Otherwise he might have snapped out of it. You know what Van Gogh's problem was? He didn't have enough trumpet synth. But now, it's the only one I genuinely enjoy.Ī few of the ingredients that do it for me: What's funny is that, as a kid, I did not prefer "Straight Up" to her other hits in any way. Take the best tracks from Madonna, Janet, or the Boys of Pet Shop, and let me tell you something: "Straight Up" could straight up go toe-to-toe with any of them. "Straight Up" appears fun and fluffy on the surface, and yet it has a sinister, accusatory bite to it.
Whoever was responsible for "Straight Up" (possibly someone other than Paula?) wrapped up all their whistle-ready hooks and playful synth riffs into one seamless, raunchy little package (Wikipedia is giving me the possibly made-up name of Elliot Wolff). You know why? "Straight Up" is lean, it's mean. It's like reminiscing about MC Hammer, Vanilla Ice, or "Do the Bartman." You sort of just had to be there.įor this child of the '80s at least, "Straight Up" holds up. I remember my brother and I sitting in the back seat, listening to her singles on the radio, and spending the whole length of the song talking about the "awesome video!" She was dancing with a rapping cartoon cat! What could top that? In hindsight, I can't say I would strongly recommend Paula's old hits to a contemporary listener. The thing is, I don't know if I genuinely liked Paula's singles as songs, or simply as cool music videos that happened to have songs associated with them.
How did she do this, you ask? Well, you see, once upon a time, there was this television channel, and it made certain kinds of things possible that simply weren't possible before.īack in the day, the release of every Paula Abdul single from Forever Your Girl felt like a mini-event - at least to my brother in me as we sat in our parents' car on the way to the mall. think about it baby." And so, Paula Abdul became a dancer with a recording career. But can Janet make great dance-pop? You God damn right.
After helping choreograph several of Janet Jackson's Control videos, some opportunistic record executive must have droolingly backed her into a corner at some record release party and laid out a persuasive spiel: "Look Paula baby, you see Janet? You think Janet's got the greatest vocal range? Fuck no. Unnecessarily harsh YouTube users will often insult contemporary pop singers by saying something along the lines of "XXX can't even sing, she's just a fucking dancer." The thing is, if you said this to Paula Abdul, she might actually agree with you. But like Madonna and Janet before her (or even Alice Cooper and Kiss for that matter), I can recognize that the chief appeal of Paula Abdul in her heyday wasn't exactly her musical output. "Opposites Attract" is sort of a Gershwin/Porter-style standard on autopilot (for two more plausible, and acidic, '80s treatments on the same theme, I would recommend Billy Joel's "A Room of Our Own" and the Go-Go's' "We Don't Get Along"). "Cold Hearted" now strikes me as a less effective "Maneater," trudging through a well-worn chord progression (Pebbles's "Girlfriend" would like a word) to uncertain effect (judging from the relative apathy in Paula's voice, I feel like this guy's heart is probably lukewarm at worst). For instance, the title track sounds like the theme for an all-star ABC sitcom that sadly never was (starring, perhaps, Joey Lawrence, Will Smith, and Alyssa Milano?). Paula Abdul may have been Forever Your Girl, but I would not say that all of her four #1 hits (!) from that album have "forever" held up over the years. Like the approval ratings for ol' Herbert Walker himself, my level of affection for certain artists from the 1989-1990 era has, shall we say, risen and fallen.
0 kommentar(er)
