A Woman Named Pat

You Better Run - Pat Benatar (mp3)
Take It Any Way You Want It - Pat Benatar (mp3)

Pat Benatar might not have owned the ‘80s, but she had a very nice lease with an option to buy.

Were I God, I would have created a serendipitous series of events that allowed Pat Benatar to marry Rick Springfield. By now, their son, Patrick Springatar, would be in his late 20s and burning up the charts with the kind of power pop we’re sorely missing. But I digress.

Because I was just a kid, I was relatively tardy to the Pat Benatar party. I’d seen a few of her videos and heard her on the local radio station. Trivia moment: Benatar’s video for “You Better Run” was the second video ever played by MTV. Proof nobody remembers second place.

I was given the 45 for “Shadows of the Night” as a Christmas gift in 1982. I was 10. It grew on me very slowly.

For some reason, the song “Anxiety (Get Nervous)” got more of my attention. Maybe the Billy Joel song “Pressure,” released the previous spring and in a similar pop pseudo-psychology vein, laid the groundwork for me being intrigued. Somehow I tie these songs and that time in my life as the first signs I would eventually seek out a bachelor’s degree in psychology.

First I got her Get Nervous album. Then I expanded my obsession when two other albums, Crimes of Passion and Precious Time, were offered at the “Nice Price” of $3.99 each. For a couple of months, these three albums comprised most of what occupied my orbital lobes.

Ironically, in a time when videos were the vehicle and measuring stick of success, one could easily argue that Pat Benatar succeeded in spite of the general suckiness of her videos. Her most popular and ambitious video, “Love is a Battlefield,” was born cheesy and only gets worse over the years.

The video for “Shadows of the Night” arguably gave Quentin Tarantino inspiration for Inglorious Basterds. It was still a bad video though.

Her first five studio albums (and one concert album) all went platinum. She released these albums over six years. Think about that. One platinum-selling LP every year for six straight years. While not unprecedented, and while certainly not Beatles-esque, I dare you to find anyone in the last 20 years capable of competing with that kind of release pace and unbroken popularity.

Eminem had four platinum albums in six years. Mariah Carey had 10 platinum albums in 15 years and nine in 12, which is about as close as I suspect you’ll get (and, arguably, more impressive).

It’s also worth noting that, in an era where female stars rose the ranks on sex appeal, Benatar didn’t -- perhaps couldn’t or wouldn’t -- win at that particular game. Nothing about her looks or her behavior worked the Madonna or Lita Ford angle, and even Heart, a legitimately respectable musical force, kicked up another level of fame on the exposed cleavage and leg kicks of Nancy Wilson.

Pat, bless her heart, has a small chest, big teeth, and as a longtime friend says, “breeder hips.” I always found her appealing, but she wasn’t someone you’d consider universally attractive, nor did her videos work too hard to sell her as such.

In fact, many of her videos seemed almost dead set on not calling too much attention to her in such a way. Her song "Sex as a Weapon" was not posing. She'd earned some of the right to take that stand... (even if she didn't write that song or anything else she sang).

The nature of our relationship to popular musicians over the course of time is to remember the 24 different greatest hits albums released rather than for their original LPs. With the possible exception of Led Zeppelin or the Beatles (or, I guess, Radiohead), we measure people by their hits. While Pat comes away looking plenty fine when measured by her hits, it seems a shame that a lot of quality pop rock gets neglected.

You can go buy Crimes of Passion as an mp3 download for only $5. It’s probably her best overall album.

Wherefore Art Thou, Kenny Loggins?

Playing with the Boys - Kenny Loggins (mp3)
Down With the Sickness - Richard Cheese (mp3)

We need another Kenny Loggins. We will not find peace and harmony in our lives or on this planet until his replacement is found.

If you wanna know why the world's gone to hell in a handbasket in the past couple of decades, it all goes back to the disappearance of Kenny Loggins from the pop charts. I'm totally serious.

The world is all about balance. Yin and yang. Anyone who watches LOST or studies the martial arts understands these things. And Kenny Loggins was a vital cog in the interworkings of natural balance.

Don't misuderstand here. Even when I was a shrill, gum-chewing ankle-biter, annoying the crap out of my older step-brothers and expressing myself in all the obnoxious ways hyperactive elementary school nerds do, I still thought Kenny Loggins was a tool. In fact, as best I can recall, no one I ever know actually stood up and proudly proclaimed their love of Kenny Loggins.

Why would you stand up and proclaim your love of a tool?

Kenny wasn't just a tool, like, loser tool. He was a tool, like, corporate shill tool. He was a Hollywood wet dream, with the God-given talent of crafting a catchy pop hook around whatever subject matter and theme your movie needed. And he did it over and over. Hell, he even managed to do it in retrospect by making that God-forsaken awful song "Heartlight" in homage to E.T.: The Extraterrestrial, after the movie had already become a blockbuster!

So, including his after-the-fact E.T. song, Kenny wrote songs for six movies. Each time, he had at least one big hit, and each time, the movie kicked ass at the box office.*

• "I'm Alright" for Caddyshack
• The theme for Footloose
• "Danger Zone" and "Playing With the Boys"*** from Top Gun
• "Meet Me Halfway" from the Sly Stallone arm-wrestling epic worthy of Homer known as Over the Top. Yes, this movie did better than you'd think, money-wise. For a few years, Sly could make movies where all he did was sit on a toilet, and the movie made money (see: Cobra)

Kenny also had a few more legitimate pop gold nuggets in which any fool could believe, including "What a Fool Believes" (performed by the Doobies), "Your Mama Don't Dance," and "This is It" (performed with Michael McDonald).

But back to my point.

I can't recall a single human being, ever, who owned a Kenny Loggins album. No Kenny Loggins posters on anyone's walls. No kids at school announcing that they couldn't wait for Kenny fucking Loggins to roll into town, because they just knew that dude could put on a kick-ass show and rock the motherfuckin' house!!!!!!!

Yet.

Yet we all listened to his music. We weren't proud of it, mind you. In fact, you're probably reading this right now and shaking your head and denying it. "No, not me. I always hated that dude." Sure buddy. Sure you did.

When people would catch us actually bopping our heads to the beat of "Danger Zone," opening our mouths wide enough to take in a river as we imagined ourselves screeching out those wonderfully cheesy lyrics, we'd play it off, make fun of that tool Kenny, and talk about what a loser he was. No one can ever prove you listened to his songs, that you liked them. That truth is between you, God, and Kenny.

But Kenny knew what he was doing all along. Kenny is King of the Earworms, and I betcha he's made enough money off the eight or so legitimate earworms he crafted to provide a comfortable living for his children, and maybe his children's children. His grandkids will be like the Hugh Grant character in "About A Boy," who lives solely off his father's royalties from a single Christmas song.

Every generation of music lovers and pop addicts needs its Kenny Loggins. He provides a sense of balance to the world. He balances the scales of Musical Justice. He unites all people by creating tunes we secretly enjoy while giving us a symbol of uncoolness to mock. The sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, waistoids, dweebies, dickheads... they all mock Kenny Loggins, but none of them can quite seem to punch the dial when "I'm Alright" hits those speakers.

Kenny Loggins is the Yin... and the Yang.

You, Kenny Loggins, are one of the first Real Man of Genius and the obvious inspiration behind its singer. I can't wait to see the hack that one day ascends to your throne.



* -- Well, until Caddyshack II. At which point, Kenny was announced DOA, along with Chevy Chase and the rest of the cast. That one movie was the smoke monster of its time.**


** -- LOST reference. Sorry, but I'm so wrapped up in that show right now, it permeates everything I do. I'm afraid to masturbate right now because I'm so caught up in that whole "Live together, die alone" mantra.


*** -- Sorry for the masturbation reference in **, but I can't help but go there when I hear Kenny's song "Playing With the Boys."

Billy's Best Worst Wonderful Song Ever

Dancin' - Olivia Newton-John with The Tubes (mp3)

All of us have what gets called a "guilty pleasure," but sometimes our affection for a specific item transcends such a simplistic description. Sometimes we know how inexcusable it is to love something as much as we do, but holding onto that love is what helps remind us what love is about. This is to say, True Love is often indefensible and unreasonable.

I have just such a love for the song "Dancin'" from the Gawd-awful movie Xanadu.

My iTunes counter claims I've listened to "Dancin'" some three dozen times. I'd say I listen to it two or three times every month and have for years. Sure, there might have been a month or two in the last few years that I didn't listen to it. But there are other months -- particularly in the summer -- where I listen to it three times in a single day, my own version of how A Christmas Story runs for 24 consecutive hours on TBS.

"Dancin'" is the 1982 version of the Kitchen Sink song. They try and throw big bands, the sultry multi-tracked voice of Olivia, the pseudo-rugged rawk sound of The Tubes, complete with the hyper-dumbed-down "wanna get laid now now dear sweet Jesus right now" message, and the oh-so-delicious attempt to blend two seemingly disparate songs into a single unified collective. It's not just a duet of two voices; it's a duet of two whole songs.

"Dancin'" is by no means the first song to successfully do this. And I'm sure some listeners would happily argue that "successfully" is debatable. I can't deny a weakness for many of the aspects of the song, either. Olivia? Check! Songs about cheap sex? Check! Hand claps? Check! Harmonic "Ahhhs"? Check! The merging of this sonic melange into an over-produced assault? Abso-fuckin' check-lutely!

Loving the song still doesn't help me explain how it plays any part whatsoever in the movie. Then again, you'd be lucky to find five scenes in the movie that create any sense of cohesion. Xanadu is like Kentucky Fried Movie except with music, roller skates and almost no sense of humor. Which is to say, not good.

This song gets to the heart of the difference in mentality between the sexes when it comes to looking for a one-night stand. Or, well, it's how we think we think when it comes to one-night stands. Circa 1980.

You've got the female view. She's smooth and seductive and looking to ease your worries. Come to my lair because I can make the world disappear for a while... at least until the sun comes up in the morning and my makeup has worn off and I start talking about how much we have in common and yeah I know this started as a drunken sleepover but maybe just maybe we have enough that we should talk relationship and do I talk too much my last boyfriend said I do but he's an asshole not like you.

Then you've got the male. He's the moron who won't ask for directions when he's driving, who couldn't give one shit about whether the woman he sleeps with has an orgasm. He's that guy from the "Unforgivable" video that's on YouTube, just lookin' for a nut and some waffle fries.

Crappy lyrics. Cheesy guitar licks. Sometimes True Love cannot be broken down like some J. Evans Pritchard Scale that measures a song's greatness on certain qualities and then determines your affection. Sometimes it makes little to no sense.

So, until then, Olivia, you keep singin' in three-part harmony; and Tubes, you keep rawkin' in 1980s faux synthness; and I'll keep playing it on a regular basis to remind myself of the deeper meaning of love.

And cheap, meaningless sex.