Once again, I’m stretching the definition of “rock” on this one. But the other night my wife and I were watching Disney+’s excellent new TV adaptation of “Percy Jackson and The Olympians” and the episode featured a great dance hit from 1990’s. It’s “What is Love” by German singer Haddaway. In fact, it’s one of those producer-manufactured songs, the brainchild of music wizards Dee Dee Halligan and Junior Torello, who hired Haddaway to sing it. Further evidence of its “manufactured” quality is the fact that the wonderful female vocals in the background are uncredited (apparently they were taken from a sample library).
To me, this song is proof that art doesn’t have to be “pure” to be wonderful. It doesn’t have to be the concept from a lone genius. A pair of producers wrote and designed this song, and then Haddaway put his own interpretation on it (at odds with the producer’s original vision). The result is history.
The Fixx was one of those cool 1980s bands that seemed to have their finger on the pulse of (then) modern American culture, never mind the fact that they were a bunch of Brits. I saw them one Halloween night at the University of Florida Bandshell, where the student government used to host all kinds of music. The Fixx seemed really wiped out that night (Gainesville was, no doubt, a little venue that they management had squeezed in between bigger gigs). Still, they rocked.
Back in the 1980s, there was no worse gaffe that a nerdy, trying-to-be-cool high school boy could commit than referring to The Who’s greatest song as “Teenage Wasteland.” (Yeah, I did it.) Never mind the fact that “Teenage Wasteland” is the chorus of the song, and it’s most powerful lyric. That’s not the name of the song, dammit.
It is, of course, “Baba O’Riley,” and while we may have gotten the name wrong, we knew it was just about the coolest song ever. That is, it was the coolest song ever until Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” came along. And in the decades since, I have come to realize how similar those two musical masterpieces are. Both are operatic, not just in the rock arias executed by their similarly powerful lead singers (Roger Daltrey and Freddie Mercury, respectively) but by the amount of sonic ground each covers. Each is divided into discernable “acts” with a different theme and style, and by the time each is finished, the listener feels a combination of elation and overwhelm. You have, quite literary, heard more than you can handle.
One thing that might be lost on modern listeners is how innovative “Baba O’Riley” was when it came out in 1971 (and, indeed, how innovative it remains today). I first heard it about a decade after its release, and even then I found myself wondering how the hell the electronic ostinato was performed. That is, how the hell had they gotten a synthesizer back in 1971, and who was playing, and how the hell did they play it so fast? The answers were, as I learned a few years ago, that the sequence was 1.) created on a Berkshire Deluxe TBO-1 organ, 2.) by Pete Townsend himself, and 3.) that he didn’t play it, he programmed it.
But what I really love about the song is Roger Daltrey’s voice, and the power of his delivery. When Freddie Mercury appeared on the world stage, people sort of forgot how incredible a singer Daltrey is (I think he’s tied with Mercury as the best rock singer ever). Who cares that the lyrics don’t make sense—they have a poetic power all their own.
“Let’s get together before we get much older…” Oh, yes. Definitely.
Oh, and I also love the gypsy fiddle rave at the song’s end.
When The Verve’s “Bitter Sweet Symphony” hit the airwaves (yes, we still had radio back then) in 1997, it became an instant classic, and no one knew why. A rock song with an orchestra and virtually no electric guitar, it sounded utterly different from anything else in the rock world at that time. In fact, it was based on a sample from a Rolling Stones from 1965. I would argue that part of the song’s hypnotic appeal has roots in a much, much older genre: the march.
A march is a piece of music with a very clean rhythm and slow time-signature, intended for people (often marching bands) to…well…march to. “Bitter Sweet Symphony” is a kind of post-modern, existentialist march, a gesture of defiance against a cold, dehumanizing world. This march-like quality was brilliantly exploited by director Walter Stern in the song’s video, which is one of the best music videos ever made.
Even now, forty-plus years after its inception, the musical genre known as “goth rock” still bewitches me. Great bands like Bauhaus and Joy Division and Echo and the Bunnymen and Siouxie and the Banshees all seemed to break out when I was in high school. In other words, when I needed them most. I was a shy, introverted kid in a brash, extroverted decade, and the dark, conflicted lyrics and controlled sound of goth rock spoke to my soul. If heavy metal is for people with too little serotonin, then goth rock is for people with too much.
One thing that still amazes me about goth rock was how diverse it was, less like a sub-genre of rock than its own, self-contained, parallel rock universe. Inside that universe one could find an analog to almost every kind of standard music. There were goth-rock-pop songs and goth-rock-dance songs and even something like goth-rock-disco songs. And, with the emergence of England’s great band The Cult, there were even goth-hard-rock songs.
When listening to one’s first The Cult song, one might easily mistake it for just another hard-rock song as the first guitar-driven bars come out of the speaker. But then Ian Astbury’s magnificently clean and expressive baritone sails out, and one realizes, with a shock, that this is something totally different. And special.
Looking back on this video for my favorite song by The Cult, “She Sells Sanctuary,” I now see that Ian Astbury dressed like Captain Jack Sparrow, danced like Jagger, and sang like Freddy Mercury. God bless him. He helped get me through some very hard years.
Yeah, I know. Picking U2’s “New Year’s Day” as my Friday-Night Rock-Out three days before New Year’s Day is a very, very obvious choice. But the truth is that I still listen to this song all the time. It came out when I in high school, and it marked the first time I really became aware of U2 as a band. The song sounded completely different from anything else on the radio or MTV at the time, with Bono’s soaring, heroic lyrics and The Edge’s dirge-like guitar work. But unlike any other U2 song that I know of, this one is driven primarily by the use of a piano, also played by The Edge. It’s the propulsive piano melody (really more like a drum beat) that makes the song feel otherworldly. Sublime. Classic.
Suffice to say that it still works for me, lo these many years later.
Yeah, I know. Calling this song “rock” is a bit of a stretch. Like all of Bryan Ferry’s solo work, as well as all his hits with Roxy Music, “Don’t Stop the Dance” is a brilliant and elegant pop song. Emphasis on brilliant. What William Faulkner is to literature, Bryan Ferry is to pop music. Who else could create a song like this, one that is both eminently danceable and yet edgy and so, so cool?
I also love the music video, in which French model Laurence Treil features prominently. Ferry and Roxy Music were famous for using the faces and bodies of beautiful women as part of their branding, and Treil was the most beautiful of all. With her glamorous features and impossibly arched eye-brows, she looked like a Patrick Nagel painting that had come to life.
Back in the late 1980s, INXS bestrode the rock world like a colossus. Their most successful album, Kick, came out in 1987 and included such minor classics as “Never Tear Us Apart” and “Need You Tonight”. But I had already been a fan for years by that time, having gone through high school listening to their earlier hits, especially their first major one, “Don’t Change.”
When the Grunge phenomenon hit in the 1990, INXS pretty much disappeared from the premier stage. The band’s popularity dropped off, and lead singer Michael Hutchence killed himself in 1997, just three years after Kurt Cobain, the frontman for Nirvana (the band most primarily responsible for INXS’s displacement) did the same.
I really, really wish he hadn’t.
“Don’t Change” is one of the best rock songs of the 1980s. I remember clearly the first time I heard it, standing in a bookstore here in Gainesville, Florida. (Yes, that’s right—I first heard it a bookstore. I am that kind of nerd.) And even through the tinny, five-dollar speakers that had been installed in the shop’s ceiling, I picked up on the soaring lyricism and heavy rock beat of the song. And I was instantly a fan.
Enjoy…
BONUS!!! Here’s a surprising (and surprisingly moving) cover by The Boss…
One summer in the early 1990s, I drove across the country with a beautiful, brilliant girl named Susan. We drove from Manhattan, New York all the way to Tucson, Arizona, and by the time we reached the desert southwest, we had driven each other a bit crazy, to the point that it pretty much marked the end of the relationship. (The fault, by the way, was entirely mine.)
I only had one working cassette (yes, cassette) to play in my tape deck. It was Depeche Mode’s Violator, which marked the peak of that great band’s success and cultural influence. Speaking of cultural influence, you know you’ve become a musical icon when one of your songs gets quoted in the most culturally significant film of the decade. That film was The Matrix, and the song was Personal Jesus. If you’re ever driving through the desert in a demented state of mind, I highly recommend it. Actually, I highly recommend it for any time in your life when you need to get your blood going.
In some ways, Missing Persons was the ultimate west coast 80s band. With their heavy synth sound and propulsive drum beats, they were a band that could make you think and make you dance. Plus, I simply loved Dale Bozzio. Not just your average bottle-blonde space-age sex-kitten with a plexiglass bustier, Bozzio could really sing. And her baby-doll, hiccuping style was tempered with just enough knowing irony to make you realize how cool she was. In fact, she presaged another super-smart front-girl from a decade later, Shirley Manson of Garbage.
My favorite Missing Persons song is “Destination Unknown”. Ah, how true.
Ash Clifton, Writer 