Sunday June 22, 2008
The summer hits (and misses)
Music, Myths & Legends
By MARTIN VENGADESAN
The writer recounts songs that made him cringe.
EVERY one who knows me well knows that I can be quite snobbish about the music that I listen to. When I do leave the radio or MTV on, there are some songs that provoke an instant violent reaction and have me rushing to turn the damn thing off.
My explanation for this is that I have a habit of letting music get under my skin, whether I actually like the song or not. This means that while I have gladly absorbed the works of anyone from Beethoven to Van Morrison, somewhere in the recesses of my soul are stored popular albums by Rick Astley, Samantha Fox, Kylie Minogue, Tiffany, Debbie Gibson, Richard Marx, all due to traumatic school bus rides I had to endure back in 1988!
Not everyone thinks the Cheeky Girls’ Touch My Bumwas hot. – Reuters All of which brings me to the chilling phenomenon of the summer hit. You know what I mean, don’t you? The song that is so popular that no one can get away from it. Two of the most recent examples I can think of are Rihanna’s Umbrella and Sean Kingston’s Beautiful Girls, neither of which is particularly bad. But in my time, I’ve sure known some doozies.
I think one of the first songs I tried to escape from unsuccessfully was Wham!’s Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go. That nauseating bouncy little chart-topper featuring Andrew and George in skimpy shorts was just everywhere in 1984. I found that as much as I hated it, I too was able to sing along about not leaving George Michael “hanging like a yo-yo”.
And thus began my unfortunate relationship with songs that I really disliked. I found myself able to sing/rap along to a string of truly horrible but totally unavoidable songs. The year 1986 brought with it the Holiday Rap by MC Miker G and DJ Sven (who can forget such gems like “we’re going to ring-a-rang dong for a holiday”?) and Spitting Image’s The Chicken Song (“hold a chicken in the air, stick a deckchair up your nose”) which bore a resemblance to Black Lace’s equally inane Agadoo (“push pineapple, shake a tree”).
Mushy ballads like Glenn Medeiros’ Nothing’s Gonna Change My Love for You and Jennifer Rush’s Power of Love also did their very best to provide an unwanted soundtrack to my teenage years!
I’ve already mentioned my bus ride trauma suffered in 1988, but the following decade was to have its share of atrocious songs. Hip-hop was coming above ground, and it did, thanks to some meaningless slogan-like singles. Two little kids told me to Jump Jump, while MC Hammer proved that he wasn’t too legit to quit and DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince kept at it with Boom! Shake the Room. Vanilla Ice got in on the act and even though nobody admits to liking it nowadays, Ice Ice Baby was all the rage in the early 1990s.
Now I’m not saying every one of these massive hits was annoying. I quite dug The Cranberries’ Zombie, 4 Non Blondes’ monstrous What’s Up? and even Fool’s Garden’s Lemon Tree which seemed to crop up everytime I went out on a date in 1996.
At another point in the 1990s, it was impossible to take a step out of your front door without hearing Bryan Adams proclaim Everything I Do (I Do It for You) but some of the ballads of the era weren’t that bad.
There was I Will Always Love You (Whitney’s quivering lips) and One Sweet Day (Mariah’s legendary shorts), although I think I enjoyed Boyz II Men’s End of the Road most because I loved to do a mocking imitation of Michael McCary’s spoken word segment (“I feel pain too, baby”). Wet Wet Wet’s Love is All Around merely gave me the opportunity to rail at my generation for not knowing how much better the original by The Troggs was!
Still, many a time I was held hostage by the likes of Shampoo (Trouble), Aqua (Barbie Girl), Scatman John (Scatman) and Lou Bega (Mambo No.5). I was also really cheesed off by Dr Bombay’s gimmicky “hurry, hurry, hurry, gimme rice and curry” and damn grateful when his career collapsed after a failed second album as Dr MacDoo.
These songs, in fact, become more dangerous when allied to a really foolish dance and while I can now smile at Kaoma’s Lambada, no such fond memories exist for the Macarena, The Ketchup Song and the Cheeky Girls’ Touch My Bum.
I must admit this decade has not been as bad (although its peaks seem nowhere near as good as previous decades either!). I do, however, remember feeling a little trapped by Nelly and Kelly and their Dilemma. Although that might be because I got the wrong end of the stick in the story song ... I thought she was singing “Whenever I’m with Abu”!
In fact, I must say that arguably my favourite monster summer hit of the last 25 years is Black Eyed Peas’ Where is the Love? That’s one song that will get others cringing ... if they’ve ever seen me dancing along!
Martin Vengadesan, a music lover and history buff, combines his two passions in his fortnightly column. If you have any interesting stories you want him to research, do drop him a line at starmag-feedback@thestar.com.my.
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