Heterarmony

Rusted Wheel - The Belle Brigade (mp3)
At Least I Have You - Mates of State (mp3)
Chances Are - Bob Seger & Martina McBride (mp3)

My single most favorite trend of the past 20 years in music is the surge in male-female musical groups.

Boy-girl duets is nothing new, mind you. Helloooo, Sonny & Cher? Donny & Marie? The history of pop music is replete with duets, from Kiki joining Elton to Rihanna guesting with Eminem or Coldplay.

But the fact is this: You put a male and a female in a song, singing into one another, singing around one another, singing on top of one another, and I’ll give your song five times the chance of success.

The song doesn’t have to be overtly sexual, because the allure of male-female singing goes far deeper than mere genitalia. It follows a rule similar to Jules' explanation of foot massages in "Pulp Fiction." A male-female duet hits me in the same core as bagpipes or African drums; something primal in me is instantly drawn to it.

Trying to name all the current bands on my radar which exploit this weakness is virtually impossible. The Weepies, The Civil Wars, The Rescues, Mates of State, The Belle Brigade, The New Pornographers, Buddy & Julie Miller. Those are all bands who earn chronic rotation in my musical life.

Others include The Ting Tings, Lady Antebellum, Sugarland, Swell Season, Acid House Kings, Sleeper Agent, Black-Eyed Peas, COYOL. These are all without even looking at my iTunes collection. There’s no telling how many I’m missing.

Glee, the entire show, the cultural phenomenon, rocketed into instant success the minute they turned "Don't Stop Believin'" into a male-female duet.

As much as I adore ‘80s music and its place in my heart and history, its male-female combos kinda sucked unless they were one-shot deals. Roxette? Animotion? The Human League? Ace of Base? Just about the only one that comes to mind that earned much respect was Timbuk 3, and that’s a stretch.

The ‘70s and ‘80s seemed better about single-gender combinations, groups where multiple dudes shared singing duties or sang on top of one another. Hall & Oates, Tears for Fears, Wham, Alabama, The Eagles, Flock of Seagulls... the Beatles, even. Almost the only obvious exception that stands out is Fleetwood Mac.

But you sit me down and ask me to start rattling off all the songs from my life I’ve loved that harnessed the power of a male-female duet, and I might never find time to eat a meal again. Here’s what I came up with just on the way home from dinner tonight:

• “Don’t Go Breakin’ My Heart” - Elton John & Kiki Dee
• “After All” - Peter Cetera & Cher
• “The Next Time I Fall” - Peter Cetera & Amy Grant
• “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” - Tom Petty & Stevie Nicks
• “Endless Love” - Lionel Richie & Diana Ross
• “Islands in the Stream” - Kenny Rogers & Dolly Parton
• “Kid Fears” - Indigo Girls & Michael Stipe
• “I Knew You Were Waiting” - Aretha Franklin & George Michael
• “It’s Only Love” - Bryan Adams & Tina Turner
• “Up Where We Belong” - Joe Cocker & Jennifer Warnes
• “Chances Are” - Bob Seger & Martina McBride
• “U Got the Look” - Prince & Sheena Easton
• “Summer Nights” (and most of GREASE) - Olivia Newton John & John Travolta
• “I’ve Had the Time of My Life” - Bill Medley & Jennifer Warnes
• “Don’t Know Much” - Linda Ronstadt & Aaron Neville
• “Almost Paradise” - Mike Reno & Ann Wilson

These all popped up in 15 minutes or less of driving. I’ve thought of at least several dozen more since then, and I haven’t even Googled “greatest duets ever” or anything yet.

I only made this connection, about my deep instinctive love for male-female songs, because I wrote about both Tina Turner and Bryan Adams. The truth is that I love their duet, “It’s Only Love” as much as if not better than anything the two of them created individually. Which is absurd, by the way. It’s not that great. Which means this is more about my own Kryptonite, my own Achilles’ Heel. But I wouldn’t trade it.

Rap and Hip hop men have always sensed the value of a well-placed woman. We would never know Rob Base or DJ EZ Rock if they didn’t enlist the assistance of a woman to tell us exactly What Took Two. C&C Music Factory never sells 10,000 CDs without a woman belting out that chorus. This continues today with B.O.B.’s “Airplanes” and Eminem’s “Love the Way You Lie,” just as examples.

I love all these songs far more than they probably deserve.

I wonder how much longer this trend will last? Or if maybe it’s a longer-term shift in music? Would Oasis even form in 2011 if Noel & Liam didn’t have a cute siren of a sister? Could Hall & Oates have even been born in the 21st Century? Surely they would have had to at least give themselves a different name that dodged emphasizing them as a couple.

Is it coincidence that, as our country and culture gets increasingly comfortable with homosexuality, we increasingly insist that our music resemble Adam & Eve more than Adam & Steve?

What about you, dear readers? Do you have a favorite duet, or a favorite band where the singing duties are shared across gender lines? Give me some names to feed this hunger of mine.

Bryan's Song

Back to You (live acoustic) - Bryan Adams (mp3)
Summer of '69 (live acoustic) - Bryan Adams (mp3)

Bryan Adams was that slut in your high school no one admitted to bedding.

Words I’ve never heard uttered:
“Bryan Adams is my favorite all-time musician ever ever ever.”

Not once. I checked Snopes.com, and there's no record of anyone ever making this claim. Not male, female, or even a transgendered person in transition.

Recently, I heard a talking head point out that Mitt Romney had only won one single solitary popular election in his entire political career. That one-time victory to lead Massachusetts was the only time he ever won an election.

Bryan Adams is the Mitt Romney of pop rock.

Billboard named him #38 on their “Hot 100 50th Anniversary Charts.” That’s, like, #38 over 50 years of pop and rock and stuff. And you just know there were staffers in that room who saw Bryan Adams landing at #38 and threatened to burn down the building. “Fuck this. This is a joke. Bryan Adams shouldn’t be #338, much less #38 on this stupid list,” they surely said. "Hell will freeze over before we sign off on this." And then, predictably, like the wuss music nerds they were, they threw a Nerf ball at the glass meeting windows with righteous vitriol and accepted that hell would just have to freeze over.

Meanwhile, no one in that room would actually defend him. Everyone would just sit quietly in their Billboard meeting room chairs, shrugging their shoulders and sharing those higher-than-thou looks of disgust. But, in their heads, quietly to themselves, they’d be humming the tune to “This Time" or "Summer of '69."

BA had 5 different albums go Platinum in the U.S. For roughly a decade, Canadians used BA songs instead of their national anthem when TV service was announcing the end of air time*.

If you know your cheesy pop music history, then you’ve already formed a theory on when the BA Train went off the rails, and it’s eight cute little words. You know it’s true. He did it for you. Somehow Morgan Freeman and Alan Rickman get away with participating in this farce, but BA gets forever damned to the fires of sellout hell.

Here’s the real problem with this theory: it assumes that at some point people loved them some Bryan Adams, and to the best of my memory and understanding, this simply isn’t true. He was never loved. People never sat around water coolers asking each other:

“Hey, you pick up that new Bryan Adams album yet?”
“Shit, he’s got a new one?? When’d it come out?”
“Tuesday. There was a hundred of us camped out down at Record Bar Monday night waitin’ for the doors to open. We was so damn pumped.”
“It’s good, huh?”
“Oh man, everything you loved about Cuts Like a Knife and Reckless gets ramped up on this one. It’s just awesome.”

No, that conversation never happened anywhere in the USA. We didn’t brag about it. We didn’t show him off. We carefully and sparsely placed him on mixtapes, more than prepared to act like it was a mock-ironic decision if someone dared question it.

In fairness, this is probably the fate he deserved: popularity sans conviction.

Hell, I was one of his fans, and it’s taken me almost 500 words to even admit it. I buried it down here in the hopes that only a few people will mock me for it later.

It’s not like he was Debbie frappin’ Gibson or Tiffany or some shit. Yet how many rock stars of any stripe would inspire, by the mere mention of his name, another rock star to consistently lose his shit? You woulda thought Ryan Adams was being mocked for being Andy Gibb. BA never aided the Nazis. He never remade “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” as some horrifying ‘70s movie. He just sang poppy rock songs and sold out a few dozen times.

I like Bryan because he made it OK to shout out "Me and my baby in a 69!" at the top of your lungs, and adults didn't seem to mind. I like him because he seemed almost semi-normal in a business (especially in the '80s) when some kind of costumed get-up or big hair or wild makeup or funky fashion statements or massive and obvious drug addictions seemed mandatory to even get your foot in the door. I like him because he crafted a mean damn hook that sold 10 million albums no one will proudly claim.

Like. Not love. Because nobody wants to own up to that level of devotion when it comes to BA.


* -- Yes, kids, there was a time in our world when most television stations signed off the air for a majority of the early morning hours. And yes, I totally made up the part about Canadian TV sign-off song, but it wouldn't surprise me. Canada is funny like that.

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."

Listen w/o Prejudice: Hanson--Redux

This post of Billy's has been picked up by a Hanson fan site, which has given it a second life. He has clearly tapped into a cultural phenomenon, so I am pleased to bring it to the fore and to "reprint" it on his behalf."

--Bob

Billy's All-Time Top 11 Hanson Songs That You Prolly Never Heard (in chronological order):

• Weird
  This is the song that single-handedly proved they were different than their contemporaries. They weren't about hair gel and muscle shirts. They were about expressing the gamut of feelings of being young teens.
  
• With You In Your Dreams
  They wrote this song about their recently-deceased grandmother. I'm not too ashamed to admit that it gets me a little misty everytime I hear it.
  
• Runaway Run
  Absolutely has to be one of the catchiest pop songs I've heard this decade. Made all the better because you really don't have any specific clue what the hell they're talking about other than some really hot girl worth obsessing over yet also makes either her or him want to run away. But rock history is resplendent with great songs no one totally understands.
  
• A Song to Sing
• Penny + Me
  If it's a crime that "Runaway Run" was ignored by the mainstream, then no Hanson fan could be surprised that "Penny + Me" fell to the same cruel fate. For a song that feels so exhilerating, there's a bittersweet undercurrent in those superfast lyrics. The way friendships change over time, particularly between boys and girls, can't be explored enough in lyrics to suit me.
  
• Underneath
  
• Deeper
  
• Hey
• Great Divide
• Go
  OK. There's nothing groundbreaking about this. It's pure, uncut adult alternative break-up fodder. But these kids are gifted at fodder. And when done right, fodder is good. It's not like vegemite or haggis. It's tasty, like a Wendy's Spicy Chicken Filet or a gut-busting Krystal. Just 'cuz you shouldn't exclusively dine on such junk, ain't nothin' wrong with enjoying them now and then.
  
• Been There Before
  The song where they openly brag about how derivative they are as a band. And the hook is luscious. Finger snaps and everything!

For fans of Slap Shot, this post isn't for you. But certainly it's kismet that a cutesy teeny-bop band from the late 90s share their name. The trio of fictional (and non-fictional) minor league hockey immortality were good for one thing: beating the crap out of the other team.

The band Hanson, on the other hand, born of up three hippie-fied teen brothers, are good for one thing: getting constantly stomped by nay-sayers and music snobs.

At a time when the Jonas Brothers ride a wild ride of success as carefully constructed as Space Mountain or any of Disney's other amusement park rides, it's worth paying homage to a band that wasn't created by corporate goons; the Hanson brothers were merely shaped and molded. With the help of a few hand-holding songwriters and the Dust Brothers (whom you can also curse for Avril Lavigne). Another big difference, and a sign of how much more involved and serious Hanson has always been: they've made four albums in 10 years. The Jonas Brothers, on the other hand, have put out three albums in three years. Like the Beatles! Except with more financial backing!

Hanson debuted with their album Middle of Nowhere, which must be one of the most saccharine-sweet paeans to young teenage life ever crafted. However, it's possible to be terribly over-sweetened while also being spot-on -- early teen years can be pretty over-the-top and make you wanna say "Awwwww" in that cute way a lot. The album also contains moments of poignance and insight, not to mention great pop hooks, that suggested Hanson had legs their contemporaries might not.

I listen to Middle of Nowhere for the same exact reason I can't seem to turn off The Goonies whenever I see it on TV, because I love anything that celebrates the joys and miseries of those precious years in a sincere way. Even if it's a little cheesy and has a Cyndi Lauper song in it.

Yes, before Radiohead or Trent Reznor grew the testicular fortitude to, as Fleetwood Mac might say, go their own way, Hanson took that plunge. Rather than milking their "Mmm-Bop" fame by making more albums cut from the same cloth (and in Jonas Brothers-esque double-time), they chose to try and mature right along with Taylor Hanson's voice. They didn't wrap their second (non-Christmas) studio album for three years, basically flipping off anyone and everyone who figured Taylor Hanson would always sound like he was on helium and would milk success from his Young Michael Jackson sound.

Four albums in, Hanson hasn't done anything particularly revolutionary. They just make darn fine pop music heavy on 60s and 70s roots rock. They are the true life version of the Partridge family, except better songwriters and honest-to-God musicians.

No one who sticks with classic country or believes Metallica is king of the music hill could reasonably be expected to listen to Hanson songs and have a Road to Damascus-like conversion. If you don't enjoy pop, there's nothing in their collection that will raise your antannae. But it's a shame to me that this band, a real band that takes their craft seriously and are in it because they love music and always have, somehow got lumped in with all the others of their first album heyday. And the Jonas Brothers serve as a reminder of what Hanson could have been if they'd really wanted to, as Bob's last post discusses, Sell Out.

They're sugary-sweet pop, but all of us should find it in us to enjoy a Twinkie every once in a while. So quit hatin'. Enjoy some delicious pop goodness!

The four main Hanson albums as well as others can be purchased through both iTunes and Amazon.com.

Listen w/o Prejudice: Electric Light Orchestra

The first in a series. Click here for the Preamble.

Electric Light Orchestra has been quite the advertising catch lately. In the last five years, I've seen ads using "Mr. Blue Sky," "Do Ya," and "Hold on Tight." Advertisers use these hits to sell their product mostly to folks in their 30s and 40s, who have heard these songs in our past lives as teens or pre-teens. So I'm kinda surprised at how many people I know don't really know that ELO sang all the songs they sang. They know the songs; they just never really cared who sang them.

More tragic, most of the people who are aware of Electric Light Orchestra and their musical past hate their ever-lovin' guts. For my generation, I can't immediately think of many other legitimately talented bands who earn the level of vitriol thrust on ELO. In a musical universe where practically everyone rips off the Beatles for profit, John Lennon described ELO as the "Sons of the Beatles."

I'd like to think that, when someone bigger than Jesus makes a declaration like that, it's worth pause. No matter how stoned he might have been when he said it.

Their number one proof that ELO sucks? Xanadu. Dude, even the Beatles and Bob Dylan farted out a bad apple every once in a while. That doesn't ruin their entire oeuvre. Not to mention that, um, some of us actually kinda enjoy the soundtrack to Xanadu. I haven't found anyone else yet who does, but I'm holding onto my faith that they're out there somewhere. (And mostly I'm talking about heteros here, 'cuz it's been made very clear that Xanadu is some kind of gay Panacea.)

[NOTE: Olivia Newton-John was my first crush. I was in lust with her before I even understood what the hell lust was. In both Grease and Xanadu, she's this wholesome princess who brings the movie to climax by turning into a ball-rockin' sex goddess... I had to believe she was magic.] 

The central creative force behind ELO was Jeff Lynne, easily one of the the more influential musical presences in pop music in the late '80s. He formed the Traveling Wilburys, thus sneaking his way into a group of four kick-ass legends and making a darn fine album to boot. He produced Tom Petty's rocket-shot beyond Heartbreaker stratosphere, Full Moon Fever (and co-wrote almost all the songs). He also produced the most successful 80s fare from Dave Edmunds, Roy Orbison, George Harrison and Randy Newman. So, although Xanadu put his "band" in an iron lung, Lynne kept on making waves.

To remind folks like me of his pop brilliance, he came out with one last album, Armchair Theater, his only blatantly solo effort ever. While a flawed collection -- as were almost all of ELO's albums -- there are some genuinely great pop moments in there.

My all-time Top 10 ELO/Jeff Lynne songs (in alphabetical order, 'cuz I can't rank things without constantly changing my mind):

• Calling America
• Don't Bring Me Down
• Don't Walk Away
  Remove this song from Xanadu, and forget that it was played during a particularly uninspired animated portion of said awful film, and what you have is an adorably sappy break-up song with killer orchestral flourishes, classic '60s backup singer repetition, and just enough falsetto to make any masculine man jittery. One of the great devices of pop song greatness is the ability to keep a song building in intensity, with an increasingly complicated arrangement, and it works wonderfully here.
  
• The Diary of Horace Wimp
  OK, so the verses of this song take some getting used to, but by God the chorus is catchy. And when I say "by God," I mean Lynne throws that booming God voice in the background. I'm kinda surprised conservatives haven't adopted this one for it's "Marriage = One Man + One Woman" message... straight from the voice of God! Also, I'm a sucker for songs that follow the days of the week (Sting's "Seven Days" immediately comes to mind).
  
• Last Train to London
• Lift Me Up
  From Lynne's 1990 solo album, I've actually overheard this song on a couple of movie trailers in the past few years. It's not a transcendent pop song, but it's damn fine. More than 30 years after starting in the biz, Lynne still shows his gift for mixing mild electronica, those adorable background vocals, and a catchy-as-hell pop hook.
  
• Mr. Blue Sky
• Turn to Stone
• Twilight
• Wild West Hero
  This song doesn't belong on Out of the Blue. I like that album a lot, and I loooove this song, but it's totally out of place. What's a songwriting genius to do, though, when he writes a song to honor the soul and spirit of his childhood, maybe one of the coolest orchestral-electric-pop-western songs ever. It was written for boys who were my age when I first played it some 5,000 times on my turntable. I didn't love this song because I wanted to be a cowboy. I loved it because it spoke of yearnings so powerful you feel dizzy, of wishes you wish knowing damn well they're not gonna come true, but you just keep wishin' 'em anyway, 'cuz what are we if not creatures made of cells, tissue and wishes?
  

 Any number of ELO compilations and albums can be found on iTunes and Amazon.com's mp3 site.

Pop Goes the Good Ole Days

Dance Music - The Mountain Goats (mp3)
257 Weeks - Nine Days (mp3)

The schoolgirl outfit. The pigtails. That oddly childish voice emerging from that very grown-up lookin' body. Although Britney's become something of the Bearded Lady With Three Heads people pay money to see at the state fair, what we've forgotten is what we all knew the minute she exploded on the music scene: she was the world's first Cylon Pop Star.

Oh, we've had cyborg stars in the past, folks who needed a lot more than mere talent to hit the charts. But never before did we have someone whose sole talent was merely looking the part of a virginal teenager who desperately wanted to be a slut. (Or maybe it was the other way around.)

I mean, I can still remember the first time I ever saw the video for "Baby One More Time." My cheeks flushed and I looked nervously around me, as if I was holding one of my Dad's Playboys and I was afraid someone would catch me. Is this OK to watch? I thought to myself. This seems so wrong... but gosh she's kinda hot... How old IS she??

The only time I can ever recall feeling guiltier about watching a video was Fiona Apple's "Criminal." Fortunately, by the time I'd watched both videos 20+ times, most of the guilt was gone. We humans are nothing if not exceptionally gifted at numbing our consciences.

Lots of us who love music feared Britney's arrival signaled the end of the world as we knew it. Although "Flash Over Substance" had been "The End is Nigh" claim for decades, maybe since before the first rock 'n' roll song, Britney managed to somehow kick this equation up a notch. She managed to get me listening to songs I didn't even like just because they reminded me of the dirty thoughts I had watching her videos!

What we didn't realize but perhaps should have is that, while we were fixated on her as the Death of Music because she was the paragon of Flash Over Substance, she was actually the Hospice Nurse for another musical phenomenon of our culture: The Simultaneously Experienced Pop Song. Songs everyone knew.

Born in 1972, I can only speak for the musical times in which I was a living component, but I'm pretty sure the Simultaneously Experienced Pop Song (let's call it "SEx Pop"!) was an even more powerful creature in the Elvis and Beatles days. Although the '70s seemed to be a time when albums stole some of radio's thunder, radio and the universally-known pop song were doing just fine.

My elementary school years found radio continuing to ebb, but that crazy little thing called MTV emerged. MTV was a nation-wide radio station with visual aides, and it injected new life into the SEx Pop. But that merely provided a second wind to an aging notion. By the time Nirvana arrived in their flannel and bitterness, the SEx Pop was hitting retirement age but still able to drive around on its own, albeit very slowly and always in the right lane on the Interstate, its head barely visible behind the wheel. By the 21st Century, SEx Pop was in a nursing home.

Let's have a fun experiment. No matter your age, go take a look at the Top 100 Hits of 1984. Just keep track of the number of songs you know. Speaking personally, it's easier to keep track of the ones I don't know. It's not until #61 -- "State of Shock" by the Jacksons -- that I fail to recognize a single song. Hell, I could almost sing the choruses to at least 92 of them, and I'm not remotely exaggerating.

Now, take a gander at the Top 100 Hits of 2004. To quote Sheriff Buford T. Justice, ain't no way, nooooo way, that list stands the test of time, comparatively speaking. Even if you compared the lists with comparably-aged people -- say, comparing my knowledge of that 1984 list to someone born in 1992's knowledge of the 2004 list, I still bet the farm my generation has them beat by a mile.

For every "Crank That" by Soulja Boy in the present, there are at least half a dozen "Ghostbusters" by the Ray Parker Jr., and arguably more. Not because kids today listen to less music, which would be insane. It's because kids today don't have the musical Tower of Babel -- MTV, radio, etc. -- feeding them all the same food like we did.

If anything, the Guitar Hero and Rock Band phenomenon have done nothing but exacerbate the situation. Every recent hit they've managed to pound into our older generations' skulls is matched by at least one or two more from the '70s or '80s roping in those younger kids.

With all the talk about how today's generation of teens and young adults are somehow more interpersonally disconnected, in spite of all this communication-centered technology, I can't help but mourn the slow death of SEx Pop. Play "Bust a Move" or "Mickey" in the presence of 20 people and see if you don't get some smiles, some looks around to see if anyone else is enjoying the guilty pleasure of a fun flashback.

You think f#*king Hoobastank is gonna have Peter Frampton's legs? You think Switchfoot holds the same longevity as Dexy's Midnight f*#king Runners? No. Chance.

Sure, exceptions exist. SEx Pop ain't dead; it's just in an iron lung, fighting for every molecule of oxygen. Most mammals with ears know Eminem's "Lose Yourself" or Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy." But ever since Britney took over Hospice care, the most universally known pop songs come from one single location. Ironically, it's the very same location that began Britney's transformation two decades ago:

Disney.

High School Musical. Hannah Montana. The Cheetah Girls. The Jonas Brothers. This is the closest that Modern Music has to a SEx Pop generator, music that adults like me play in their cars to keep their kids entertained, because at least the music approaches something akin to music we can stomach, and at least the songs maintain the slightest level of innocence.

The '80s had Grease. Now we have HSM. Even if HSM wins -- and I don't really think it does -- nobody from the younger generation is gonna be particularly proud to claim it. Hell, even my daughters are already starting to diss HSM.

Breaking Free - Troy and Gabrielle (High School Musical) (mp3)

"Dance Music" is off The Mountain Goats' The Sunset Tree. "257 Weeks" is a great, great pop song by the 1-album wonder Nine Days. "Breaking Free" is one of the many halfway decent pop songs churned out by the Cylons created at Disney Channel. All are available on iTunes or Amazon.com's MP3 site.