. That said, the Ames library doesn't have a copy. For shame.

That's not to say that there are no other good songs on the album. I would argue that there's another song that's at least as good, if not better, than "Tubthumping." The follow-up single "Amnesia" (which completely failed to chart in the U.S.) is completely and utterly worthy. As ear-wormish as "Tubthumping" it contains the great lyric "do you suffer from long term memory loss...I don't remember." I think I heard it on the radio exactly once because I remember Heidi and I laughing at that lyric. Have a listen for yourself. (not the greatest copy of the video, but it's what YouTube has)



This was, amazingly, not on my iPod until just now.

Despite their one-hit wonder status here in the U.S., I was surprised to find that Chumbawumba actually has had a 30 year career in the UK! Who knew?

My friend Mary and I always like to joke about one-hit wonders and say how much better we liked their other hits vs. their one hit. The implicit suggestion in that statement is that there WERE no other hits. But I think that given the choice, "Amnesia" actually does edge out "Tubthumping" although there will always be something so fun and 90s-tastic about getting knocked down and getting up again.

And another goodie I found this morning - the country/western version of "Tubthumping." HOW do I get a copy of this? Dolly should totally cover this song in this style. Anna would, undoubtedly, prefer the original version. She's a purist that way.

Baby it's tonight

It's a fact of my life - some songs stick around forever while others get buried in the years that pass between first listen and the present. One of the latter type of songs recently bubbled up - pretty sure it was during my last bunch of overnight shifts. The song was Jude Cole's "Baby It's Tonight." It had been so long since I had heard the song that I had to Google the lyrics to remember who sang it.



Liking a song like this is kind of indefensible, even though it is catchy and has a good hook. But what's worse is going and buying the entire album that the song is on (A View From 3rd Street, for those wondering.) But it was on eMusic and I swear, buying music from eMusic feels like stealing - although it isn't - so it's never hard for me to justify getting music from there. I mean, it wasn't all that long ago that I went on a Samantha Fox buying binge, all thanks to eMusic.

When I first picked it up, I didn't really like anything on it, aside from "Baby It's Tonight." It just didn't click with me for some reason. But for some reason, in the last week, the clicking has commenced. It's good pop music - a bit Bryan Adams-ish for my taste, but I still enjoy it more than is probably legal. As the allmusic review insinuated, there are several good songs that even a couple years earlier would have been all over the radio. The songs are actually pretty smart considering it's just pop music from the dawn of the 90s. Although this may be a bit of a slam, it reminds me of Alannah Myles' debut record which contained the ubiquitous "Black Velvet." Straddling the line between rock and pop, it is actually quite satisfying.

Yeah, the video screams 90s, but he's kind of cool in a douchebaggy (props to Matt & Lance - just doing my part) sort of way which is, oddly enough, the coolest kind of cool there is.

Tomorrow's news

So the first day of my time off hasn't been as productive as I would have liked. Granted, it's only 1:00 and I can turn that around pretty quickly. But mostly, I've been content to sit around in front of the TV, which is odd for me because I so rarely do it. The show I've been spending my time with today is the unlikeliest of candidates - the late 90s Saturday night drama Early Edition.

Early Edition has a very simple premise - regular guy Gary Hobson (Kyle Chandler) gets a copy of the Chicago Sun-Times delivered to his door every morning. The catch is that it's tomorrow's paper. He spends most of each episode going around trying to change the bad headlines before the day is out. I always kind of liked this show, although I have to say that I rarely ever watched it. Mostly, I just watched it sporadically if it happened to be on, never deliberately tuning into it. Even by 1997-98, being devoted to a TV show was quickly becoming a thing of the past. I'm not sure how or why that happened, but somewhere along the way, I decided I just couldn't be bothered with remembering when a show was on TV and that pretty much continues to this day. The big exception to this is Glee, and that's because there's three of us remembering when that show is on. So more often than not, I missed it even though, as I said, I did really like it when I watched it.

Thanks to the brilliance that is TV on DVD, I finally have the chance to rewatch all these old shows that I just didn't watch back then. And after watching three episodes of Early Edition this morning, I realized that I had actually underestimated my fondness for this show and also marveled (much like I do when I watch The X-Files on DVD) why I didn't watch it when it was on TV. What sets this show apart from something that hasn't aged as well (i.e. Quantum Leap) is the writing and characterization. Even three episodes in, you can tell the writers are paying attention to character. If someone is going to get a copy of the paper a day ahead of time, it couldn't happen to a more likable guy than Gary. He's just such an "aw shucks" guy that you can't help but root for him. He does good without being a do-gooder. What I especially like is how Gary is just an ordinary guy who has had something extraordinary happen to him. Yes, he stumbles with it, he screws up, but don't we all? As an everyman hero, he works. He's the kind of guy I'd want to be friends with.

That said, his choice in friends is a bit uneven. I take no issue with Marissa, the receptionist at his office (a job he promptly quits after the pilot episode.) She is the angel on his shoulder, providing the moral compass. It's his "best friend" Chuck Fishman that I have serious problems with. I don't remember him from the few times I watched the series and apparently he leaves after two seasons, but his presence, even after three episodes, is beyond grating. His function is clearly to be the foil to Gary, and in so doing, is everything Gary is not. I'm trying to think of adjectives that describe him, but I keep coming back to selfish. He's like a weasel - one that is completely and utterly harmless - but a weasel nonetheless. When it comes to the paper, he thinks of nothing but the potential ways to make money off of it, usually in the form of knowing the sports scores so that he can safely bet on them, the outcome completely secured. But what bothers me most about him is that he's basically a beta-male pretending to be an alpha, whereas Gary has a healthy mix of both. Nothing bothers me more than someone walking around pretending to be something they aren't and the overcompensation that Chuck does in the guy-ness department just makes me shake my head in complete exasperation.

But no one's perfect. Gary does follow in the late 90s tradition of wearing approximately one pound of product in his hair.

An annoying character and excess hair product aside, I'm going to keep on going with this show. The stories are tightly written and almost always satisfying. And there's always a happy ending, which I am a sucker for, regardless of how cool or uncool that might be. One other bonus is the abundance of Chicago scenery. It just makes me want to go live in Chicago! New York City might be fun to visit, but Chicago is probably the only big urban area that I would actually consider living in.

But that's enough TV for now. I'm going to go read till it's time to go pick Anna up from school. Heidi's disappeared into her office and is back in writing mode.

Early Edition is available from Netflix. Sadly, only two of the four seasons are available.

I'm gonna get you, yes I am!

When I was in college, I had a roommate who was totally into the 90s dance/R&B stuff. You know the music of which I speak - songs like CeCe Peniston's "Finally," Black Box's "Strike It Up," La Bouche's "Be My Lover" and Snap!'s "Rhythm Is A Dancer." There are countless others and at the time, they all sounded about the same to me, but that hardly mattered when you were out and pleasantly buzzed by cheap beer. And even though it's getting to be 20 years on (!), they still sound pretty much the same. But it still doesn't matter. Whenever I get 90s nostalgic, trashy 90s Eurodance is usually what I reach for first.

My favorite of all these songs is a song that I spent the last 5 years of the 90s trying to track down. I remember my other roommate singing along with it in the car, and the only things I remembered from it were the lyrics "Why waste your time/You know you're gonna be mine," a rap breakdown that started "Yo DJ pump this party!" and a vampish part that went "da da dat da doo da da/da da dat da doo da da da." I recall searching AltaVista like crazy for this song, trying to identify it. When Napster hit, I tried every permutation of "Yo DJ pump this party!" and "Why waste your time" that I could muster to completely no avail.

Then one day, I got extremely lucky and stumbled across it while searching 90s dance music compilations on Amazon. By then, Napster was defunct, but Audiogalaxy wasn't, so I went and got the song. I remember bragging to my sister about how I had found this song I had been looking for so long. Turns out, she knew it all along and all I would have had to have done was ask her and all the hair-pulling could have been avoided, even though a part of me enjoyed the thrill of the chase.

The song in question? Bizarre Inc.'s "I'm Gonna Get You."



The version of the song I got from Audiogalaxy was not the version I remembered, so about a year ago tonight (I went through my massive Gmail archive to find out for sure), I put out a call to some friends of mine to see if anyone had a better version of the song. As one of those guys said, this is why it pays to have gay friends. Not only did he have a better version of the song, he had THE version of the song I remembered. It was 1993 all over again.

Over the last few weeks, I've been vetting songs for the latest installment of the CD I make with Matt and Bess - the theme for this one is guilty pleasures. "I'm Gonna Get You" didn't quite make the cut as I'm not really embarrassed by it. But it sure does take me back.

(thanks to XO and Robbie whose Twitter conversation has inspired this fit of 90s nostalgia)

I'm-a-m'i'm-i'm-i'm-alright

I made the mistake of listening to this song the other morning. It has now been stuck in my head for over 24 hours.



I have written about all there is to write about Jo Dee Messina before. Liking her music is kind of indefensible, but there are so many country songs that I like more than I probably should that I have given up trying to defend them. This is one of them. What I will say here is that this song is a product of the time when the line between country and pop was so blurred that I strayed over to country for some times. Probably from the period from about 1993-1999, I liked quite a few country acts outside of the omnipresent Dolly Parton. Many of them persist in my listening habits today, but nowhere near the level they did then.

I also really like this video, even though it is simple and basically is just Jo Dee hamming it up for the camera. There is something mildly trashy about it. As one of the commenters on the (non-embeddable) YouTube version of this video said, there is something kinda Sarah Palin about her, and I can't believe they meant that as a compliment!

Oddly enough, I can't figure out how this song fits into my overall musical taste. It doesn't have much in common with most anything I listen to, apart from being kind of cheesy and campy, but it is what it is.

A picture worth a thousand lies

Popular (and not so popular music) is such a huge part of my life that it's kind of hard to surprise me with something new. But let me tell you a secret: the way to do it is to introduce me to something that is old but new to me. Something from a time period through which I watched music come and go, but somehow managed to slip beneath my radar. Well, this managed to happen last night.

A song called "Bury My Lovely" by October Project landed in my inbox quite randomly last night during an e-mail conversation with a friend. I had never heard the song before, but his music recommendations rarely, if ever, disappoint. First released in 1993, this song hits me in all the right places. It boasts a female singer (Mary Fahl) with a haunting vocal, a minor-ish key signature, and syncopation all over the place. It is angsty but not too much, and has a dark and brooding video to accompany it. (sorry it's so small! There were no clips on YouTube that I could embed.)

Where was this song in 1993? Obviously, it was nowhere near my radar. It would have fit in perfectly with where I was and how I felt about life back then. That is not to say that I was this emo, brooding young adult, but I did have my fair share of (mostly manufactured) drama and I can just see myself sitting in my room at 3AM on a Saturday night while playing around on the then-fledgling internet (ISCABBS anyone?) playing this song over and over again. Kind of like now, I just can't stop playing it.

So this morning, I picked up the entire October Project album on iTunes. You would think that it would get same-y and you'd want to turn it off after a few songs. I was nervous about that as well, but I'm glad to report that those fears were unfounded. It also has a completely memorable album cover. It makes me almost wish I had bought the physical CD.

That's going to be my Halloween costume this year! OK, maybe not.

If I were to pick one adjective to describe October Project, I would pick autumnal. As I was listening to it this morning while walking to work, I found myself wishing that it were about 40 degrees cooler, a little bit darker and that the leaves were brown and on the ground instead of green and on the trees. I can see how this could easily have been one of the essential "fall albums" had I discovered it just a little bit later. But sadly, we can't control those kinds of things. I was lamenting this in an e-mail to the person who sent me "Bury My Lovely" and he had a great reply to this. I hope he doesn't mind that I reproduce it here.

October Project now is like looking at a picture of New England autumn during the blaze of summer heat.

I think he hit the nail right on the head.