Mainstream Rock: The Black Crowes, “Remedy” (1992)

David Lifton: It’s easy to mock them, but the Crowes were a good gateway drug if you didn’t know their influences. Those first couple of records had some good songs on them, regardless of how derivative they were. They were unabashed music fans, and had really good taste. There’s nothing wrong with that.

Beau Dure: Really a pretty song and not a bad band, even if Chris Robinson always looked like he’d blow away in a mild breeze. And Kate Hudson, for the record, could surely do better. How many years can you really stay in a serious relationship with a dude whose first love is always going to be herbal?

Scott Malchus: Great rock and roll song. Plenty of swagger and southern blues. Talk about a band that had a good thing and imploded. I wish this song got as much airplay as that damn remake of the Otis Redding song, I’m sure the Robinson brothers feel the same way.

David Medsker: When I first heard the riff to this song, I couldn’t believe that it hadn’t been written yet. It just sounded like something knocking around classic rock radio since 1972. I’ve still never heard a Crowes record in its entirety. I don’t hate them or anything. They just don’t excite me.

Will Harris: I listened to this album a thousand times upon its initial release if I listened to it once, thanks to working at a record store at the time, which would probably explain why I’ve still never gotten around to buying it. But that doesn’t explain why I’ve never bought any of their other albums. Listening to “Remedy” now, however, I think I’ve figured it out: I just don’t really like the Black Crowes very much.

Zack Dennis: My first introduction to the Black Crowes was via a cassette of Shake Your Moneymaker that someone left inside a boombox they returned to the department store where my friend Tony worked. It was something of a diamond in the rough – I listened to it repeatedly – and the follow-up single Remedy ended up being a big disappointment for me. I missed the nimble diction of “Hard to Handle” and the backup harmonies on Remedy felt artifical and irritated the hell out of me. I’m happy to say it’s grown on me – I like it a lot more now than I did back then.

Dw. Dunphy: I’m not going to dredge all the old crapola about how The Crowes stole anything that was good from The Stones or The Faces, because that’s just the nature of blooze-style rock. Nor am I going down the road of how wildly uneven the band is, swinging to decent tunes, then fro to less than decent tunes. I’m not even going to say that even though I’m not a huge fan, I still think Kate Hudson did Chris Robinson dirty. So, essentially, I haven’t anything to say about The Black Crowes.

Mike Heyliger: This is probably my favorite Crowes song. It rocks harder than most rock music circa 1992, and grooves way harder than most soul music circa the same era. So what if it sounds completely derivative?

On a side note, I’ve met the Robinsons, and I’m happy to report that they don’t smell as bad as one would think they would. Of course, it’s hard to smell anything other than pot when in their presence…

Ken Shane: Is it possible to be fresh and retro at the same time? The arrival of the Black Crowes was welcome indeed for an old Faces fan like myself. “”Jealous Again” was a great start, and then this song cemented my admiration for the band. I saw them at Newport last summer, and despite the fact that their profile may be lower these days, they really haven’t lost a step.

Jon Cummings: Remember when American rock bands weren’t afraid to dress up? Fuck Seattle, and everything that came after! I just want that happenin’ suit Rich Robinson’s wearing. The Crowes were great — and then, shortly after this, they weren’t. Actually, the decline might have begun here — while the guitar riffs and the verses are aces, the chorus just kind of sits there.

Taylor Long: It seems you can add me to the list of Popdosers not really impressed by the Black Crowes. I don’t think they’re bad, per se, just uninspired. And as both a Seattlite and someone who loves a lot of rock from the ’90s, I completely disagree with that “Fuck Seattle” comment. More like Thanks, Seattle!

Jeff Giles: When the Crowes first made it big, plenty of people were pissed at them for ripping off the Faces, but not me — I was pissed because they ripped off the Faces less gracefully than the Georgia Satellites, and while the Sats were going nowhere, these clowns were going platinum. Frankly, it still pisses me off a little. That’s what leading off your career with a laffer novelty single like “Keep Your Hands to Yourself” will get you.

Jon: Leading with “Keep Your Hands to Yourself” was no crime — it’s a great song — and radio committed a bigger crime by failing to send “Battleship Chains” rocketing up the charts. But the Satellites really screwed themselves by putting a lame version of “Hippy Hippy Shake” on the Cocktail soundtrack, where they got to cozy up to “Kokomo.” Bye-bye, credibility; hello, Dan Baird solo career…

Modern Rock: Camouflage, “The Great Commandment” (1988)

Taylor: Much like this song, I have nothing new to add here.

Ken: God, how many of these ’80s synth pop bands were there? I’m not at all familiar with this band, but I’m certainly familiar with the sound. I suppose this would be an okay song if they were the only ones working in this style. The video is kind of cool, though.

Zack: When is the time on Sprockets when they dance? I’m not sure how I’m supposed to recognize that this *isn’t* Depeche Mode, but I guess it’s not bad. I’ve never been any good at deciphering lyrical messages packaged in Eighties synthesizers and drum machines, so I suppose I’m missing the point of the song anyhow.

Dunphy: I’ve never heard this before, and while I don’t necessarily mind it as a relic of its time, this is really, really Depeche-y. I am tempted to come up with a Joe Depeche-y joke here but I’m feeling lazy.

Jeff: Hey, what’s this singer up to? Maybe he can pinch-hit for Gahan while he’s laid up with gastroentiritis or whatever it is.

Jon: This band came along about two years too late, didn’t they? I wonder if this song would have shifted any units at all if it weren’t for the awesome way the singer pronounces “comMONDment”? By the way, that singer looks like the love child of Ben Affleck and Matt Damon (but only if neither Sarah Silverman or Jimmy Kimmel was involved).

Medsker: It was a shameless Depeche Mode knockoff, but I didn’t mind. Always liked this song.

Scott: Wow, always thought this was New Order, which says a lot. Oh I get it, the man on the pulpit is a ROBOT. Very deep, very very deep.

Lifton: Twenty years on and I still can’t tell the difference between good synth-pop and bad synth-pop.

Will: I can still remember hearing this and just being dumbstruck at the pure Depeche Mode-ness of it. Seriously, it’s right up there with Red Flag’s “Russian Radio” for songs which you absolutely cannot imagine existing in a world without Gahan, Gore, and the gang. I followed them to the next album because I dug “Love is a Shield,” too, but they lost me on the third album. I did, however, download the 2006 single by the band, “Motif Sky,” and I really dug it. They’ve still got it!

Zack: I’m not sure if it’s a coincidence that this song was mentioned in a recent Song-Off, but I can’t say I remember ever having heard this song before. I’m not particularly interested in hearing it again. I don’t really have any objections to hearing it again, either, as long as the volume is nice and low. It’s not horrible, but there’s just no real *emotion* in the song. Not to mention that most Operation Ivy songs feel as lengthy as Anagadadavida compared to this nugget.

Medsker: I love lines like “Change the numbers on my telephone, but the nights will soon be colder,” because they make no sense whatsoever. Was there anything from the mines of mellow gold wussier than this? Hell, Fogelfuck didn’t even stoop this low, did he? (*pops on Paul Davis’ Greatest Hits, feels better*)

Will: I’m surprised that I don’t really remember this song, as this was right around when I was waking up to the sounds of my AM-only clock radio. I guess the Little River Band got more play in Virginia than Mr. Johnson did. Listening to it, it’s very, very ‘70s…but given that I’ve been feeling my age a lot in recent years, this only means that I really like it a lot. God, I’m pitiful.

Dunphy: This is wussy, even for 1978. One of the primary reasons someone writes this type of song is to express, even fictionally, how miserable one has made the singer. It’s a guilt trip, essentially, but this song wouldn’t make anyone feel guilty at all. Narcoleptic? Maybe. Glad that they broke up with this Weenus before he impregnated you with four pounds nine ounces of milquetoast? Probably.

Scott: Life without you will be bluer than blue if I could just wake up from this drowsy… sleepy… song. ZZZZZZZZZ

Jon: I saw MJ perform during the brief period (around 1979) when he could fill a medium-size college auditorium. He did a nice show (I liked “This Night Won’t Last Forever” better than “BtB”), but the gig was more memorable for the creepy college kid who opened, accompanying himself on piano. He offered streams of utterly sincere, utterly ridiculous between-song patter about “being true to yourself” before launching into yet another Billy Joel cover — or, as the kid called him, “Billeh Joooooooooool.” Maybe you had to be there…

Dunphy: My God, you went to this show of your own volition?

Jon: I was 13, tickets were free, there was nothing else to do in my hometown on a summer night … are any of these excuses working?

Mike: For half a sec, I got excited because I thought we were gonna get to chat about Michael Jackson. But damn, even at his wussiest (see “Heal the World”), the KOP never recorded anything this lame or sleep-inducing.

Taylor: Oh dear. Firstly, let’s call a spade a shovel here, the thing this guy’s really going to be doing after his woman leaves involves his right hand. Secondly, the song isn’t great, but having to look at all those close-ups of Michael Johnson is worse! Loving the shots where he’s superimposed twice and it looks like he’s singing to himself.

Robert Cass: When I was 14, I understood “Bluer Than Blue” completely. I mean, I felt that shit, y’all. But probably only the part about not having to miss any TV shows if I was single again, because if girls had actually liked me at 14, I would’ve had to miss Full House on Friday nights, and that would’ve sucked.

“I can’t go away with you on a rock-climbing weekend / What if something is on TV and it’s never shown again?” That’s a couple of lines from Smudge’s “The Outdoor Type.” VCRs and DVRs may have made the second line obsolete, but I’d still like to use it as an excuse.

Lifton: At first I got this confused with a possible cover of Bobby Vinton’s “Blue on Blue,” and I screamed. Then I heard the song, and screamed even louder. I just installed a new soundcard for this? Where do you find this shit, Jeff?

Jason Hare: Jessica and I spent our 10th (dating) anniversary by going up to a romantic little B&B in Connecticut. I brought my laptop, and I spent part of my time meticulously learning everything I could about Michael Johnson and his oh-so-sad 1978 hit, for Adventures Through the Mines of Mellow Gold 18. That’s right: I was on vacation with my wife to celebrate 10 years together, and I was researching Michael Johnson on the Internet.The only explanation for why I’m still married is because my wife is a frickin’ saint. She should have left me with bluer than blue balls.

And that’s why you’re not seeing more Mellow Gold posts — it could potentially lead to divorce. Screw you, Michael Johnson.

Lifton: So to answer my own question, Jeff finds this shit by going through Jason’s archives.

Beau: I had no memory of this song and only knew Michael Johnson in his days winning gold in the 200 and 400. So I read the comments here and prepare for the worst. You know what? Shame on you all. This is soft-rock mourning at its best. The contrast of the verses and chorus is well-crafted. And the dude actually studied classical guitar. Check out the fretwork here.

Ken: Decent voice, decent song, I guess, but all in all just more MOR crap. Again, so many people doing this that it’s hard to tell one from another. What makes this guy more special than Paul Davis, for example? Or Peter Cetera? And they had better songs. Just a waste of our time, really.

Jason: Which Peter Cetera song is better than “Bluer Than Blue”?

Ken: I don’t care.

Jason: I’ll answer the question, then: there is no Peter Cetera song better than “Bluer Than Blue,” because Peter Cetera is, for all intents and purposes, a robot who eats Botox for breakfast. Michael Johnson actually injects some real, true heartbreak into his vocal, which is why I was never able to write this song off. On first listen, I did, but one of the great/truly terrible things about covering these songs for Mellow Gold is that I have to actually listen to them again and again. As I mentioned then, “Bluer Than Blue” is one of those songs you can listen to when you’re sad and actually feel a little better. Tricky little nuance, and it’s helped by a clever lyric about someone describing, in detail, their attempts to be optimistic, but failing. Who can’t relate to that?

To answer your question, that’s what makes him more special than Peter Cetera. Also, he never recorded a song with Cher.

Medsker: I’ll take “The Next Time I Fall” any day of the week over “BtB.” If we include Chicago, I’d add a half dozen more.

Jeff: I’d take half of Cetera’s ’88 album over “Bluer Than Blue” and “The Next Time I Fall.”

Jason: I see where this is going. Bring it on, fuckers, I’ll take on all of you. MELLOW GOLD SMACKDOWN!

Ken: I see I’ve started something that I’m not particularly proud of, nor do I know or care much about. Good luck.

Jeff: I propose we have Ken do a Terje-style series where he listens to everything Peter Cetera has recorded since 1980.

Including the Christmas album.

Jason: ESPECIALLY the Christmas album! Oh, that version of “Jingle Bells.”

Ken: I’d rather be waterboarded, thank you.

Jason: That would also make for a good series.

Dunphy: Has the US decided whether waterboarding is finally considered torture or not? I’d like to know and, if possible, have the solo works of Peter Cetera added to that tribunal.

Lifton: “I still don’t know why they asked me to do this commercial.” –Marv Throneberry

Medsker: I have no idea what’s going on here.

Jason: We’re going to waterboard Ken. What’s the problem?

Jeff: Confession time: I only chose “Bluer Than Blue” so I could send everyone to this link.

You’re welcome.

Robert: For a second I thought it was going to be “Two Girls, One Cup.”

Jeff: Don’t worry, I’ll goatse you before I do that.

Medsker: God, this is all my fault. I sent Jeff that link a month ago. (hangs head in shame)

Jeff: I can’t help wondering what Ethel Merman could have done with this song.

Mike: This song is badass. Remember when R&B music could make you smile? I miss groups with both male and female vocalists. What happened to them?

Beau: Shalamar’s OK, but they’re no Animotion.

Jon: The first minute of this song is what arcade games sounded like in 1980. Now I have visions of “Galaga” dancing in my head. This is one of those songs that instantly conjures memories of the other songs that surrounded it on the radio — “Special Lady,” “Coward of the County,” “Please Don’t Go.” Speaking of which, can anyone prove definitively that Shalamar and the SOS Band were two separate groups?

Dunphy: Roller boogie, y’all! Space Invaders! All seven minutes of it!

This song reminds me of when I was twelve years old and had the Synsonics drum pad. I thought I was rockin’! I’d plug into my stereo, crank up the on-board and Bow! Biddi-doo! Bow! all day long! Only it wasn’t all day long, but more like an hour. After that, my dad used a hammer like drumsticks and sent my Synsonics to Biddi-doo Heaven.

Scott: Bewwwww! Bewwwww! Funky bass, slick guitar. And Bewwww! Gotta love Shalamar. You know, this song gets better… the second time around. Bwa ha ha ha! Man, I crack myself up. Bewwww!

Medsker: And to think I thought Anita Ward had patent pending on that “Bewwwwww” sound. I’m only familiar with Shalamar’s neutered work from the ’80s, so this is a most pleasant surprise.

Ken: Ah, the disco years. Not bad, as these things go. Funky, cool horn arrangement, and lead vocal. Yeah, not bad at all. Makes me want to do the Hustle … but I won’t.

Lifton: After the last two songs, an actual groove is welcome It’s amazing how much disco was hated (passive voice alert!), and yet the good stuff has held up so well. Like any great soul song, there’s a lot going on, but nothing gets in the way of each other. When the strings stop, the horns come in, with a little bit of piano thrown in. It works great.

Will: Am I the only one who didn’t know anything about Shalamar until the “Dead Giveaway” / “Dancing in the Sheets” era? It wasn’t until years later that I knew this song was by them as well. Great tune, though. Reminds me of the Spinners’ “Working My Way Back To You / Forgive Me, Girl” a little bit in places…and that’s a good thing.

Taylor: Digging the funky beat, and the vocals aren’t half bad, but seven minutes? At that length, I won’t need to listen to it a “Second Time Around”… bahaha, ok, that was bad.

Zack: Ah, sexual innuendo. I can’t resist the catchiness of this song — light and crispy. It’s the kind of song that Rollergirl would listen to on her earphones while she cleaned up her room.

Ken: From the Stones’ first great era. A perfect follow up to “Satisfaction,” in that it sounded so similar musically. It never achieved quite the same notoriety, but that only makes it easier to listen to today, after being bludgeoned by “Satisfaction” so many times over the years. This song comes from a time when, for me at least, the Stones could do no wrong.

Lifton: Charlie. That’s all I’ve got to say about this one. Charlie.

Dunphy: Not one of my favorites in the early Stones category. That would probably go to “Mother’s Little Helper” – But I don’t really mind it either. At least it has a pulse, unlike ol’ Bluer Than Johnson.

Will: I’m still always going to be more of a Beatles man, but I do love the Stones’ singles, and this is an undeniable classic. But, frankly, I’m still bitter over Mick bailing out of ABC’s “The Knights of Prosperity” a couple of years ago. It’s a total TV critic’s grudge, but, dammit, I’m still pissed. That show was awesome, and it never recovered from losing its original title, “Let’s Rob Mick Jagger.”

Scott: One of my favorite Stones songs. I’m not a big fan of Mick and the boys (sacrilege, I know), but this song is tight. Their early work is still my favorite period and this song is one of their best.

Medsker: I’m shocked that Will didn’t use this spot as an opportunity to pimp “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend” by the Rubinoos.

Will: Huh. I didn’t even think about it. Now that you’ve brought it up, I’m a little embarrassed that I didn’t. I wonder if Jagger and Richards have ever heard the Rubinoos’ song. Given their litigious nature, I have to presume that they haven’t, because the similarities are certainly there. But, of course, then you get into the discussion about whether Avril was actually ripping off the Stones rather than the Rubinoos…

Medsker: (Insert Verve/George Michael comment here)

Dunphy: George Michael can handle his own insertions, tankyuveddymuch.

Jeff: As I believe I’ve mentioned before, my formative years coincided roughly with the Stones’ Dirty Work period, and it’s taken me over 20 years to forgive them for that. (Shitty records like Voodoo Rest Home didn’t help, either.) But I have fond memories of this track, because it’s one of like five songs that my dad blurts out at random moments. (The others include “I Am the Frito Bandito” and “Hot Rod Lincoln.”)

Taylor: Unlike most of us, I guess, I’m into the Stones bigtime, but admit this wouldn’t make it onto my shortlist of favorites. That said, I really like it as one of their earlier, dancier tunes.

Jon: While the “cloud” reference may have been vaguely titillating as a euphemism for getting high, “Get Off My Cloud” never really lives up to that sense of danger the Stones were supposed to be projecting in the mid-’60s (at least compared with the Beatles). Mick doesn’t seem to be giving the song much attitude in this clip. It’s a fun record, though. I went to a college dance with a girl named Chris Cloud; don’t strain yourselves imagining the chants that poor Chris (and her dates) had to endure from her dormmates.

Mike: Is it sad that I’m more aware of the chorus of this song as the opening line to Wu-Tang Clan’s “Method Man” than I am of it as a Rolling Stones song?

Beau: My most notable association of this song is in a Saturday Night Live fake ad. Hey! Hey! You! You! Leggo my Eggo! Memorable hook in the chorus, sure, and the rhythm in the verses is inventive, but the guitar is just grating. And perhaps it’s unfair to judge it with the ears of someone who’s heard great bands over the decades reinvent the rhythm section, but this is so rudimentary that I just can’t get into it.

So I like the Michael Johnson song here, and I’m indifferent to the Stones. I’m not kicked out, am I?

Medsker: Please. That’s what being a Popdoser is all about.

Mainstream Rock: Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, “I Love Rock & Roll” (1982)

Zack: The only way this song to could get worse would be to have some pigtailed, bubble-gum chewing pop star perform a cover of it. Oh, wait. The rhythm guitar part is so incredibly simple it could have been played by an elementary school band, the guitar solo is laughable, and given the opportunity to choose between listening to Joan Jett’s screech or the sound my own screaming as a fingernail was pulled out, I’d ask if anybody had some bandages and maybe some Aleve for when the throbbing set in.

Ken: Not a favorite, really. Oh sure, if I’ve had enough to drink, and this comes on the jukebox very loud, I might get up, but on any other occasion, it just bores me to tears. It’s one of those songs that people use to define rock ‘n roll, and it just isn’t defining. It’s just mainstream crap really.

Dunphy: Complaining about this song is like complaining about pork rinds. It’s not good for you, and the taste of them kind of turns your stomach, but every so often you can handle it. This is the perfect illustration of lunkhead rock, but it’s not so awful that you’d do something drastic, like change channels or anything.

Jon: Top 40 radio playlist for a typical hour, spring 1982: “I Love Rock & Roll,” “Centerfold,” “Ebony and Ivory,” commercial break, “I Love Rock & Roll,” “Centerfold”… That year had the tightest Top 40 playlists of any in the pre-Soundscan era. Only 15 songs reached Number One all year, mostly because those three songs combined for 20 weeks. Those playlists also were practically lily-white; there’s a reason Columbia had to threaten MTV over Michael Jackson in early ’83.

I still haven’t commented on the song. That’s because I’m ambivalent about it, and always have been.

Mike: This whole song is about simplicity. That’s why I love it so much. The song itself isn’t great, the singing isn’t great, but the whole vibe of some random tough chick singing about loving rock ‘n roll just seems so cool and…well…rock ‘n’ roll to me. Joan Jett is a badass. Not to mention she’s aged extremely well. She’s hotter now than she was then.

David: Man, that is a bad solo. Still, it’s no “Fight for Your Right.” That, for my money, is the worst guitar solo ever.

I was in eighth grade when this song hit, and let me tell you, we couldn’t get enough of it. Such innocent times.

Jeff: This is the worst guitar solo ever.

David: Let me clarify: worst solo put to tape. Otherwise, you’re right, that Durst solo is pure Nigel Tufnel.

Beau: Simple, yes, but effective. Sticks in your ear without being obnoxious. Timeless theme that everyone can relate to. Even if you were never 1/100th as cool as Joan Jett.

Modern Rock: Elvis Costello, “The Other Side of Summer” (1991)

Mike: Mighty Like a Rose is the only Costello album I own between Get Happy and Painted from Memory. I must say this is one of those times when the video actually makes me like the song more.

Ken: How can any self-respecting Beach Boys fan not like this musical homage to the music of Brian Wilson? Elvis gets a lot of it right, too. Lyrically it turns the whole California magic thing upside down, but it needed turning upside down anyway.

David: I really want to like this song, since it has so many ideas percolating throughout, but it just never sinks in for me. Sorry.

Jon: I wish I could say I always found this song to be a brilliant satire of pop escapism and a profound indictment of our shallow culture. But I gave up on Elvis a couple years before the Mighty Like a Rose album, and never bothered to listen to the lyrics before just now. Therefore, I must admit that, for me, this song has always seemed a pleasant-enough space filler between “Brilliant Mistake” and “Tokyo Storm Warning” on the two-disc Elvis compilation I bought in about 1999. Oh, and: What a freakin’ buzzkill!

Beau: A couple of good zingers and a pleasant musical setting, but does anyone else find this just a little on the pedantic preachy side? In lesser hands, this is Phil Collins’ song … something … paradise …

Zack: Did Elvis Costello get confused and think that black leather and neoprene rubber were essentially the same material? (Actually, if I could get a wetsuit with fringes like that…) I generally don’t see what the big deal is about Elvis Costello, but I have to admit that this song grew on me once I realized the song has a pretty deep meaning. The lyrics along with the video provide a nice counterpoint to the music; the cheerful presentation of some pretty bleak images is inspired.

Dunphy: No love for the Mighty Like a Rose album here? While this is hardly E.C.’s best tune, and it doesn’t compare to “Veronica” from the previous Spike album, “The Other Side Of Summer” is a sugar-coated slab of nastiness that appeared during a year where we needed it badly. While everyone thought Paula Abdul‘s “Rush Rush” was something-something, I sneered from my car, listening to Napoleon Dynamite Sr., confident that if I wasn’t right, at least I felt like I was.

Dunphy: On her own, Christine McVie’s albums do have a sameness about them, don’t they. Has a person ever needed a band so badly? Vice-versa, has Fleetwood Mac ever needed her pop sweetness just as badly? The magic 8-ball indicates “Yes.” “Got A Hold On Me” is a featherweight song that’s alright by me, but placed in the context of a full album, Christine does need a psycho coke witch and a loon pop scientist around to balance the ratios.

Zack: This song has as much of an effect on my ears as a piece of toast dipped in lukewarm milk would have on my mouth. Bland enough that it’s impossible to be offended by, but nothing much to bite into, either.

Beau: I can speak no ill of Christine McVie. I shall move on.

Jon: I remember when they re-released The Legendary Christine Perfect Album back in the early ’80s (I think), and the hype was ridiculous. My brother bought it, and my reaction was, “What’s the big deal? Sounds like ‘Over My Head.’” And that’s the thing about Christine — her songs have always been nice enough, and sounded sweet and fluffy on the radio, but there was never much growth involved, was there? You could take “Say You Love Me,” “Got a Hold on Me,” and “Everywhere,” play three-card monty with them and stick them randomly on different Mac/McVie albums, and who would know the difference?

Ken: Pretty much indistinguishable from McVie’s output with Fleetwood Mac, though the piano might be a little more prominent. It’s a typical McVie pop confection, and in this case, that’s a pretty good thing.

Mike: Again, simplicity. The McVie-written Fleetwood Mac songs always had a simple message and were simply sung, and that’s what I liked about them. ‘Cause who the hell knew what Stevie was singing about? It won’t change your life, but it’s a damn well-written and catchy song.

David: Jeff and I are both on record for our views on how Christine McVie is Fleetwood Mac’s secret weapon, and her voice is what makes those songs soar. Having said that, I find a lot of her songs to be rather pedestrian. This might be one of the most wallpaper-y of them all. Even the video is boring.

David: I miss songs like this. That’s all I’m saying.

Beau: The sad thing about music today is that we don’t just lack the upbeat R&B numbers like this, but we have hordes of rappers waiting to turn this into an ode to weed.

Jon: I was listening to an AT40 countdown from January ’79 on XM “70′s on 7″ recently, and when Casey introduced “September” I was surprised, because this is the rare song that is such a part of everyday life it seems weird that it was ever new. That said, has there ever been a ubiquitous pop song that had less to say than this one? I mean, for crying out loud, “Ring My Bell” is a dissertation compared to this.

Ken: This is one of my favorite songs ever. The arrival of the first few notes get me up and singing at the top of my lungs. Sadly, I can’t begin to reach Philip Bailey’s falsetto notes, so the resulting sound is pretty tragic. But I can still dance, right? Oh, you don’t want to see that, either? Okay, I’ll just sit here quietly. But I’ll be rocking hard on the inside.

Robert: “September” is my favorite of EWF’s songs. My birthday is September 25, so it’s not hard to manipulate the first line of the song to reflect the moment I came into this world. Plus my voice never changed, so I sound like Philip Bailey every second of the day.

Zack: This song is one of the primary reasons that I’m thrilled the Giants didn’t make it to the Super Bowl this year. Can you imagine how many damned montages featuring Brandon Jacobs, Derrick Ward, and Ahmad Bradshaw running between, around, and through defenders we’d have had to sit through during the pregame coverage? The falsetto harmonies in this song have always irritated the hell out of me.

Dunphy: Like “Got A Hold On Me,” I can’t slay this song. Everyone’s dead right in saying it’s omnipresence is downright disturbing, and I can see how one could get jaded because of it, especially since it has all the literary heft of a Bazooka Joe comic strip. But come on, it’s EWF. You aren’t really supposed to think about it, you’re supposed to wave your groove hassock to it.

Mike: EW&F were the happiest ’70s funk band there was. This song never fails to put a smile on my face. Who do you guys think would win a falsetto sing-off between Philip Bailey and Barry Gibb? (you disco fans might wanna throw Sylvester in there too).

Mike: Speaking of happy. Damn. Can someone wipe that grin off of Satchmo’s face? Considering the time period and what conditions black folks were under in those days, Armstrong’s mugging seems a little shuck-and-jivey for me. Sorry for insulting an American institution, but that clip just pushed my militant button.

I also think someone shoulda turned up the A/C. Dude lost about five pounds in sweat during that performance.

Ken: Sad, really, because this is all that most people know about one of the greatest figures in the world of jazz. This, and “Wonderful World.” There’s no doubt that both are charming performances, and pure Armstrong, but hopefully people will take the opportunity to go back and check out more of his seminal work.

Zack: I’m not crazy enough to criticize Louis Armstrong around here; I’ll just say that I’ve never cared for jazz and leave it at that.

Dunphy: I love Louie, but I have an aversion to anyone welcoming Barbara Streisand back for any reason. Itz-zo nize to have you back where you belong… far away from here, that’s for damn sure.

Beau: “What a Wonderful World” is a wonderful standard. This is a basic show tune made marginally interesting by his distinctive growl.

Jon: I never got the appeal of Louis’ vocal stylings, if they can be called that. The trumpet, yes. The great instrumental jazz, absolutely. But, really, why the voice? I can’t even stand “What a Wonderful World.” However, since this drove me to Wikipedia, let’s all revel in this golden (ahem) nugget: “[Armstrong] made frequent use of laxatives as a means of controlling his weight, a practice he advocated…in the diet plans he published under the title Lose Weight the Satchmo Way…He became an enthusiastic convert when he discovered the herbal remedy Swiss Kriss, [and] appeared in…ads [that] bore a picture of him sitting on a toilet — as viewed through a keyhole — with the slogan “Satch says, ‘Leave it all behind ya!‘”)

Mike: Thanks for that visual!

Jeff: Personally, I’d love to find a poster-sized version that I could print up and frame for my office. I’d hang it up next to my Brian Wilson 1999 concert poster, my autographed Nilsson poster, and the autographed picture of Jack Wagner that my fucker of a little brother sent me for Christmas last year.

Dunphy: Well then, we have to include this, don’t we?

David: Am I crazy for loving Satchmo’s voice, but hating Tom Waits’ voice? They’re pretty much the same, right? Well, except Louie has better pitch.

Mike: One of exactly two Blue Oyster Cult songs I’m familiar with (I’m sure we can all guess what the other one is). It’s the kind of meathead early Eighties rock I dig. Whenever I hear the intro I envision a laser-light show.

Dunphy: Otherwise known as “the other good Blue Oyster Cult song,” “Burnin’ For You” is just a nice old slice of hard rock. Buck Dharma’s thick harmony “aaaah aaaahs” lean more toward The Cars than the macabre graveyard imagery the band ordinarily toyed with, but that’s where music was going in 1981. I like it.

Taylor: I wrote a Lost MP3 on this song awhile back. I have the return of KROCK to thank for reminding me how awesome it is. It’s pretty much flawless from the start – the exultant opening riff, the more subtle guitar that sort of tick-tocks, the beefy chorus. I have the ask, though, what the hell are they wearing in the video?

David: I will be the first to admit that my knowledge of Blue Oyster Cult boils down to four songs: the cowbell song, “Godzilla,” “Shooting Shark,” and this. So here’s my question: are these guys really a hard rock band, or just a rock band that occasionally kicked out the jams? I’ve always had the impression that these guys didn’t deserve the title of hard rockers, and this song – along with “Shooting Shark,” which I actually really like – are my evidence. Am I standing on faulty ground?

Zack: Not at all – while this song and “Reaper” rock incredibly hard, I wouldn’t describe either one as hard rock.

Jeff: BÖC was/is utterly pedestrian in every way that matters, but I’m still pretty sure listening to “Burnin’ for You” makes everyone here miss bands like this anyway. Rather than making the usual bitchy comments about Staind and Linkin Park, I will instead use this space to marvel that the Blue Öyster Cult has been around, in one way or another, since 1967 — and they already have tour dates lined up through September. Wow.

Dunphy: BÖC survives because they’re fun. Their “Boooo! Scary!” affections are just that, hiding the fact they’re not that far removed from Jefferson Starship. They always (for the most part) were in on the joke as opposed to being blindly unaware of the joke, unlike Jefferson Starship.

Beau: As with most early ’80s music, I’m most familiar with this from MTV, and that’s unfortunate because the video is pretty shoddy, as if a director said, “Burning? Hey, let’s put some fire in there somewhere.” The lyrics are as random as most rock relationship songs, but the laid-back vocals and sharp guitar riffs work. Perfectly good tune.

Jon: I believe the vocalist, “Buck Dharma” (also his porn name) Roeser, borrowed his costume from Xena: Warrior Princess. Actually, considering the timeline — and Buck’s wussiness — my guess is that Xena removed the costume from him forcibly, and left him with an atomic wedgie. She fills it out better, anyway.

That said, I love “Burnin’ for You” — and one of the things I love most about it is the (seeming) idea that if you take a midtempo pop-rock song, give it a decent guitar riff, and use variations of the word “Burn” liberally, you get a song that could plausibly come from the type of hard-rockin’ near-metal band B.O.C. imagined itself to be. God bless the umlaut! If I could remember how to make one with my computer, all my writing would appear Scandinavian.

Zack: Even though the production sounds a bit dated, I still love this song. Plus, I’m a sucker for internal rhyme (…I’m livin’ for givin’ the Devil his due). Between the mentions to “home in the Valley” and Eric Bloom’s mustache, I can’t help thinking that this song might actually be an homage to late-seventies porn and the scourge of venereal disease (Burning for you…or burning from you?).

Jeff: Well, the album it’s from is titled Fire of Unknown Origin…sounds like a gift from a groupie, doesn’t it?

Modern Rock: The Jesus & Mary Chain, “Blues from a Gun” (1990)

Beau: Generally, I have little to say about this band other than “Where’s Joseph?” But this isn’t bad at all, mining the same territory Love and Rockets never really finished exploring.

Zack: It’s impossible to conceive of the Reid brothers as “young,” but they certainly look that way here. They’ve always seemed a bit camera-shy to me. I love the distinctive sound of the Jesus and Mary Chain, so I’m pretty much guaranteed to like most of their songs, and this one is no exception.

Jon: This is a wonderful song, and I had never seen the video before, which is also terrific. But did the Reid brothers never get the memo that when you’re lip-syncing on a video soundstage, you don’t have to stand stock-still and sing right into the mic? Or is it that, after all the notoriety they received for violent episodes during the ’80s, their A&R rep said, “We’ll let you guys make this video, but only if you down this handful of quaaludes first”? Either way, one imagines the director pleading, “Come on, William, smile for me! Dance around a bit! Can you give me anything at all? No? … Screw it! I need more animation!“

David: I remember how excited I was when I first heard this, because finally Jesus and Mary Chain made a song that didn’t make me want to smash their records. I snagged a copy of Psychocandy from the record store I was working at, but I didn’t “get it.” In other words, I was too busy listening to Information Society 12″ singles to appreciate the whole feedback thing. But this had a beat, so I was totally on board.

Jeff: I spent the JAMC’s heyday refusing to acknowledge its existence; in fact, this is the first time I’ve ever listened to one of their songs all the way through. Nothing personal against the Reids, but I don’t think rock & roll and drum machines were ever meant to go together, and although age has mellowed my stance somewhat, listening to “Blues from a Gun” doesn’t make me sorry for ignoring the band all these years.

Taylor: This is a solid rager, and the kind of JAMC song that makes me angry that they literally refused to play really loudly when I saw them at Webster Hall last May. Part of me always wants to pump both fists in the air when he sings, “I don’t mind about the state of my mind.” Often, I do.

Dunphy: The Reid Bros. kind of wear me out. It’s a guitar assault but there isn’t something that lifts it up beyond that, and the rest of the song is a standard pop track… Jesus & Mary Chain are more influential than well-remembered (not hard to hear a little Smashing Pumpkins in there) but they also can be a bit tedious.

Mike: This is the only song here I wasn’t familiar with. After all, in 1990 I was 14 and it was still a year or so before I started listening to “alternative rock” (thanks R.E.M.). I don’t really have much to say about this song, other than that it sounds like what most modern rock sounded like in 1990 — at least to my ears.

Zack: Uh, Mike, I don’t mind it when Taylor does it (it’s kind of her thing), but would you please refrain from, uh, you know, being younger than me and stuff? Much appreciated.

Adult Contemporary: Harold Faltermeyer, “Axel F” (1985)

Jeff: Here’s my lone “old guy” gripe for the week: When did people forget how to write songs that, even if they didn’t have any words and you’d never seen the movie they were written for, still managed to make you think of high-speed chases and dudes hanging onto the backs of Italian cars? Dammit, the world needs more of those.

Zack: I just want to say right now that the first three songs make this one of the greatest Chartburns ever (in terms of songs I actually enjoy listening to).

Jon: How many Casio keyboards, sitting on shelves in electronics stores nationwide, had their virginity swiped by pock-faced boys riffing on “Axel F”? I still think somebody should manufacture a computer keyboard that plays “Axel F” as you type. Once upon a time, hearing this song would conjure a mental image of the entire Beverly Hills Cop plotline (where have you gone, Judge Reinhold?) — but these days, sadly, it is more likely to remind me of the Spongebob episode where Mr. Krabs starts imitating a synth-pop song and Spongebob becomes convinced his boss is a robot.

Mike: It’s hard to imagine now that the guy behind crap like Norbit was once the biggest movie star in the world and a badass to boot. Twenty-five years later, I think even Judge Reinhold is a bigger badass than Eddie Murphy now. Oh, the song. Awesome when you hear it in the movie, not so much when the movie’s not playing. Never been big on instrumentals, and this one’s kind of repetitive.

Zack: I managed to get Jon Brion to perform an improvised and embellished version of this during his birthday show at Largo in December. This song fit so perfectly into Beverly Hills Cop as a leitmotif that it’s impossible to imagine that it ever existed in any other context. Depending on your point of view, splicing in a 4/5 scale green-screen version of Harold Faltermeyer into the scenes from the movie is either hilarious, or unintentionally hilarious.

Dunphy: The most famous soundtrack song in history. I can’t imagine a human being of communication age that hasn’t heard this instrumental. Many don’t know it’s from Beverly Hills Cop, and some of them only know it as a Crazy Frog song (yikes!) but it has so fully integrated itself into the popular conscience that it has ceased to be a piece of music for me. It’s still an interesting ditty but I find myself confusing it with Herbie Hancock’s “Rockit” a lot lately.

David: It’s amusing in retrospect how gaga we all were over this when it first came out. Dude, this is cutting edge, man! All synthesizers! Then Jan Hammer’s “Miami Vice” theme hit later in the year, and we all forgot about this. “Whoa, listen to those drums!” Boo boo boo bee boo boo…

Taylor: First thought after watching that video: uh, what? There isn’t a lot of electronic instrumental stuff I can listen to more than once without feeling like I’m living inside a computer, but I can probably listen to this a good two or three times in a row before that happens.

Beau: We should probably give some history here for Taylor’s benefit. In 1985, Eddie Murphy was pretty much the biggest movie star in the world, which much more of a bad-ass rep than he has in his post-”Daddy Day Care” career. “Beverly Hills Cop” was a ginormous movie at the time, and this was back in the day when movie soundtracks could move some CDs. And if you were a teenager interested in music in 1985, you and your buddies kept trying to one-up each other by learning this tune on the Casio or whatever keyboard someone had.

All that said, I think it still stands up. It’s a good synth hook with some clever counterpoint. It didn’t turn out to be a sign of things to come in the music world, but perhaps that’s a shame.

Taylor: Oh, I may be a youngster, but I knew all the Eddie Murphy/Beverly Hills Cop stuff – aside from the whole trying to one-up each other by learning how to play it. That’s pretty good! 2009 version of that: who gets the highest score playing it on Rock Band? Oh wait, have they added keyboards to Rock Band yet? I’m a poor excuse for a 20-something sometimes…

Mike: his song makes me think of one thing and one thing only (and it has nothing to do with Eddie Murphy or Beverly Hills Cop).

R&B/Hip-Hop: Ashanti, “Foolish” (2002)

Zack: I’m pretty sure none of the girls I’ve ever dated would put up with me throwing a lamp at them – whether I missed or not. There’s really nothing I like about this song – the overdubs are awful, the harmonies are pedestrian, and the lyrics are pretty much just a cry for help from a doormat. Get confident, stupid!

Beau: Is this video basically “Love is a Battlefield” for people with 1,000 times the disposable income of Benatar’s family? Or is she Diane Keaton to this guy’s Al Pacino? Ah, who cares. Trite song.

Mike: Ugh. Asshanti (I will leave the typo in as is) can’t sing, and this song, which directly samples a Notorious B.I.G. song that sampled an old DeBarge song, is lazy as hell. I wish I could grow sideburns as thick as hers, though. I wonder what her secret is..

Dunphy: Is that Terrence Howard in the video? I think that’s Terrence Howard. That’s just about the only interesting thing happening here as Ashanti, a third-stringer in the R&B pop world, spools out another “lonely and done-wrong” jam. As a singer, she’s not interesting enough to hold her own. The material she’s working with is kind of hacky and we get all the same studio tricks the “megaproducers” still haven’t graduated from. No wonder Terrence Howard is the only interesting part of this.

Oh, and I heard he’s a stark staring lunatic too.

Taylor: I have a weakness for smooth-ass R&B, so it’s no surprise that I kind of dig this. The piano hook is pretty good, although I’d take Alicia Keys over this.

Jeff: Ah, Ashanti — no sooner did she swipe the one-named-pop-starlet tiara from Brandy and Mya than it was taken from her by Rihanna. It’s rumored that Ashanti released a comeback album this year, but no one has been able to verify this.

Jon: Ashanti never lip-syncs until three minutes in, and even then for only 20 seconds as she straddles gangsta-bastard Terrence Howard. It’s an interesting divergence from the interlacing of plotline and lip-sync footage that characterizes the traditional narrative video. There — I’ve proven that I paid attention. Can I listen to something else now?

David: It has long been my wish that the bling videos – I can shower you in diamonds and champagne, get you a table at the hottest restaurant, ’cause I’m a playa/gangsta, baby – die a violent, fiery death. I can’t help but think they’re responsible for the number of kids running around that think they’re entitled to wealth and fame without having to earn it. Oh, this song’s all right. Funny seeing Terrence Howard in the video.

Zack: Don’t you mean a violent, bullet-riddled death?

David: Bullets are quick. Fire is painful. Definitely fiery death.

David: Never heard this before. Man, could he wail. Sigh.

Mike: Jackie Wilson was a smooth dude, y’all. I’m sure the chicks were all over him. I’m also sure that Michael Jackson was listening and watching very closely.

Taylor: You know how I know this song is from the ’60s, aside from the way it sounds? Because with the obesity figures we currently have, I’m fairly confident that a song encouraging this much physical movement couldn’t make it to #1 now (sex and sex-related things aside). The most recent thing I can remember that even comes close is the “Macarena” and that was the very definition of wimpy. Oh, and “Crank That.” Yeeeeah.

Dunphy: Certainly not Jackie Wilson’s best song, but that’s not a problem. Even his so-so attempts rule.

Jon: I’m exhausted just from watching the go-go dancers. I recently “let my backbone slip” during a workout — damn, Jackie, why didn’t you tell me how painful that was gonna be? I had to borrow some quaaludes from the Jesus and Mary Chain so I could sleep it off. Jackie was amazing, though. It’s sad how he’s largely forgotten these days — like many others, I’m sure, I only tracked down his music after Howard Huntsberry sang his ass off on “Lonely Teardrops” near the end of La Bamba.

Jeff: I came at Jackie Wilson from odd angles — first hearing Van Morrison’s “Jackie Wilson Said (I’m in Heaven When You Smile),” then Michael McDonald’s excellent (no, really!) cover of “Lonely Teardrops” — but that’s probably only heightened my appreciation for his music. “Baby Workout” isn’t his best song, but it’s still my favorite of this week’s tracks. In fact, I think I’m going to go listen to some Jackie Wilson right now.

Zack: I can say with one hundred percent confidence that nobody I’ve dated would have put up with me repeatedly exhorting them to “Work out. Baby. Workout.”

Darren Robbins: This song was the exact turning point for Adams. Up until then, his music has a certain us-against-them quality. While “Run To You” is not a bad song per se, it and the entirety of Reckless (the album on which it appears) is much too polished for my taste.

I like to think that if time travel really were possible, the first thing I’d do is travel back in time and tell Bryan Adams 1984 that I have two songs I’d like to play for him: “All For Love” & “I Wanna Be Your Underwear”. Why, you ask? Because I wanna see Bryan 1984 wrinkle his nose and shout profanities and struggle to find the “off” button before being subjected to another note, all the while trying to keep his lunch down. By doing so, I think I could make the world a better place for everyone.

Dw. Dunphy: About a year ago I got the Live Aid DVD set. I was flipping through chapters and somehow landed on Bryan Adams. Not literally, of course, ’cause I’d have killed him. (Ba-doo-sha! Try the brisket!) At any rate, my brother John walked into the room intrigued. Then he noticed what he was hearing and said, “Oh, I forgot Bryan Adams used to be a rock guy.” And with that one statement the entirety of the Reckless album was put into perspective.

Beau Dure: The first Bryan Adams song I heard was “Cuts Like a Knife.” Good solid rock song. He has spent the rest of his life slowly and painfully sliding into uselessness.

Maybe not that slowly — “Summer of ’69″ makes me wish the electric guitar had never been invented.

Mike Heyliger: Welcome to yet another episode of Mike Goes Against Popular Popdose Opinion. I’m not the world’s biggest Bryan Adams fan, but I like “Run To You.” It certainly has way more energy than most of his later work, and it sounds a lot fresher than “Summer of ’69,” which the radio completely killed for me. Of course, I also like the Adams*Stewart*Sting collaboration. Whatever. Bite me.

Will Harris: For those who grew up in the “Everything I Do (I Do It For You)” era and beyond, it’s hard to fathom a day when Bryan Adams was actually pretty cool, but for my money, he was one of the great pop-rockers of the early ‘80s, and this song encapsulates many of the reasons why. Between Cuts Like a Knife and Reckless, the man earned every minute of his chart success…though, okay, Bob Clearmountain deserves some of the credit, too.

David Medsker: Adams may have pissed away his rock cred with the Robin Hood and Three Musketeers songs — not to mention the skeezy 18 Til I Die album — but Reckless was a damn fine record (SIX singles charted, all at #15 or higher), and this was a hell of a leadoff single.

Zack Dennis: This song seems like it is tailor-made for the beginner level of Guitar Hero. A simple, familiar riff, not too many changes, and an occasional flourish from the lead guitar. I don’t really have anything against this song, though it is doing a hell of a poor job commanding my attention for more than fifteen seconds at a time.

Jeff Giles: I love to make fun of Bryan Adams — in fact, one of the first things I ever did at Jefitoblog was a series running each of his albums through the Cliche-O-Meter — but I think even if you don’t frame it in the context of his later, shittier work, “Run to You” is a fine single. It’s moody, it’s got some nice guitar work, and it boasts one of the few relatively honest vocal performances I think Adams has ever given. I think it’s aged pretty well, too.

Jon Cummings: Back when Bryan Adams was someone Canada could celebrate, rather than apologize for (see South Park), “Run to You” already felt redundant — not a bad pop-rocker, but kinda meat-headed and a bit of a comedown from “Cuts Like a Knife” the year before. It’s funny, in retrospect, that “Run to You” and the entire Reckless album already felt dumbed-down and compromised compared to Adams’ earlier work (my brother had played the You Want It, You Got It album and the single “Lonely Nights” to death in ’82, after we saw Adams open for Loverboy — shut up!). Oh, Bryan — you emasculated soundtrack sissy — how we long for the days when something as decent as “Run to You” seemed like a drop in quality! The video, however, does have the benefit of opening with two MTV-certified visual cliches: the electric guitar shoved into the ground, and the footsteps in the snow leading to the brooding protagonist.

Darren: Sigh. I like to think that if time travel really were possible, the first thing I’d do is travel back in time and tell the B-52′s 1980 that I have two songs I’d like to play for them: “Good Stuff” & “Dreamland”. Why, you ask? Because I wanna see the B-52′s wrinkle their noses and shout profanities and struggle to find the “off” button before being subjected to another note, all the while trying to keep their lunch down. By doing so, I think I could make the world a better place for everyone.

David: Oh man, did I want to like this. I think I even forced it down a few times, but then I bought the record, and was not amused. There were some interesting experiments here and there (I confess to liking “Dreamland”), but this is the sound of a band trying really, really hard to sound spontaneous and wacky, and failing miserably.

Dunphy: It’s like a movie with an extremely positive title that the critics twist, turn and then impale said movie with. For all the band’s kitschy charm, there’s nothing good about this stuff.

Beau: Can’t believe people are hating on this song. It goes a little too long, but you simply can’t go wrong with a call-and-response between Fred and Kate, particularly when you follow up with some jazzy harmony in the chorus. This one’s proof of some professional competence in the party band. Keith Strickland isn’t just there because women think he’s cute. (And, statistically, a few of the men, to borrow a Sabrina Matthews line.)

Mike: Even at the age of 16 when this came out, I remember listening to this song and saying to myself “Is every song they make from now on going to rip off ‘Love Shack’?” Another question I’ve always wanted to ask — how come you never saw Fred Schneider and Charles Nelson Reilly in the same room at the same time?

Will: “Take me down where the love honey flows”? Nice. I think we all know that this album was a miserable failure compared to its predecessor. The only song on the record that I really love is “Is That You, Mo-Dean?” Otherwise, I can take or leave it.

Jon: For some reason I tend to lump this single, and the Good Stuff album in general, together with REO Speedwagon’s “Keep the Fire Burnin’” and their Good Trouble album — in the category of Most Pointless Follow-Up to a Hugely Successful Album. (As long as my brain is stuck in the early ’80s, I could easily add Kilroy is Here to that list, but that album wasn’t pointless. Many other bad things, yes, but pointless, no.) One thing the world did not need in 1992, in the wake of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and the advent of grunge, was a warmed-over “Love Shack.”

Zack: I think my own personal version of hell would consist of being locked into a chair, Hannibal Lecter style, and having Fred Schneider sing at me for all eternity. That said, I think this is actually a decent song. If rating redheads on a scale from Kathy Griffin (1) to Jenny Lewis (10), I’d have to say that Kate Pierson comes in somewhere around a six — just below Katie Sagal.

Beau: But Kate is in her own category. She’s simply Kate. Comparing her to Jenny Lewis is like comparing Studio 54 to the Taj Mahal. Both impressive but in completely different ways.

Jeff: I’m with Zack on his personal vision of hell — I’ve never been able to stomach Fred Schneider’s constant mugging, although I do think the first three minutes or so of his cover of Harry Nilsson’s “Coconut” is pretty funny. I guess what I’m saying is that I was never a fan of the B-52′s, but even I could tell they were trying too hard with this album, and it made me a little sad. Much as I hated “Love Shack,” it represents a golden era for modern rock radio.

Zack: Fred Schneider is New Jersey’s answer to Einar Orn.

Jeff: I believe this is the second Einar Orn reference in Chartburn history, which should make us eligible for some sort of Webby Award.

Beau: I say, “Ouch, this really hurts.” Especially if that would make Kate the B-52s equivalent of Bjork. You’ll never see Kate wearing poultry. And even my 5-year-old knows to recognize Kate’s voice, even if she’s just doing backup on an Iggy Pop or R.E.M. tune. (I prefer “Me in Honey” to “Shiny Happy People,” but the latter led to the creation of a Kate Muppet, who appears with R.E.M. on Sesame Street when they sing “Furry Happy Monsters.”)

Also, I have to point out that Fred may be from Jersey, but the B-52s are from my hometown. Which is only part of the reason I’m arguing against the Chartburn consensus here. And speaking of redheads, I should point out that the episode of MythBusters on the air at the moment includes Kari Byron rating guys sober and then rating them while being legally inebriated. I smell a hit.

Darren: I like to think that if time travel really were possible, the first thing I’d do is travel back in time and tell David Cassidy 1972 that I have two songs I’d like to play for him. That would be a lie, though. In truth, all I would have is a set of nunchucks and written permission from the people of the future to use deadly force if necessary.

Will: I actually like David Cassidy’s voice, but I see no reason to prefer this version over the Association’s.

Zack: Someday, hopefully the Matchup Monkey will throw David Cassidy into the ring against Kool and the Gang so they can give him the beatdown he so richly deserves. Watching those hordes of hysteric fans wave banners is profoundly disturbing, especially considering they’re showering their adulation upon a mediocre vocalist and uninspiring songwriter.

Beau: Apples and Orange Crush. The fans waving banners don’t care about his vocals and probably don’t even know he didn’t write this song. He was McDreamy back before Shonda Rhimes imposed her muddleheaded post-feminist male objectification on a generation of gullible women.

I remember Danny Bonaduce in some sort of VH1 special talking about how Cassidy had become successful twice, citing his Broadway/Vegas career. He said it took tremendous balls to do so. That said, I also remember Cassidy getting really annoyed when Beth Littleford asked him about his anatomy on “The Daily Show.”

All I can say about this recording is that if I had been in any way involved with it, I would suffer guilt by Association. (Thank you! Try the portobello surprise!)

Dunphy: David Cassidy: “Why can’t I have a comeback? Why? Why?”

Popdose: “Cherish, 1972.”

David Cassidy: “Oh. Yes. Spot on… Are you going to eat those pizza crusts?”

Jon: I don’t have a problem with Keith’s (I mean David’s) version of this song. On the one hand, because it’s a love song it’s nice to hear it sung by a solo dude, rather than the Mitch Miller-style chorale that was the Association. On the other hand, I miss all the harmonies and the bom-bom’s of the Assn.’s version. So, all told, it’s pretty much a wash. All that said, I reject the Chartburn crew’s general rejection of Cassidy. Sure he’s a bland milquetoast, but I choose to remain loyal to the memory of my adoration (as a 6-year-old, and ever since) of the Partridge Family’s Up to Date album. (Hell — I even listed the Razor & Tie CD release of Up to Date among my Top 10 albums of 1994, back when the Billboard staff all got our picks published in the year-end issue.)

Mike: This is the stuff that was popular in 1972? Between this and that Bread song from the last Chartburn column, I’m not so upset anymore that “Love Hangover” was the #1 song the week I was born. I’m also now eternally grateful for Debbie Gibson, Tiffany, The Jets, New Edition and New Kids on the Block. The teen idols of my generation may have sucked to some folks, but none of them ever made a song as bad as this one.

Jeff: If he wasn’t so obviously a self-important douche, I might be more inclined to give Cassidy a mulligan for his crappy teen idol records, and maybe even rest an elbow on the revisionist Cassidy-as-decent-songwriter bandwagon that started rolling in the ’90s. But I’ve heard what’s supposed to be his best album (1990′s David Cassidy), and although it isn’t as bad as “Cherish,” it isn’t that much better. Shaun’s brother needs to get over himself.

David: Is it just me, or are there times in this video where David Cassidy looks just like Lindsay Lohan?

Jeff: All of a sudden I want a Members Only jacket.

David: Wow, this seems reserved for a band that I associate with full-on disco funk. I like it, though.

Will: For years, I only thought of The Gap Band for one song and one song only: “You Dropped a Bomb on Me.” But the more I expand my knowledge of their work, the more I find that pretty much everything they’ve ever done is good funky fun.

Zack: It kind of feels like if you dirtied up the lyrics, this could just as easily be a B-side from a Tony! Toni! Tone! single. I mean, it’s okay, but when it comes to bands financed by corporate clothing store chains, I’m a bigger fan of the Bananarama Republic.

Dunphy: Well, the song is called “Outstanding,” but it’s not. We’ll say it’s good enough, though. Certainly better than “Good Stuff,” I think. It goes on forever, but the first four minutes are pretty darn fine. Aw, what the hey. Sure, why not, it’s “Outstanding”…

Beau: If I were dancing to this, would I be less bored? Probably not. My “moves” are as limited as this R&B-by-numbers tune.

Mike: It’s a little difficult to hear this song now in its original context, considering that there was a time in the early Nineties when “Outstanding” had to be sampled at least once on every single rap album. This is probably my favorite Gap Band song. I was scarred for life later this same year by seeing lead singer Charlie Wilson in a banana hammock during the “Party Train” video.

Jon: I’m gonna ignore this song that never made any impact on me, and instead tell a story about a different Gap Band single that is forever burned into my subconscious. In 1992 my then-girlfriend (now wife) Gwen and I moved to Philly and settled into a refurbished apartment building. The walls and ceilings were less than paper-thin, as we discovered on our first night when we were awakened at 1:30 a.m. by the massive sound of a hot-rod revving and then peeling out. The noise ended, then repeated again and again, until I got out of bed and banged on the wall.

That ended the agony, but the next night it picked up again, so I banged again — this time hard enough to knock something off the neighbor’s side of the wall, at which point he stomped into the hallway threatening bloody murder. Finally Gwen went out to make peace and beg for quiet, at which point our giant clubfoot of a neighbor (he had a broken ankle) explained that he’s usually quiet, but his brother was in town and wanted to party — and just loved the opening of the Gap Band’s “Burn Rubber (Why You Wanna Hurt Me)” so much that he had to play it over and over in the middle of the night at 120 dB. Clubfoot never gave us any more problems, but it was a couple weeks before we felt confident going to sleep at a normal hour.

Zack: I don’t really love this song, but I’m very impressed by the technical side of it — a magnificent recording of a live performance, perfectly balanced levels, and some really nice harmonies.

Beau: The Wikipedia entry says the Everlys gave a-ha a couple of guitars after their successful (in Europe) cover. Wonder if Carole King sent over a piano.

Dunphy: Did the Everly Brothers ever do anything that was awful? Never. “Walk Right Back,” “Bye Bye Love,” and “Cathy’s Clown” are all eminently worthy contenders, but this particular song always took the prize as far as I’m concerned. Take that, David Cassidy, you dumpster-diving dork.

Will: Would you believe I knew a-ha’s version of this song before I knew the Everly Brothers’? Actually, you probably would, given how many commenters on YouTube have said the exact same thing. But the combination of this song and the stuff that I already knew by Phil and Don led me to invest in the Rhino Records four-disc box set…and what an awesome investment it was. I still find it hard to believe that Warren Zevon used to play keyboards for them, though.

David: Like Will, I heard a-ha’s version first, but haven’t heard it in years, so I don’t remember what they did with it. Given what a fan of Marshall Crenshaw and all things Finn that I am, I really should pick up an Everly Brothers compilation one of these days. I know I’d love it.

Jeff: Wow. Up until this week, I’d assumed I was the only person on the planet who heard a-ha do this song before the Everlys, and I’ve been carrying this secret shame with me for almost 15 years. I want to thank David and Will for letting me know I’m not alone.

Jon: Speaking on behalf of the vast majority of American music-lovers who put a-ha in the rear-view mirror immediately after the moon rose on “The Sun Always Shines on TV,” please allow me to submit that you people frighten me. Their version of this song is haunting, if inconsequential. For years, all I knew of the Everlys’ version was the three seconds they would sing on one of those TV-compilation commercials. It’s a nice minor-key song, though it’s performed a bit too much like a revamp of “Let It Be Me.”

This was one of the Everlys’ last two Top 10 hits, as they continued a chart decline that must have been a huge bummer for Warner Bros. (which had stolen them away from Cadence two years before). Interestingly, right after they signed with Warners they lost access to the Acuff-Rose Publishing catalog, whose songwriters included not only Felice & Boudleaux Bryant (the authors of their early hits), but the Everlys themselves. They couldn’t sing songs they had written themselves! Carole King and Howard Greenfield wrote “Crying in the Rain.”

Zack Dennis: Every time I get hooked in by Pete Townsend’s synthesizers, I feel kind of silly. And yet it always happens. While I’d rather listen to the entirety of Quadrophenia rather than any particular single by the Who, the singles almost universally have the capacity to cheer me up and this one is no exception.

Jason Hare: I’m on a lot of Who discussion groups, and Face Dances is generally regarded at the band’s worst studio album — ranked worse than ’82′s It’s Hard — but I quite like it. Perhaps Bill Szymczyk (you know how hard it is to Google that name when you don’t know how to spell it?) wasn’t the best producer for The Who (just as Kenney Jones wasn’t the best choice of drummer), but he helped them create a sound that accurately heralded in The Who 2.0, post Keith Moon. “You Better You Bet” is a ridiculously stupid song but I love it anyway. I love how Pete’s vocals are omnipresent, and Roger sings with fantastic attitude that, for one of the first times, just doesn’t translate to “I’m angry.” (See just about any track from Who Are You).

Ted Asregadoo: Man, I loved this song when it came out — and then I bought the cassette and wanted to return it because I thought someone was playing a joke on me. I mean, yeah, there was this gem and “Another Tricky Day,” but what about everything in between? I thought some smelly socks idiot at the mastering lab dubbed in a bunch of songs from … well, I had no idea where because, to me, it wasn’t the Who singing “Cache Cache” and the other forgettable songs, it was some group who sounded like the Who trying to foist dung on me while calling it prime rib. But hey, who doesn’t love Townshend missing his vocal cue and smiling at his mistake?

Dw. Dunphy: I was as surprised as anyone when longtime Eagles producer Bill Szymczk ended up as the Who’s choice for Face Dances. Yet when you backtrack, it actually makes a little sense. Leaving their comfy home of MCA Records, this was their first Warners release, all old-timers were feeling pinched to prove they still could turn the charts their way and they had the huge hurdle of overcoming Keith Moon’s death. Of course a “hitmaker” was called in, and this is exactly what was expected. “You Better You Bet” is bouncy, snarly, a little dirty and has major hookitude. Townshend employed most of those same hooks on the superior “Let My Love Open The Door.”

David Lifton: One of the things I love about this song is that it brings out Townshend’s sense of humor. There are so many lines in here — “Your dog keeps licking my nose,” “You welcome me with open arms and open legs,” and “I look pretty crappy sometimes” — that go against his usual angst that it’s irresistible, and Daltrey sounds like he’s having a lot of fun with it.

Beau Dure: I find it funny that so many people slag The Who’s post-Moon work. I have limited tolerance for “eh, we’re not really sure what to make of this relationship, but let’s enjoy it for now” genre — personally, I think if her dog is attached to you, it’s time to man up and make a commitment — but this song is just too catchy and clever to resist. Of course, I like “Eminence Front,” so what do I know?

Jon Cummings: As someone whose first experience with the Who was as a 10-year-old deciphering the phrase “Mama’s got a squeeze box, daddy never sleeps at night,” I have what may be a generational lack of concern with the incoherent silliness of “You Better You Bet.” Daltry’s vocal is perfect — somehow, as he has done so many times through the years with all sorts of Townsend’s material, he finds a way to give a lived-in feel to that last verse and my favorite phrase, “I showed up late one night with a neon light for a visa.”

When I lived in London a decade ago, I used to find myself singing this song in my head every time I watched a bunch of rowdy football fans cram onto the Tube after a match. I came to believe it was written in their voice — working-class guys who are complete fuck-ups, but who at least are grateful that their women don’t toss them to the curb. I know the entire Who catalog backwards and forwards now that I’m old, but whether it’s the sentimental value or whatever, this is still one of my favorites of theirs.

Scott Malchus: Like many people from my generation, the first song by The Who I heard was “You Better You Bet.” In the early ’80s, there was no classic rock radio, so Pete had to cater to the MTV crowd and come up with something poppy. I’ve always felt that the last two Who albums were extensions of the material he was releasing on his solo records at the time (Empty Glass and All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes). The son gs are more straightforward and painfully introspective. Which makes “You Better You Bet” a joy, because it’s so silly. Kenny Jones was definitely the wrong choice for the band. I can see why they wanted to get a drummer with a different style than Moon, but they could have chosen someone a little more original in their playing. Jones is just plain boring as a drummer. Still, this song brings back nice memories of my childhood, and it’s always a pleasure to hear when it comes on the radio.

Will Harris: I know people love to trash Face Dances, but my experience with it has never been quite as awful as others…but, then, that’s probably because I didn’t have any knowledge of their earlier incarnation when I first encountered it. I totally missed out on this song when it was first released, and, indeed, I spent several years knowing far more about Pete Townshend than the Who, since – at least by my recollection – Pete ended up getting way more airplay on MTV than his band ever did. In fact, “You Better You Bet” made absolutely no impression on me until I picked up Pete’s Another Scoop in a cut-out bin and fell in love with that whole album (I still enjoy spinning “Girl in a Suitcase” and “Football Fugue” on a regular basis), but while I’ve now come to prefer the Daltrey-sung version of “You Better You Bet” by the Who, I maintain a fondness for Townshend’s solo version as well.

Mike Heyliger: Not much of a Who enthusiast, but this is a nice, bouncy tune. Has anyone pointed out the song’s vague similarity to Townshend’s “Let My Love Open the Door” yet?

Ted: Love! Love! Love! U2. However, I could never see what made this song so popular.

Beau: Achtung Baby is a brilliant album. The singles don’t do it credit. Especially this one.

Zack: Speaking of favorite albums, Achtung Baby is up on the top of my list. After what “So Cruel” does to me, every song on the album is kind of like punching your opponent a few more times as he lies there unconscious on the canvas, and then maybe hitting with a chair for good measure. It’s just an incredible album. And it’s unfortunate that “Mysterious Ways” got so much airplay as a single, because it’s the only song on the album that I’ve actually managed to get tired of.

Will: I can’t listen to this song without one line leaping out at me: “She’s slippy.” I read some review at the time of the album’s release that positively tore Bono a new one for that one lyric, and it’s always stuck with me. As for Achtung, Baby, I admire the way U2 escaped the sound of The Joshua Tree, but I never embraced this record nearly as much as most of my friends did. It’s okay, but with the exception of “Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses,” which is prime radio-cranking material for me and probably always will be, I don’t find myself drawn to it very often.

Lifton: A good first single from Achtung, Baby. It’s not nearly the best song on it, but it’s not too soncially radical to make people think that the years of silence from them had completely remade them. I like the wah-wah pedal on it.

Zack: This is one of the only times when I actually know something like this off the top of my head (compared to the other Popdose writers, who could tell you everything down to and including the name of the cleanser used to wipe down the control board surfaces in the studio the day the track was recorded), but wasn’t “The Fly” actually the first single released from Achtung Baby?

Mike: I’m also pretty sure “The Fly” was the first single released from Achtung Baby. Either way, I love U2 and love this song. It was certainly nice to hear the band sound this loose and funky. It’s the first U2 song you can legitimately dance to.

If, God forbid, something happened to my record collection, Achtung is one of the first 10 albums I’d re-purchase.

Scott: “Mysterious Ways” (which I think was actually the third single after “The Fly” and “One,” no?) was all over the place in the summer of ’92 when I met my wife. Therefore, the song has a special place for me. The transformation from arena rock band to techno dance arena rock band was a brilliant move on the part of U2. The groove of this song and Larry Mullen’s snappy drumming is what makes it for me. For all of Bono’s posturing and the Edge’s technical wizardry, U2 is nothing without Clayton and Mullen.

Jason: Just as we were discussing (okay, I was discussing) The Who 2.0, here comes U2 2.0. (U2.0?) I don’t really listen to a lot of U2, but Achtung Baby is one of the few albums of theirs that I own and play every so often.

Jon: Some of the hype about Achtung Baby being such a radical departure for U2 was overblown, but even to this day I find it fascinating that the boys rolled out that album in the fashion they did. Releasing “The Fly” to radio first seemed like a screw-you to pop and Album Rock radio, and an attempt to leave the Joshua Tree/Rattle and Hum era as far behind as possible. But then came “Mysterious Ways,” which to me is one of the band’s most glorious achievements. Threading the needle between past majesties and a more futuristic sound, it announced that the band was moving in a new direction while welcoming the mainstream to come along.

Has one act ever released a double-shot of singles as brilliant as “Mysterious Ways” and “One”? Maybe “Hey Jude”/”Revolution,” but otherwise I say no.

Dunphy: I like Achtung, Baby as much as the next guy who thinks it’s kind of overrated. “One”? Awesome. “Even Better Than The Real Thing”? Well, maybe. “Mysterious Ways”? Just doesn’t click with me, I suppose. The unintended consequence of the album was that, after becoming a huge seller, every band with a few years behind them started reinventing themselves with Madchester beats and Euro-trash smarm, hoping to hijack the trappings of hipness. In retrospect, even Achtung, Baby sounds absurdly calculated, but we’ll always have “One” and the album cover with Adam Clayton’s naughty bits.

Do you know what Clayton could have used to remedy those unsightly testicles? Read on!

Scott: Sniff, sniff. So heartfelt.

Mike: Whoo! Falsetto alert! Goddamn! How come no one warned me?

When I hear this song, I picture flowers, morning dew, and those K-tel commercials where they featured the best Soft Rock hits of whenever. A friend of mine was giving away a portion of his music collection earlier this year and I took the Bread anthology just out of curiosity. Consciously listening to this song (as opposed to it just being background filler) does not make me want to investigate the rest of the album.

Jason: I would be remiss if I didn’t point you towards this clip, which has been sent to me by at least three of you on this list. I don’t even know what to say about it, other than Telly must have been thinking, during filming, “I am so full of shit right now.”

This will not come as a surprise to anybody, but I do love this song. If I had my way, every night at around 11:45 PM, I’d call David Gates and he’d sing me to sleep. (That may very well be the most emasculating thing I’ve ever written.) He could sing anything he wanted. He could sing fucking “Creeping Death” and I’d drift off peacefully. He’d have to include the “wahwahwahwahwah” sound in there somewhere, though.

Ted: Damn, Jason! Thanks for including the Telly Savalas clip. I had no idea that it was single, AND IT CHARTED! In 1977, our family took a trip to England and we went to Madame Tussauds Wax Museum. There among the celebrity figures was a wax version of Telly holding his trademark “Kojak” lollipop. But if you stood around long enough, out of some hidden speaker, Telly started speaking the first lines to “If” — followed by the sounds of gun fire, sirens, and the theme to “Kojak.” I must have stood there for a good 25 minutes listening to that over and over.

As far as the Bread version of this song goes … if I ever decide to kill myself, I’ll make sure this song is playing in the background.

Dunphy: I was reading Kevin Trudeau’s book Miracle Cures They Don’t Want You To Know About and it’s fascinating. Did you know that if you listen to “If” by Bread every day for a month, you can avoid the need for a vasectomy entirely? Think about all the money and pain saved, and the discomfort avoided as Dad doesn’t have to go get the love-hose cauterized! And with “If’s” patented gonad-shrinking formula, you’ll never have to worry about the boys playing peek-a-boo down the jogging shorts pantleg again! Huzzah!

Lifton: If only Fogelfuck hadn’t passed away, we could have had a steel cage deathmatch between him and David Gates for the title of world’s wimpiest soft rocker. Maybe it would be redeemable if this was in a key that didn’t require a falsetto, but I can’t listen to it.

Jon: “Oh, yeah, David Gates? Well, if I could save time in a bottle…” I wonder if Gates ever thinks to himself, “Man, if only I could have died in a plane crash, my song might be remembered as ‘poignant’ instead of ‘syrupy.’” This song is just a mile or so too far down Molasses Road for me, though I have a high tolerance for Bread. I greatly prefer “Lost Without Your Love” or “The Goodbye Girl.”

Beau: I was disappointed that this isn’t the Darling Buds song, but it’s not bad. I just can’t figure out what instrument makes the waa-waa-waa-waa sound.

Robert: “If” isn’t as great as “Baby I’m-a Want You” or “The Guitar Man,” but it’s still pretty dreamy in a grainy early-’70s photograph kind of way, and it features David Gates’s songwriting at its most risque: “And when my love for life is running dry / You come and pour yourself on me.” It doesn’t sound dirty when Gates sings it, but Savalas knew how to up the smut quotient.

Zack: Youtube isn’t loading this fast enough for me to fast-forward through it. Seriously, there’s like three different things that happen in this song — a burst of guitar effect noise, some high pitched singing, and…wait, there’s only two things that happen. No wonder this band is called “Bread”: this song is about as interesting as a sandwich made out of two pieces of bread and nothing else.

Will: One of the greatest wedding presents I received when Jenn and I tied the knot was from David Medsker, who gave me a gift certificate to buy CDs. What can I say? The guy knows me. As it happens, one of the CDs I purchased with that gift certificate was Rhino Records’ compilation of the best of Bread, and, man, screw street cred, I’m going on the record and saying that David Gates wrote some great love songs, of which this is but one.

Dunphy: I have to wonder: did your wife have any say in the purchase of Bread? I mean, she may have been hoping you’d bring home something funky and sexy, and you walk through the door with Bread. You may have missed out on some glorious freaky-deaky.

But I recuse myself because I’ve already gone on record as saying I love “Guitar Man.” Hell, I’ll take any of David Gates’ output (even if it is sung by David Soul) so long as it’s not “If” or “Baby, I’m-a Want You,” ’cause that’s just ignorance.

Will: As it happens, I thought I was buying it for her, because I remembered her saying something about liking them but not having anything by them. When I showed it to her, though, she wasn’t nearly as excited as I’d thought she would be. Her response was something along the lines of, “Um, that’s nice, I guess…” Ultimately, however, she couldn’t resist the charms of “Make It With You”…

Beau: I was disappointed that this isn’t the Billy Ocean song, or possibly a Loverboy song called “Mariah Carey.” They could probably use the same video footage, couldn’t they?

Lifton: Mariah hasn’t been the same since Derek Jeter dumped her ass.

Will: I’ll watch any Mariah Carey video you put in front of me. I won’t listen to the song, but…I like to watch. But, okay, somewhere around the 2-minute mark, I un-muted it to hear the great Larry Blackmon do his thing.

Lifton: As with Shania, the best way to watch a Mariah Carey video is with the sound, and your pants, down.

Zack: Mariah Carey seems like the kind of girl that would piss you off by making too much noise in bed. Normally noisy is a good thing, but I get the feeling you’d get up fed up with her squawking, losing your temper and eventually shouting “for God’s sake, can you just shut up and let me finish!” This song is basically annoying, but no more annoying than any of her other material.

Jon: What a waste–of time, of talent(?), of an American flag for her boobs, of gasoline for the cars. This song is even more brain-dead than most of the other crap Mariah has recorded since she decided to be a gangsta ho instead of a prim pop star. Oh, wait a minute — this is from Glitter? Well, now I feel bad for piling on. Poor, poor “exhausted” Mariah. Too bad we didn’t kick her enough when she was down.

Zack: I will not stand idly by and listen to you badmouth Mariah Carey’s boobs. Sure, the song is annoying as all hell, and the outfit is stupid, but leave the boobs out of this, man. They’ve done nothing wrong.

Scott: Ever since Mariah started dressing in short shorts and low cut tops, she has come off as one of those girls you knew in high school who tried to hard to fit in. You know the ones I’m talking about. Wannbes. Mariah always seems to me to be selling her sexuality instead of actually being sexy. And when I look at her, I just think, “sad.” As for the song… whatever.

Jason: I swear I’ve never heard this before, which shocks me, because I had a nagging feeling that all of Mariah Carey’s singles resided somewhere in the back of my head, never to leave unless David Gates sung them away. Listening now, though, I can see why this one slipped past me: it truly sucks. I can’t even find a discernible hook here. I mean, hooray for Cameo and everything, but other than that? Blech.

Ted: I think this is the first time I’ve heard this song, too. Toward the end, the song so gets so busy with the layering of Mariah and Cameo’s voices that it seems like the poor sod who had to mix this just kind of gave up and let it all run together. The video, however, is, I believe, Mariah at her porniest (if that’s a word). She sings about how shy she is right as she’s tweaking her nipples, does the pole dancer “bend over,” and all the while has that crazy smile on her face. I’m not sure what year it was when Mariah had that weird appearance with an ice cream cart on MTV, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the year this single came out.

Dunphy: You could probably get everything you were looking for from this video with twenty dollars in singles and a drive to the go-go bar. You might actually get a better song too.

And is it just me or does Mariah look a little like a Special Ed kid? She just doesn’t cause me to need twenty cc’s of “If” is all I’m saying.

Robert Cass: I have a feeling several of you were dumped on your ass by Mariah Carey, hence the hostility. Or maybe Tommy Mottola has threatened to kill you if you don’t call her a whore.

I only like a couple of Mariah songs, but I also only like a couple of Duran Duran songs. They both suck, people. Now, let the trash talking commence in full.

Mike: What? Duran Duran sucks? NO YOU DI-INT!!!!

John C. Hughes: Oh, Robert, the earrings and heels just came off — hold onto your weave!

Mike: I just pictured myself with earrings, heels and a weave. No disrespect, Robert, but you’d probably make a better looking woman than me.

“Loverboy” is an incredibly shitty single. It’s lazy — Mariah basically follows the same pattern as she did for the lead single off of each of the three albums that preceded “Glitter”. Painfully recognizable sample, guest rapper (although I think that may have been on the remix), it might be the worst single she ever made, and that’s saying a lot because whenever I hear “Hero” (which is usually in the supermarket or at a doctor’s office) I want to go postal.

I won’t say Mariah sucks, because she doesn’t. While she’s never made a great album, she’s certainly made a handful of semi-decent ones. Especially since she ditched the whole Lite-FM schtick.

Dunphy: I have never heard Mariah sing like she’s feeling anything, even the most heartfelt ballads… She knows how to put across the sound of heartbreak and longing, but it always sounds like an act to me. Then she goes all nuts with the tightrope singing.

Zack: That’s exactly where I was coming from with my bedroom noise comment — it all just feels transparent.

Beau: My problem with Mariah may be nothing more than a bias against singers who aren’t also songwriters or creative visionaries. All they can do to stand out is add a few more bells and whistles to melodies that usually don’t need them. Compare her to, say, Madonna. The one-time Material Girl clearly doesn’t have Mariah’s pipes — never has, never will, though I’d argue her performance on Ray of Light is powerful and nuanced. And I have no idea if she has even one-tenth of Tori Amos’ skill at a keyboard. But she has an idea of what she wants to do musically besides show off.

That’s also one reason I respect Kelly Clarkson more than a lot of the Idol alumni. She clearly has more going for her than a strong voice and cute face.

Idol has sinned against music by putting singers on a pedestal. I need more than that. I need a song to which the singer has some connection. I need a singer connecting with a band. Otherwise, music is nothing more than a karaoke contest.

Dunphy: You just made Rod Stewart cry.

Mike: So a singer can’t necessarily have a connection to a song they didn’t write? “I Wish it Would Rain” by The Temptations and “I Want You Back” by The Jackson 5 just popped into my head.

And not that Mariah’s a creative visionary, but she does write all of the lyrics to her songs.

Beau: Okay, hammer me with the exceptions, I know. I think my biggest problem is with singers (Mariah, Michael Bolton) who aim for vocal gymnastics in place of anything novel from an artistic point of view. There’s a reason why Mark Knopfler is so much more effective than Whitney Houston at conveying emotion. (For sheer cringing value, check out the Indigo Girls version of “Romeo and Juliet,” in which Amy Ray — usually one of my favorites — tries to go all showy.)

Mike: Of course, as I read this, there’s this book sitting next to me called 1000 Songs, which says, and I quote, “Mark Knopfler is the most inexpressive singer in history.” Although I think that was a backhanded compliment. Those crazy rock journalists.

Jeff Giles: I have that book, and it’s full of insults for the artists mentioned. I remember them singling out Supertramp for particularly heavy scorn.

Jason: I’m the polar opposite on this one. I didn’t find Amy Ray’s version of “Romeo and Juliet” showy at all; I thought it was tremendously passionate.

Zack: Ugh, I hated it. I’ll take “Blood and Fire” over it every single day of the week, and twice on Sunday.

Jeff: I prefer Cliff Eberhardt’s version. You guys are both stupid.

Jon: I don’t get it — why are all these singers covering Henry Mancini’s theme from Romeo & Juliet, which is an instrumental anyway?

Don’t slag off the Indigo Girls. Their version of “R&J” was always the emotional high point of their shows in the early ’90s — I never even bothered with Dire Straits’ version until Amy & Emily had hooked me on the song.

Beau: I love the Indigo Girls — listened to their first two albums all through college, and I’ve stayed with them long enough to blast “Tether” on my iPod. Love seeing “Least Complicated” and “Fugitive” live. That’s the one recording I’ve heard from their catalog that I simply can’t stomach.

But there are different tastes. Like I said, it’s just a bias of mine that I need more than a voice to get me into a song. They say there’s no accounting for taste — I’m just accounting for mine.

Now I’m wondering if any singers have thought about covering Mancini’s Pink Panther theme. “Dead ant, dead ant, dead ant …”

Mike: Mariah-bashing aside, what I hate about this song is that it’s a blatant recycle of a song that wasn’t that good to begin with. I mean, the fact that the crappy “Word Up” and “Candy” became Cameo’s biggest hits almost poisons me to the fact that they released some great material before and (for a short while) after.

Jason: Simply wonderful. This might be one of the happiest songs written about a slut.

Zack: A while back I had an idea for a WB television show called Rain Men. It would have been about an a cappella group at a college in the Pacific Northwest, and one of the shows would have involved one of the members running around through a dormitory trying to find “protection” so he can hook up with the younger sister of one the female characters on the show. In a subsequent episode, when the Rain Men hit the road to sing at other colleges and visit hers, he’s pretty crushed to find that she of course has a boyfriend — and an a cappella arrangement of “Runaround Sue” would be used to deliver the scene. I love this song. I’ve listened to it three times already, and I feel like I could listen to it all day.

Beau: I’ll take “Music I Can Only Listen To When I’m At Silver Diner With Imminent Arrival of Pancakes” for $400, Alex. I’m sorry — for me, going back to listen to stuff like this must be like Bach’s contemporaries going back to Palestrina and saying, “Dude, what’s up with the strict rules on counterpoint?”

Mike: Along with “You Better You Bet” and “If,” this is one of those songs I’ve heard a bunch of times before but didn’t really consciously listen to until now. For whatever reason, music made before The Beatles breakthrough/the heyday of Motown doesn’t really resonate with me, and although it’s a pleasant enough song, all it really does it make me want to listen to Billy Joel’s “An Innocent Man.” Damn — being born in the mid-to-late Seventies kinda sucks.

Jon: Hmmm, Popdose seems to have a Dion fetish. That’s fine, though — I could listen to “Runaround Sue” all day. These days we tend to forget that doo-wop singers could be tough — but Dion, who was trying to bridge into a more ’60s sound once he dumped the Belmonts, has the stones to admit he’s been crying and that he still loves her, and enough bravado to get off a snarling line like “People, let me put you wise — she goes out with other guys.” After listening to this or “The Wanderer,” it’s hard to argue with his later claim (on the album we discussed a few weeks ago) that he was “King of the New York Streets.”

Will: Mr. DiMucci came up in a recent “Bottom Feeders” column, at which point I praised his early ‘90s should’ve-been-a-comeback album, Yo Frankie. I still don’t have nearly as much stuff from his back catalog as I know I ought to, however, as this classic song reminds me. The man’s still putting out great stuff, too.

Dunphy: What is it about these super-simple late ’50s / early ’60s pop tunes that make them so irresistible? I mean, getting right down to it, this is a song about a straight ho. Sue is a ho. She digs guys who think with their meatballs and aren’t listening to “If” seven times a week. Yet there’s nothing to get so offended by here and, before too long, you’re singing along with the hooks.

That said, I still can’t believe this is the same guy who would go on to sing “Abraham, Martin & John.”

Lifton: What is it about those tunes that makes them irresistible? It’s because they swung like hell. Straight ahead rock drumming hadn’t been invented yet, so you had all these session jazz guys who could do all sorts of cool stuff. On this song you can add that you also had guys who learned how to sing on street corners, and that attitude naturally found its way into the songs.

Ted: I’m not going to mess with a classic ’cause, really, what can you say about this song other than it’s a classic? Sure, you can bring up the fact that Sue is a whore, but whoring is a classic, too. I mean it’s the world’s oldest profession, right? Still, I love the video because the audience is clearly waiting for their martinis and highballs to kick in.

Scott: Dion rules, man. “Runaround Sue” is the definition of timeless.

Scott Malchus: This was the album when Keith and Mick supposedly started liking each other again. In truth, I think Mick suddenly realized the money-making potential of a group of ’60s and ’70s icons touring endlessly. “Mixed Emotions” began the endless cycle of soulless Stones albums put out for the sole purpose of trying to make them seem relevant. I have never found much of the current music remotely interesting. However, since Rolling Stone gives every Rolling Stones record five stars, I must be in the minority.

Darren Robbins: Is this a Stones or Fabulous Thunderbirds video? I must say, it is difficult to differentiate between the two, but if the singer is shown in full-on Olivia Newton-John aerobics attire (circa Perfect), it’s a Stones video.

Beau Dure: You’re not the only one with mixed emotions, but you’re the only one who listened to this song more than once. The Stones have some solid material in the MTV era, and this isn’t horrid, but it’s not particularly memorable except that I kept thinking “suction my lips” instead of “button your lip” would be a funny opening line.

Dw. Dunphy: I’d imagine longtime Stones fan breathed a sigh of relief when they first heard “Mixed Emotions.” I’d imagine, just the same, that they had their own on the second listen. Why? Because they realized that from here on out, they weren’t getting anything new from the boys (giggle, tee hee, snort.) Don’t get me wrong, if this or any other song from Steel Wheels comes on the radio, I don’t mind. But this was the clear proof that they were only going to recycle the sights, sounds and smells of Some Girls and Tattoo You from then on.

David Lifton: Everything decent the Stones have put out since, say, Tattoo You is basically a recycling of things that they did better years earlier. We get it by now: Keef with the I-IV on an open-tuned Telecaster, Charlie playing that drum pattern that says that he can’t be bothered to come up with anything interesting. The other single, “Rock And A Hard Place,” was basically “Brown Sugar.” But it works on this song because, well, it’s the Stones, dammit. It’s the musical equivalent of when James Bond says, “Shaken, not stirred,” and you still love it no matter which Bond says it. It helps that it’s got a fantastic chorus.

There was also a rumor that Keith used to call this “Mick’s Emotions.”

Jeff Giles: I think I’ve said this before, but “Harlem Shuffle” was the first Stones hit of my formative listening years, so I think I can be forgiven for not giving a shit about “Mixed Emotions” when it was released. Having since lived through Voodoo Lounge and Bridges to Babylon, I now feel nothing but the warmest of nostalgia for this song. (I still hate “Harlem Shuffle,” though.)

Will Harris: Somewhere in a box, I still have the promotional 45 that Sony sent out when this song was first released. I had never really been into the Stones prior to this, but I was friends with a girl at the time – hi, Ashlea – who was a huge fan, so I probably think more fondly of this song and the Steel Wheels album that perhaps I rationally should. In retrospect, it’s not necessarily a great Stones song, but it’s still a pretty good pop song. On the whole, though, when I think of Steel Wheels, I generally think of “Almost Hear You Sigh,” Keith’s “Can’t Be Seen,” and the shouldn’t-work-but-it-does “Continental Drift.”

Mike Heyliger: I don’t think I’ve listened to this song since it was popular. I’m surprised beacause I probably like it more now than I did originally. It’s derivative as all hell, but they sound like they’re having a ton of fun. I like the looseness of it.

I hope no one ever tries to button Mick’s lips. That might take some work…and a mighty big button.

Taylor Long: This is actually one of my favorite Stones songs. OK, sure, nothing new from them, and portions of the lyrics are really awful, but I still love it. It’s proved to be a convenient anthem for many a rocky road in various relationships. Their Rarities ’71 – ’03 CD has a fun 12″ mix of this.

David Medsker: Like everyone else, I wasn’t really looking for the Stones to reinvent the wheel at this point. I was just happy that they came up with a leadoff single better than “The Harlem Shuffle.” Always wanted to hear that 12″ mix. Taylor, could you share with the rest of the class?

Taylor: Why yes, I’d love to!

Jon Cummings: This was the second time of … how many has it been now? … since 1986 that the Stones have dragged Keef from the sarcophagus, cranked up the tour bus, and cranked out an album that the nostalgic rock press has hailed as a “return to form” before forgetting it five minutes later. To say that this is their last half-decent single is to overstate its relevance considerably. I have to say, though, that “You’re not the only ship adrift on this ocean” is a pretty profound line for a cock-rock Stones song.

Zack Dennis: Jagger’s voice is stuck on “yell.” It seems like the lyrics would be a whole lot more meaningful if they were sung with some kind of inflection; instead, they’re just belted out over a boring guitar mix.

Zack: These guys need to clean their apartment. I like this song, the peppiness of the music contrasts nicely with the subject. And it’s kind of neat to hear the “Sympathy For the Devil” hooting at the end right after we’ve listened to a Rolling Stones song.

Lifton: The lyrics are silly, but who cares? This is as good a summer single as “Hey Ya!” or “Crazy.” And the guitar line on the “Show me” section make the whole song a perfect piece of pop.

Dunphy: This song is catchier than it deserves to be and betrays every crappy, hypocritical thing Karl Wallinger said about other bands (at that time) channelling sounds of the ’60s.

Taylor: Where was I when this came out? I have no idea. I can honestly say that I’ve never heard this before. I guess it’s pretty catchy, but he has that annoying, not very expressive ’90s alt-rock voice, and it’s turning me off.

Beau: Gotta give Karl’s one-man gang some credit. Today, a hip-hop guy would just sample all the stuff that he painstakingly reproduced.

I thought this was a pretty good one, actually, but I’m a sucker for lines like “the clocks will all run backwards, all the sheep will have two heads, and Thursday night and Friday will be on Tuesday night instead.” Almost as good as “bible-punching heavyweight, evangelistic boxing kangaroo, orangutan and anaconda, Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck and even Pluto too.”

Yes, I’m saying Karl should’ve been in the Rutles. Except that he wouldn’t have produced a good relationship angst song like “Is It Too Late,” which precedes “Way Down Now” on the album.

Medsker: Man, I am just shocked by the snark headed World Party’s way. I love these guys, and I loved this song when it came out. The drum track was borderline Art of Noise-ish, which was unheard of for a Beatle-esque alt-pop band at the time. As for relationship angst songs, I’ll see you “Is It Too Late” and raise you “And I Fell Back Alone.” That one’s a heartbreaker.

Jeff: I didn’t catch up with World Party until Egyptology, so I think this might be the first time I’m hearing “Way Down Now.” Not bad, not bad.

Will: I went to see World Party in concert during their tour for Private Revolution rather than attend my prom solo. It felt right at the time, and it feels right now…especially since, ultimately, I never would’ve left the prom with any memory than would’ve compared to seeing Karl Wallinger perform a live cover of The Beatles’ “A Day in the Life.” Although I know that “Ship of Fools” got some mainstream radio play, I don’t remember this one getting nearly as much top-40 success, but it definitely secured them as college-radio faves. To date, there is still nothing in Wallinger’s discography that I don’t love, but this is definitely one of his greatest singles.

Scott: “Ship of Fools” remains one of my favorite songs from the ’80s. Just a great fucking song. That said, “Way Down Now” is an excellent reminder of the greatness of World Party. Too bad they never had huge commercial success.

Jon: In a world inhabited by Lenny Kravitz, everyone who ever derided Karl Wallinger’s Beatles fetish can bugger off. World Party is one of my five favorite ’80s bands, and Goodbye Jumbo may just be my favorite album of the decade. I’d gladly stack this, “Put the Message in the Box,” “Ship of Fools” and “All Come True” against the four best songs by any ’80s mod-rock band you care to name — except maybe REM and the Smiths.

Mike: Before I clicked on the video, I didn’t think I’d heard this song before. However, I recognized it within the first 30 seconds. Fun stuff. Remember when alternative/”college” rock actually sounded cheery (even if the lyrics were on the dour side)? Now, everything on alternative rock radio is either super-aggro or makes you want to kill yourself.

Darren: Yeah, this song is pretty indicative of what alt.rock was before Nirvana blew the format to smithereens. You could turn on the radio and hear World Party, All Shook Down-era Replacements, School of Fish, Material Issue, Tripping Daisy, Peter Murphy…and while it was dark, it didn’t immediately make you reach for the nearest sharp object. Ah, you just don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.

Beau: We should have a Popdose debate on the topic “Did Seattle destroy alt and/or rock music?” Though perhaps it’s not Nirvana’s fault that so many bands followed their well-trodden path that we’re maybe a year or two away from having tattooed 13-year-olds singing about the angst of homework.

Dunphy: I don’t think so. A lot of what we considered alternative before Nirvana is just pop music now.

Medsker: There was still room for bands like World Party, Lightning Seeds, Tears for Fears, Erasure, etc. on the dial after Nirvana broke. Hell, I even heard the Trash Can Sinatras on the radio in Boston in the middle of 1993. No, I maintain that it was the soundtrack to The Crow that blew all those bands off the dial. After that, it was come hard, or don’t come at all.

P.S. Does anyone remember when Metallica was briefly considered an alternative band? They even played Lollapalooza, didn’t they? Strange days, indeed. Most peculiar, mama.

Taylor: I’m from Seattle. Fair warning. I think “alternative” eventually became kind of like “indie” is now: More of an umbrella term for whatever you can justify using the word for.

Dunphy: It’s always something that strikes me odd. When I think indie, I’m thinking Slint, or The For Carnation, or Palace or even Man Or Astroman? When I hear what is now considered indie, the majority sounds like twee-pop.

Medsker: Shit. I’ve only heard of one of those bands. Do I need to turn in my rock critic badge?

Mike: I’ve heard of ‘em, but have never listened to ‘em, so I guess I’ll throw my badge on top of David’s. But I will agree that a lot of what is being called indie-pop these days isn’t too far removed from regular old dance-pop. It’s like Justin Timberlake in skinny jeans, nerdy eyeglasses and Chucks.

Zack: I’ve only heard two of them, and you’ll have to pry my rock critic badge from my cold dead hands.

Beau: I think I know Slint by association — didn’t they have a guy who went on to be in Zwan, which Billy Corgan acrimoniously dissolved, claiming the other people in the band (other than Jimmy Chamberlin) were reprehensible people who did things like have sex in public? I thought that might have been a good marketing gimmick.

Zack: Did you just call me reprehensible?

Jon: I’m among the few and the proud who have always considered Nirvana more than a bit overrated, but the descent of “alternative rock” from Nirvana/Pearl Jam to Nickelback isn’t difficult to trace — just follow the sound of the gargling male vocalists singing the same sort of crap that’s filled time on AOR radio for 40 years. The gag, as we all know, is that any style that fits the “alternative rock” rubric is only “alternative” until it becomes popular, at which point it becomes another excuse for cynical corporate marketing. Kurt no doubt had many complex reasons for putting a gun to his head, but who could have blamed him if the final straw was hearing an advance copy of Sixteen Stone?

Jeff: I think A Few Small Repairs and Whole New You are Colvin’s worst albums, and this might be my least favorite song of hers…but like pretty much everyone else has said, I was still glad for her success. If it hadn’t been for the Lilith Fair gang, the mid-to-late ’90s would have been wall-to-wall Limp Bizkit.

Scott: I recall an interview with Shawn Colvin back when the Cover Girl record came out, and she said she wanted to record an album like Springsteen’s Tunnel of Love. With her own divorce behind her, I think Colvin accomplished just that. “Sunny Came Home” was a strange song to become such a huge hit. It’s moody and downright depressing, like most of A Few Small Repairs. But I like that album almost as much as I enjoy Fat City. I agree with Jeff, too. I’m very glad that after the hard years Colvin went through both personally and professionally she finally found success. Of course, she found that success just as the record industry was taking a shit, so I don’t know how much good it did her.

Beau: It was so nice to see Colvin get her moment in the sun that I hardly cared how good the song was. Fortunately, it’s pretty good.

Taylor: Oh god, I hate this song. What the fuck kind of name is Sunny?! And why do I give a shit that she’s home?! Her voice on the chorus kills me — wait, what’s that? I think I just heard the neighborhood dogs howling in response.

Beau: Coincidentally, I saw my high school friend Sunny this weekend. Not related to my friend and former co-worker Sunny (a guy of Asian descent).

So since you have a name that could go both boy and girl, you should empathize!

The voice on the chorus bothers you? I hope you never get stuck in an elevator listening to Whitney Houston.

Taylor: So, uh… I sincerely apologize to anyone named Sunny.

And yes, I also hope I never get stuck in an elevator listening to Whitney Houston.

Zack: I haven’t heard this song in quite a while, so it seems to have reset, but I remember finding it progressively more annoying each time I heard it. The lilting voice in the chorus is cute at first, and gradually become more grating each time she does it until finally it seems about as melodic as a car alarm.

Dunphy: I have several music crushes, a few of which I’ve already divulged. Jenny Lewis, Neko Case, Alison Krauss… Jewel and Shirley Manson are in there, but not for their music, so… yeah. Objectifying pig, I presume. But Shawn Colvin was the first, mostly on the strength of her Fat City LP. By the time this song came out, as well as the whole A Few Small Repairs recording, I was a goner, and not because she went all pyromaniacal in the video. Colvin has the combination of a writer who can get a lot from a little, not one for cramming up paragraphs where one word will do (I know, I know. I could definitely take a tip from her) and a singer with no need to oversell the sentiment.

She’s also damn foxy.

Jon: “Sunny” is far from my favorite of Shawn’s songs, but it was pretty amazing when an artist who had previously been stuck in the “contemporary folk”/”Americana” ghetto (and has since been shoved right back there) briefly grabbed the pop brass ring. (Why doesn’t Joel Whitburn list “Sunny” as a #1 hit, the way he did other radio-only chart-toppers of the ’90s?) A bit of a history lesson on the single that ensured that Shawn could burn down any house she chooses to own until the end of her days: In the mid-’90s my old editor at Billboard, the late, great (?) Timothy White, helped spearhead a major tweaking of the way nominees would be selected for the “big four” Grammy categories. It was seen by many to be not just a coincidence that Tim’s new process resulted in one of his favorite artists surprisingly sweeping Song of the Year and Record of the Year. (That was an unusual Grammy year, anyway, what with “Soy Bomb” and ODB’s intrusion on one of Shawn’s speeches.)

Lifton: This was a deserved hit, because Colvin is such an intelligent songwriter. I generally hate songs that become feminist anthems, but this is great because it doesn’t sound like she set out to write one. She just came up with a good story, like she has done so often, and put a haunting guitar line to it, and it resonated with a lot of woman who could relate to it. Good for her.

Medsker: She played my hometown’s concert festival a few years back. It was the first time I had attended in decades. I was completely and utterly bored.

Mike: This was when I briefly jumped on the Shawn Colvin train. Actually, it was the single before this — “Get Out of This House,” which I saw her perform on the Rosie O’ Donnell show or something. The album this appears on is pretty decent, but this is one of the weaker songs (maybe I’m just saying that because I heard it on the radio so much), and by the time her next album was released, I’d officially jumped off of the Shawn Colvin train.

Will: I always thought “Steady On” was a rather whiny track, so I’d both been introduced to Shawn Colvin and dismissed her early on. But the chorus of this song winds around you and embraces you from first listen, so I’ve given her new stuff a chance ever since.

Darren: I lump this one in with the Dixie Chicks’ “Goodbye Earl” — downright disturbing characters that the feminist soccer moms of this world have embraced with an idiotic, entitled fervor. I also lump this one in with Paul Cole’s “I Don’t Wanna Wait,” wherein a moderately successful singer has that one brief shining moment where the stars align, radio formats oblige, and a single solitary hit is born — akin to a pitcher with a .190 batting average hitting a home run.

Dunphy: I’d agree with you only if I never had to hear “I Don’t Want To Wait” ever again in my life. It probably won’t happen. As for Paula Cole, do you think she’s flipping burgers now?

Mike: Didn’t she put an album out a year or so ago? I recall seeing some reviews of it that were quite favorable.

Beau: Shameless self-promotion: Spurred by a discussion at Jason’s blog last year, I covered Paula Cole’s whereabouts here. She precipitously left behind inauthentic trappings, or something like that.

Jon: Leaping proudly to Paula Cole’s defense…sorta…her first album, Harbinger, was tremendous, and I would be happy to hear “I Don’t Want to Wait” on a regular basis for the rest of my life. (It may be the Party of Five connotations, but it may not.) I offer no defense for that ridiculous “Cowboy” song or the rest of her overwrought catalog, but I still listen to Harbinger pretty frequently — “I Am So Ordinary” is an amazing song.

Jon: I remember crooning this song on a daily basis while delivering newspapers on my bicycle during the winter of ’80. My voice was breaking at that time, so the falsetto I had been so proud of took on a Peter Brady quality as I sang the verses — but I didn’t mind because puberty also gave me a deep bass that was perfect for the choruses. I still love this song — I’ll take this and “How ‘Bout Us,” and you can have every melody-deprived R&B hit of the last 20 years.

Medsker: As a Spinners fan, I am embarrassed that I have not heard this song (or remember hearing this song) until now. That’s some dope-ass Philly soul. Was Thom Bell involved with this? And just how tall is that singer? His legs looked like they were five feet long by themselves.

Mike: These guys used to be The Moments, and had a pretty decent string of hits through the Seventies (“Love on a Two Way Street” was probably the most popular) before changing their name for no apparent reason. This song is the epitome of smooth, and these guys should’ve been starring in Colt 45 commercials along with Billy Dee Williams.

Taylor: If a man ever decided to sing this to me, I’d so be okay with it. Especially if he used the same facial expressions and hand motions from this video.

Zack: Having just been to a wedding, this seems like it would be a great song to dance to. It’s putting a smile on my face, and ain’t nothing wrong with that.

Scott: Ow! Those pipes! Those suits! I have no clue who the hell Ray, Goodman and their buddy Brown are, but this song is smoooooooth.

Will: I have reached a point in my musical evolution where I’d just as soon listen to smooth R&B like this as I would a catchy power pop track. I guess that’s maturity.

Beau: I watched the video, then came back to post, and I still see the title and immediately think of Sugarloaf’s “Green-Eyed Lady.”

Dunphy: Whatever happened to these R&B soul types that, even though their song isn’t great, it’s enough to be really good? What did they have that the modern bunch don’t? I suppose the easy answer is “soul,” but the more complex answer is that these love songs actually sound like the subject is love, and not a Roofie date rape soundtrack.

Jeff: Fuck yes. Where are these guys now? Why haven’t they slapped the shit out of T.I. yet?

Zack: Man, I never got what the big deal was about Tesla. The opening is admittedly good, but it doesn’t seem any better than a moderately talented guitarist could put together and post to youtube. And did anyone else notice that the drummer has about seven times as many pieces in his kit than anyone could possibly ever need?

Mike: I made it my business to listen to “American Top 40″ every week from probably 1983 until I graduated high school ten years later. This might be the only Top 10 song from that period that I have absolutely no recollection of. Then again, this is fairly anonymous as far as anonymous power ballads. Is it me, or does every video for one of these hair metal slow jams have a tour bus in it?

Dunphy: I have a theory that the Tesla tour bus hit that proverbial fork in the road, splitting it in two. On one side, you wound up with Candlebox and, on the other, the Black Crowes. It’s just a theory.

Jon: I have no memory of this song whatsoever. But then, I ignored the entire hair-metal oeuvre as best I could, and I avoided pop radio like the plague during the winter of ’89-’90, when this was a hit. And why not, with Paula Abdul and Michael Bolton and Milli Vanilli and … this dominating the charts? To me, Tesla is that pointless cover of “Signs,” and nothing else. If anyone can convince me that Tesla is worth another moment of my time, I might give them a shot. Any takers? Don’t all scream at once.

Beau: When I get to heaven, I’ll have to ask the Serbian inventor Nikola Tesla if he’s prouder to have an asteroid or a hair band named after him.

Dunphy: He may have wanted the asteroid and the band to meet.

Medsker: He’ll say, “Who cares? David fucking Bowie played me in a movie.”

Zack: That’s what my friend Jareth the Goblin King always says whenever I give him shit for putting on weight.

Beau: Tesla seems like California’s answer to those English bands that had some intellectual grounding (enough to name the band after an inventor) but recorded stuff with very little pretense. “Love Song” is the most basic of basic power ballads. And then they brought “Signs” back into public consciousness. Hippie, hair metal, obscure references … amazing that these guys never had a massive identity crisis.

Jeff: These guys are still around, and they still have a major following. In Sacramento, but still. I mean, what are those assholes from Saigon Kick doing these days? I bet they couldn’t sell out Arco Arena.

Taylor: Hey, the guitarist’s hair looks like mine! But seriously, THIS was from “Hot 100″? Why, dear god, WHY? Oh, the ’90s. I miss them and yet I don’t, all at the same time.

Medsker: “Iiiii knoooooow. Doot n doot, doot n doot, Iiiiiiii knoooow.” That’s all you need to, um, know about this song.

Will: I am Tesla’s worst nightmare, because no matter how many of their songs I hear, I still – and probably always will – think of them as “the guys who covered ‘Signs.’” This isn’t a bad song for what it is and when it was recorded, but I’ll stick with Skid Row’s “I Remember You,” thanks.

Zack: Sweet — now I’m thinking about “18 and Life.” Time to get my cock rock on.

Robert Cass: It’s time for me to come clean with all of you — I’m from the future. Though I’ve been living among you for some time now, I was born in a more technologically advanced age in which time travel is possible. Unfortunately, they don’t make ‘em like they used to, so my time machine broke once I arrived here. While I wait for repairs to be made and tricked-out accessories to be added by a man named Robert Zemeckis, who I was told could help, I’m basking in the awesomeness that is 2008.

You people really don’t know how good you’ve got it. For instance, did you know that the music of this decade is the best music of all time? It’s true! Those of you who think the 1950s, ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, or ’90s produced the best pop music are hopelessly stuck in the past, whereas I’m literally stuck in the past, but at least I know for a fact that music peaked in the “aughts,” so I actually have something to get misty-eyed about.

Ah, 2008. It was the last time Metallica would put out an album. In 2010 they broke up after Kirk Hammett’s hair plugs gained artificial intelligence and strangled him in his sleep. He was the buffer between James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich, who couldn’t get along without him there to block their punches. Hetfield retreated to a cabin in the Ozarks, where his homemade brand of “light” moonshine made him a billionaire, and Ulrich retreated to Middle-Earth, where he became a wizard.

In the future there is no war. But there are still anti-war videos. It gives liberals something to do on their down time at the re-education camps.

Beau Dure: Re-education? Does that mean in the future Americans are educated in the first place? That’s an improvement.

As for me, my nightmares about the “One” video will be replaced by nightmares that we get to the future by listening to this dull remake of it over and over, eight grueling minutes at a time.

David Medsker: Over eight minutes, yes, but there isn’t much of a song there. That whole “This I swear” part was particularly bad. Yes, Kirk got to shred at the end. Good for him. Bored now.

Darren Robbins: I remember when I first heard this song way back earlier this month. I was trying to figure out how to change the password on my banking website and darn if those bastards at WaMu could be bothered to make it easy for me. I clicked here, I clicked there…I used all reasonable logic and still I came up empty. Only when I clicked on the button CLICK HERE FOR FREE SMILEYS was I finally rewarded…

With free smileys and a fuckload of spyware, but I digress.

As for the video, the only thing that’s missing is a big fat Rock Band 2 logo at the beginning, middle, and end of it. Seriously — talk about a slow-motion posefest. Thing is, that’s no cinematic effect. that’s actually how Metallica moves these days. I kid, I kid.

Mike Heyliger: I didn’t discover Metallica until, believe it or not, the 1989 Grammy Awards, when they performed “One.” My junior high graduating class of 3-400 kids had not one person lighter than cardboard in it, so my exposure to metal (or metalheads) was quite limited. It was another story once I got to high school, though.

I tend to not go for music that’s particularly loud or abrasive, so I actually like the more palatable Metallica/Load/Reload stuff more than I like the early stuff. This falls somewhere in the middle. It has a semi-discernable melody, but tons of riffage as well. I’d like the song better if it were cut in half,though. 8 1/2 minutes is just too long to ask me to concentrate.

Jon Cummings: If Metallica and the Iraq War were transported to the ’70s, this video would have been attached to a soft-rock song called “Billy, Don’t Be a Vengeful Bastard.” The narrative stretches out like an overlong guitar solo…in fact, it stretches out in tandem with two or three overlong guitar solos, to the point where I thought the “day that never comes” would be the day the clip ends. This is why I’ve never given two shits about Metallica.

Jeff Giles: Eight and a half minutes long, but it feels like 15 — and the video only makes it worse. What was the point of all this, exactly? I hate to say any band’s earlier work was better, but this really feels like a pale, crappy retread of Metallica from 20 years ago. I don’t think there’s anything left for these guys to say.

Dw. Dunphy: The video is awful, I’ll just shoot that little Crite right here and now. Throw some steel guitar twang over it and you might have a Toby Keith video (There’s strong, then there’s Toby Keith strong.) The actual song? Well… I kinda like it. Sure the lyrics are horrible, and yes, technically love is a four-letter word, but I hoped no one would ever use that old warhorse again without at least a shot of irony.

Having said all that, the song works as both a post-Justice hard rock ballad and a thrash slam from days of old. If you don’t think too hard about it, it gets you by. In the big picture, what does it say about the modern music charts that this is the song I like best for the week?

Taylor Long: Hey, I used to like this band. When they were good. And, actually, even when they weren’t that good. Which basically means I liked them through Load. Although S&M is awesome. But seriously, James Hetfield (who I even had a crush on at one point!) doesn’t sound like Hetfield half the time. He’s not growling. He sounds like some wimpy asshole. I don’t know if I can make it through this whole thing, it’s making me sad.

Will Harris: Not bad, but at the risk of being called a blasphemer, I’ve always thought most of Metallica’s songs went on too long, and at 8+ minutes, this is certainly no exception. But, then, I haven’t really heard anything from them that’s caught my ear since their cover of Bob Seger’s “Turn the Page.”

Taylor: METALLICA COVERED BOB SEGER??? HOW DID I MISS THAT??

Dunphy: They also covered Lynyrd Skynyrd on that same album, alongside Pepper Keenan and Jerry Cantrell. Mind you, they were all probably drunk at the time…

Scott Malchus: This is the sound of a band trying to recapture their glory days and boring us to tears, and with the usual Rick Rubin blandness. NEXT!

Dunphy: Scott, how can you say that? He singlehandedly saved Sony Music and sent Jakob Dylan’s solo album to the top of… Oh, wait, is someone spraying polyurethane in the next room?

Scott: It’s funny, I used to be so impressed with Rubin’s production, especially what he did in the early 90′s with the Chili Peppers on Bloodsugarsexmagik and especially on “Mary Jane’s Last Dace” with Petty and the Heartbreakers. But I now think that Brenden O’Brien’s skills had just as much to do with the fucking awesome sound of “Give It Away Now,”"Suck My Kiss” and the rest of that record, and that Petty and Mike Campbell had a little more control (plus, Stan Lynch wasn’t going to let some producer ruin his last recordings with the band).

Sure, Rubin brought Johnny Cash back from purgitory and allowed him to leave this world with dignity and the acclaim he deserved (from a new audience). But everything he produces sounds the same, just as everything Jeff Lynne produces sounds like ELO and everything that Mutt Lange touches sounds like Def Leppard.

Taylor: I used to like this band, too. But they were never good, and I’d rather forget about that time in my life. Moving on!

Scott: Remember the ’80s, when every metal band had to do a power ballad? Now every band does its emo-metal ballad. Who do we blame, Nickelback? Staind doesn’t do it for me, sorry. NEXT!

Will: I can’t believe I’m saying this, but…I think I’d rather listen to this than the Metallica song. And I say that even though I hold the opinion that this sounds like re-hashed Nickelback.

Jon: You know the music-video era is over when a tubby slob like Staind’s lead singer, Aaron Lewis, is considered photogenic enough to get significant airtime walking on a beach and lip-syncing. Couldn’t somebody have slapped some makeup (and hair, and a rubber suit) on this guy? Or at least had an animated fly buzz around his face? No wonder MTV stopped showing this crap! This kind of generic, mid-tempo AOR pablum has rarely lent itself to good videos, and this is no exception. The comments on YouTube note that Staind is currently opening for Nickelback at an amphitheatre near you. I wonder if, some nights, the two bands change places in the lineup without announcing it–and nobody notices?

Dunphy: I remember when I first heard “It’s Been Awhile” from Break the Cycle, only once. I thought Aaron Lewis sounded like Tool’s Maynard James Keenan, but without all the mid-Eastern vocal acrobatics. I picked up the CD that day, listened through a couple times, then sold it on eBay a week later (At least it sold. I’m still stuck with an Orgy CD bought under the same circumstances.)

My point is that even if I didn’t have the previous experience of being once burned by Staind, this song would immediately present itself as the douche-rock it clearly is. Even the earnest verse, growly chorus, lumbering beat remains consistent. Even so, it’s nice to think that after all this time, they can still get on the charts with the same old formula from the good/bad old early aughts.

Darren: My friend Robin absolutely loves this song. We met way back in 2004 when we worked together. One day, I walk in and the guy in the cubicle between us is blasting Barry Manilow on his headphones so loud that a tinny Barry Manilow may as well have been in the room crooning “Copacabana.” We didn’t know each other yet, me having just started at the company mere days before, but our eyes met as we both stared daggers at the guy and we became fast friends. This song always reminds me of her, mainly because not an email goes by where she doesn’t mention that she’s listening to the tune and telling me I should do the same. Maybe today I will.

Okay, I just listened to the song/watched the video. It was exactly as I expected it to sound and look…chubby knuckledragger dude walking on the beach, stoned dude half-passed out on the couch…gentle guitar melody that lasts only long enough to make you crave the all out rock assault that comes when the A&R man says it’s time for a chorus. This kinda tune is the Y2K version of the hair metal power ballad, isn’t it? As predictable as a Lindsay Lohan car crash, and god bless Staind for giving the world a song you can sing along to without having ever heard it before.

Jeff: I’ve never been able to understand the appeal of this kind of music. Can anyone help me out here? What kind of person listens to Staind or Linkin Park for fun? What has to be going on in your life for you to say, “You know what I could really go for right now? An entire album’s worth of loud, dirge-y whining”? It never seems to go out of fashion, either. I don’t get it.

Medsker: If Dr. Phil had a house band, it would be Staind. And like Jeff, I have no idea what people see in them. I always thought of them as the band that helped someone through a difficult time in their lives, but once they got through it and were happier, they would never want to listen to them again. God knows I don’t want to listen to them again.

Mike: Staind has essentially made the same record something like six times in a row, and I think people are finally starting to notice. It wouldn’t hurt Aaron Lewis to crack a smile every once in a while.

Two quick things upon watching the video: 1) Who wears sneakers when walking on the beach? and 2) If you dipped Aaron Lewis in brown paint, wouldn’t you end up with a dead ringer for Darius Rucker?

Robert: Ah, that special genre of the aughts that you know as “emo.” Because of Staind’s “Believe” video, the National Transportation Safety Board installed a bald, overweight guy in the backseat of every car in America by the following year. The reasoning was that drivers won’t get sleepy and drive off the road or into other cars if they look in the rear view mirror and suddenly see one of “them” in the backseat. This form of employment financed Frank Black’s next seven solo albums. (Mike, you’re right about Aaron Lewis being dipped in brown paint and looking just like Darius Rucker. In fact, when President Rucker died of a heart attack while making love to his mistress, his administration did just that. It was quite a scandal.)

Beau: Can Future Man explain why this genre of music just re-records the same song over and over? Nice that the guitarist learned how to play harmonics for this one, I suppose.

Robert: No, it’s still a mystery, but you probably won’t be surprised to know that the future is even whinier and mopier than what you know as the present. This financial crisis turned everyone into babies. Tom Joad and other fictional characters would be disgusted, I’m sure.

Jeff: Speaking of President Rucker, did you guys know Hootie has a Top Five country single? No shit, he’s the new Charley Pride. Check it out.

Robert: A friend of mine who lives in Charleston, SC, said that it’s all over the country station there. He met Rucker five years ago or so when he was recording with Rucker’s sister’s brother-in-law or something like that, and Rucker said, “Whenever I pick up this one guitar of mine, I always write a country song.” I still like “This Is My World,” his 2001 R&B song from Back to Then and the Shallow Hal soundtrack.

Mike: I still play Back to Then religiously. It’s not a bad album at all.

I just realized something. People say (when I have a beard) that I look like Darius Rucker. Does that, by extension, mean that I look like a skinny, dark Aaron Lewis? Say it ain’t so!

Dunphy: Country Hootie couldn’t be any worse that David-Gates-singin’ Hootie or Burger-King-Shill Hootie. So good for Hootie.

Robert: When did he sing a David Gates song?

Dunphy: He covered the theme from The Goodbye Girl.

Will: For those who thought Edwin McCain’s “I’ll Be” was a little too rockin’ for their tastes.

Dunphy: Ech. ECH. David Cook can braid David Archuleta’s bung hair for all I care.

Ten years from now, that might be the best offer either of them get.

Jeff: I’m beginning to think that the songs American Idol gives its “winners” are written by the same manatees that write Family Guy. I couldn’t even make it all the way through this one.

Medsker: I quit watching AI after Melinda Doolittle was outsted (call me paranoid, but I’m convinced that was an executive desicion, not the work of the voting public). Sounds like I haven’t missed much. Man, couldn’t they hire Burt Bacharach to write the winners a song? Jesus, this is awful.

Jon: Forget the snark: It’s time to drop some sincere, heartfelt science on David Cook’s future as a recording artist. Throughout the Idol season, Cook seemed to want people to think he was simultaneously a Daughtry-esque rocker and a heartthrob who could sing “Hello” with as much impunity as Archuleta. Now he has a Number One single at AC–with, by the way, probably the best of all the singles Idol winners have been saddled with over the years–and the question remains: Who does he want to be? If he can continue to thread this needle, he may have a significant career as a pop artist — if he can find good pop songs, which is a big if. However, his Our Lady Peace fandom seems to mark him as someone who would like to be “harder,” and who may have exploited the pop covers just to advance through Idol. But can he write his own material? If not, he’s headed for Bo Bice-land, trying to wring hard rock from Kara DioGuardi types. My suggestion: David, bubelah, try to be a man first. Rock as hard as you can on your first album, and if nobody’s buying you can always slink back to Archuletaville. Will he take my advice? We’ll find out in a couple months–when his first single will probably be a cover of “Dancing on the Ceiling.”

Dunphy: You do realize who you’ve told David Cook to follow in the footsteps of…

Scott: I have to say, I like Cook’s voice. I think he sings with some emotional depth that you don’t expect from a pop singer. I can’t hold the song against him because it was handed to him when he won American Idol. I hold judgment against his career until something new comes along. Until then, I’ll take this over Metallica and Staind.

Taylor: David Cook kind of looks like Dane Cook. Now the real question is: who’s worse? I would say no contest in favor of Dane, but after listening to this, I’m not so sure. Oh god, I bet this is going to be next year’s graduation song or some bullshit.

Mike: I don’t think American Idol is the downfall of music as we know it, but I conveniently managed to ignore it until about three years ago (the Taylor Hicks/Daughtry season), and have watched sporadically since. The thing that struck me most about this year’s contestants is how absolutely beige they were. I don’t see David Cook having any kind of long-term success, especially when he’s biting off of Edwin McCain. This song is basically “I’ll Be” mashed up with Green Day’s “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life).”

Darren: For most of us, there is a song that we equate to all the special times in our life. Falling in love, breaking up, having kids, you name it – if we’ve lived it, there is a song attached to it in our minds. This song, of course, was one I found myself coming back to for the two weeks when I was a little unsure of how I was going to meet all my expenses and was too stressed to sleep. One of these days, I may even get around to listening to it all the way through. Not while driving, though…

Robert: Ah, early-21st-century music generated by popular TV shows. In the future, people love buying music that plays when they open their morning paper. It’s how everyone samples new music in the future, and it was a real boon to the sagging newspaper industry. Also in the future, music like David Cook’s “Time of My Life” can be converted into fat-free vanilla ice cream in less than 30 seconds!

Beau: I think if we put this song in newspapers, we’ll go out of business even faster. I’m still hoping to hang on until the 2012 Olympics. Or can Future Man tell me if Iceland wins the handball gold that year?

Mike: What exactly did Missy Elliott add to this record except for a couple of annoying screams? And is it me, or is she (Missy) the most overrated artist of the past 10-15 years? Otherwise, this song is fairly pleasant. I guarantee you I’ll forget about it in 15 minutes or less.

Will: I actually liked this track…and I would’ve liked it even more without Missy Elliott. But even her presence couldn’t kill the reggae groove or Sullivan’s soulful vocals. Of the bunch, this is the only one that I’d actually enjoy hearing again.

Jon: Now that we’ve discussed David Cook, my critiques are stuck in Idol land. Dawg, this Jazmine is hot hot hot hot hot! She worked it out! This girl can definitely blow!

This record has a great early-’70s Hi Records feel when it’s not bogging itself down in lame toasting, which is just a’ight for me (dammit!). Nice tune, great singing. I’m a fan.

Dunphy: What a comedown. Last week we had Ray, Goodman and Brown singing “Special Lady.” This week? Tired faux-reggae beats, overworked vocals and a text message title. And you wonder why I live in the past?

Scott: Awwww, let’s go! Never heard this song before, but I love it. Nice to here some reggae rhythms in there and some great harmonies.

Taylor: This song is pretty okay, but the beat reminds me a little bit of “Doo Wop (That Thing)” by Lauryn Hill, and I’d rather listen to that.

Jeff: Nice. It’s overly busy, but I like the retro-flavored arrangement, the melody has some pleasant push and pull, and Missy doesn’t overwhelm the song. But yeah, I can’t listen to it without thinking about Lauryn Hill.

Robert: Ah, 2008 music that sounds like 1998 music. In the future people still want “that thing,” and they still need it bad. Thanks to cloning services, you can get that thing from whoever you want, or at least an incredible facsimile that won’t yell “Fire!” or spray you with mace as soon as you make a move.

Beau: Yeah, I’m getting suspicious. Are all these songs really from 2008?

Medsker: She oversings it, like all singers do it these days (fuck you, Mariah Carey), but the tune itself isn’t bad. That fake Jamaican bit at the end was bad, though.

Mike: I don’t blame Mariah for the oversinging. Whitney was doing it five years before that, and Chaka and Patti both had their moments prior before that. I love all four of ‘em, but damn, there’s something to be said for subtlety.

Medsker: Whitney always had the big voice, but man, I don’t remember her running over a song the way Mariah runs over “Someday.”

Robert: Remember, I’m from the future. It gets more and more melismatic for the next ten years, then suddenly every female singer sounds like Janis Ian again.

Medsker: How many years before that sweet, sweet day?

Dunphy: Knowing my luck, it’ll be the day after I lose my hearing.

Robert: No, you’ll be dead long before th– … I mean … never mind.

Darren: I dunno about U, but I am totally down with songs that use “U” in place of “you”, “2″ in place of “to”, “4″ in place of “for”, and so on. I honestly think Prince was just in a hurry one day as he wrote out lyrics for a show and used “U” for the first time. Not long after, he realized that this verbal shorthand was a great way to save a few seconds of his life. But then it kinda got out of hand…I liken it to the time me and my buddy Jim were coming back from a gig in downstate Illinois. Bored out of our minds, we started talking back and forth in this hilariously exaggerated southern accent.

After about four hours of this, we found we couldn’t stop. Seriously, we had both forgotten our actual accents. The woman behind the counter at the truck stop in Kankakee didn’t seem to mind, but by the time we hit Chicago, we were starting to get some stares – not condescending stares, mind you, but ones that seemed to say “you know, we could probably rob these guys real easy”. That’s probably what happened to Prince – he started writing U and 2 and 4 and whatnot and then discovered that he couldn’t stop. And damn if it hasn’t spread like a fungus…heck, even Sarah McLachlan is doing it these days…and now poor Jazmine has caught the bug.

Darren: I’d probably like this song a whole lot more if it was called “Whatever U Like.” Just sayin’, y’all.

Medsker: Where rap’s reigning bag of douche reinforces every negative stereotype about hip hop culture in four minutes (wicky wicky fo’ minutes). If I didn’t know any better, I would have thought this was a parody video.

Jeff: Ah, every girl’s dream — to be plucked from the fry house and turned into a trophy ho by an unwitting parody in designer clothing. I can have whatever I like? I want Slick Rick back.

Will: Yawn. I’ve forgotten it already. It’s no wonder I’ve given up the Hot 100 altogether.

Scott: I like the video better than the song. ‘Nuff said.

Taylor: I like T.I. more as a guest on other people’s songs than on his own. Sorry, dude.

Robert: Ah, late-’00s “hip-hop.” In the future hip-hop is just called music, because the ingredients of hip-hop eventually bled into every genre. (Beethoven has never sounded crunkier.) In prison T.I. found religion, and later he became governor of Texas. He made a run for the White House, but the incumbent, President Rucker, won that election. I voted for the president, but I couldn’t help thinking how closely T.I.’s story paralleled that of a certain president from your time, who we know in the future simply as Saint George.

Dunphy: Whatever I like, huh? Can I get a semi-automatic with a couple hundred rounds, a Versace shoulder holster and all that without the three day waiting period? Come on, T.I. Hook me up. As much as that drug-addled L’il Wayne annoys me, I’d take him over T.I.’s lifeless, hackneyed, sugar-daddy-on-the-cheap antics any day.

Mike: Sorry, T.I. fans. As someone who has loved hip-hop from its’ infancy, I have NO clue what people see in this guy. He’s not witty, he’s not a particularly good lyricist, and he sounds like he belongs on the short bus when he raps. I was trying not to have a Bill Cosby moment here, but what does it say about our society when the artist with the #1 single in the country is a convicted felon who’s headed for the pokey on a weapons possession charge?

Jon: And in the rap-video version of “Cop Gives Waitress $2 Million Tip,” or whatever the title of that movie turned out to be (It Could Happen to You?), we have an inspiration-free rapper offering to take the fried-chicken girl out of her humdrum life. I feel I can say whatever I want about T.I., at least for the moment, because he’s still under house arrest. He is, isn’t he? Well, I don’t want him bringing his arsenal of semis after my ass, so … this is a great song! I’m so happy for his chart-topping success!

Dw. Dunphy: Simply inescapable. It’s a big old, synth-laden AOR kind of rocker that does what it has to do. I can’t say that I either like or hate the song — it just is. It’s just a shame that for all the music Palmer made in his life, he’ll be remembered primarily for this and “Addicted To Love.”

Will Harris: I can’t believe we live in a world where Heavy Nova is currently unavailable on iTunes, but such is the case. This song suffered a major blow to its credibility upon its initial release because of its association with a Pepsi commercial, but it’s aged really well, I think. I have a suspicion that some of the women in the video still consider this video to be the highlight of their career, however, and that makes me a little sad.

Zack Dennis: I think it’s pretty amusing that only the models in the back row are allowed to dance. The frantic efforts of the girls in black dresses just simply draw attention to the sense that everything in both the video and the song itself really feel like they’ve been phoned in. With the recycled chords and styles, this song basically feels like “Addicted to Love,” except it comes with a new hat!

David Lifton: Ah, the old industry standby, the follow-up single that sounds like the first hit, but piles it on a little bit more. It’s usually a big commercial success, but as Wayne’s World 2 and the New Testament prove, the sequel is rarely as good as the original.

David Medsker: Quoth the poet laureates the Pussycat Dolls, be careful what you wish for ‘coz you just might get it. Palmer was making the last album in his deal with Island, and needed a hit. Boom, “Addicted to Love,” which he parlayed into a fat contract with EMI. What did EMI want from Palmer? Another “Addicted to Love.” And there you are. Wasn’t terribly fond of it at the time, but as Will said, the song’s held up rather well.

Jeff Giles: “Addicted to Love” might have given Palmer’s career a shot in the arm, but it also put him in the impossible position of trying to bridge his adventurous early work with the right-angled R&B that (briefly) made him a superstar. The result was Heavy Nova, an awkward, disjointed mess of a record that mashed trippy Afro-pop like “Catching a Spell” with this thin “Addicted” retread. It’s never been one of my favorite Palmer albums, but with 20 years’ hindsight, I can see what he was trying to do (and why he failed).

Mike Heyliger: Obviously designed to capitalize off of the success of “Addicted To Love,” this song nevertheless retains a measure of hooky charm. As with most songs of this era, I remember with equal fondness a parody of “Simply Irresistible” that got played on Z-100 in New York called “My Girlfriend is Inflatable.” In the worst segue ever, I wonder if the ever-so-smoove Mr. Palmer ever banged one of those red lipstick dancing video hoes.

Beau Dure: Yes — back to the important part of all this: the Palmer videos. I think they basically messed up an entire generation of boys. Were we supposed to think a bunch of expressionless women with tons of pancake and lipstick were sexy? I’m surprised anyone in our generation procreated.

Robert Cass: C’mon, who hasn’t wanted to have sex with a seven-foot-tall robot? Or Grace Jones? Those models represented unattainable but emotionless sex, which was supposed to be catnip for men, right?

Dunphy: Leave Cindy McCain out of this.

Jon Cummings: I have never wanted to have sex with Grace Jones. Or Cindy McCain, for that matter. Sarah Palin, on the other hand…say what you want about her qualifications, but I have to admit I wouldn’t mind laying some pipeline in Alaska, if you know what I’m sayin’.

Lifton: And with all those kids, you know she puts out…

Jon: Is it a character flaw that this is my favorite Robert Palmer single? I greatly prefer it to “AtL,” and I was never a big fan of his quirkier early work. I don’t know how many years it took for me to stop occasionally launching into a random, staccato “She com-pro-mise my prin-ci-ple!” To me, the saddest thing about the success of these songs is that they’ve combined to blow “Bad Case of Lovin’ You” almost completely off of classic rock/oldies radio. As for the video, a little water is always nice for completing an objectification — and it’s nice to know that one chick can rock a guitar solo. The Wonderbra budget must have been extraordinary … and worth every penny. BTW, I’ve always been thankful that my female college friends were never directly addressing me when they sang, “You’re gonna have to face it, you’re addic–.” As far as I know.

John C. Hughes: That title is such a lie. I was a big Robert fan from his early flirtations with sequencers (“Clues,” “Johnny & Mary,” “You Are in My System”) through Riptide, but this was a total letdown. The follow-up singles from Heavy Nova were no great shakes either, but at this point the fuck you money must have been nice. Luckily, he lived a long life and was able to fully enjoy all the fruits of his labors.

What in the who now?

Jeff: Well, now I can finally say I’ve heard a Hoodoo Gurus song.

Zack: Ugh. Boring. Whoever wrote this song must be a very needy boyfriend.

Mike: Much like The Psychedelic Furs last go-round, I knew of these guys, but had never heard any of their music. This song was pleasant enough, although i kept fading out of the song and fading into “It’s the End of the World As We Know It.” The lead singer looks like Paul Reubens, mug shot edition.

Dunphy: As if to herald the next decade’s parade of truly crap band names, Hoodoo Gurus arrive apparently thinking they’re clever or something. More like “something,” because these Aussies sound like a car crash between Midnight Oil and Wall Of Voodoo. This song, already working a double entendre, came from the groan-inducing Magnum Cum Louder album. Stay classy.

Will: With all due respect to Dw. Dunphy, I’ve loved these guys ever since “I Want You Back,” and their best-of collection is about as solid a CD of crunchy pop goodness as exists in our universe. This album — Magnum Cum Louder — was one of my favorites of 1989, but if I had to pick my all-time fave by the Gurus, I think I’m probably still most partial to Blow Your Cool. This song, however, is probably in my top 5 songs by the band.

Medsker: I’m a little shocked at the snarkfest over the Hoodoos. This was a HUGE modern rock song and 120 Minutes favorite. I never owned any of their records, but I always bopped along whenever this came on.

John: The Gurus were sort of like the Cars. You knew them when you heard them, they really didn’t do anything to stray too far from their formula, but dammit, they were catchy. I still love “Bittersweet.”

Darren Robbins: Despite being a huge Gurus fan (who considers Stoneage Romeos and Mars Needs Guitars required listening), I found this song to be almost too hooky, too cheerful, and too up-tempo. Tolerable when compared to “Breakfast At Tiffany’s”, of course, but still makes my teeth hurt.

For some reason, I don’t find myself coming back to Magnum as much as those first couple records. Personally, I blame it on the Bangles…

Jon: Can’t a mod-rock band write a catchy tune a few albums into their career without being accused of selling out? I was such a HooGu fan that I was over the moon when their two-disc Ampology came out a while back. I wonder if it’s still in print? I saw them play a fantastic show in Chicago sometime in ’85, supporting Mars Needs Guitars!

Zack: Double ugh. All the vocal gymnastics in the world can’t save this song from mediocrity.

John: I just see Ana Gasteyer. “I AM ZEE GREATEST ZINGER IN ALL ZEE WORRRRRLD!” (chest thump)

Medsker: Fuck you, Jeff.

Jeff: I once had the hots for a girl who loved this song, and even though I gave her endless amounts of shit for it, I’m ashamed to say I still went and bought her the cassingle. She acted all touched and shit, but I’m sure she knew, on some level, that any guy who would compromise his musical principles so thoroughly — and walk up to a cash register with a Celine Dion cassingle — wasn’t worthy of the punani. Things between us ended about the way you’d expect.

Mike: I don’t hate Celine Dion. I do, however, hate this song mightily. I remember the album that featured this song winning Album of the Year at the Grammys and wondering who stuffed the ballot box. Wasn’t this from the film about Jessica Savitch? I kind of had a crush on her when I was six. What can I say? News reporters turn me on. If me and Brian Williams are ever in a room together, watch out.

Will: I feel guilty doing too much Celine-bashing because my mom really likes her stuff, but this schmaltzy song — which was attached to an even schmaltzier film (Up Close and Personal) – is definitely not a song I need to hear ever again. Better I should hear “My Heart Will Go On” for the umpteenth time. At least it reminds me of a decent movie.

Dunphy: I can’t say I neither like nor hate this song — I just plain hate it. Recorded for the soundtrack to the film Up Close And Personal, this is just your typical boostafazoo, “Wind Beneath My Wings,” you’re-so-awesome-and-I-love-you kinda tune. It also has nothing really to do with the movie, a very, very loosely based biopic about reporter Jessica Savitch. It’s just another overwrought Celine ballad, a big old mouthful of chocolate-covered staples and broken glass.

Lifton: Like any other right-thinking American male, I’d sooner stab myself in the scrotum with a rusty nail than voluntarily listen to Celine Dion. But I just don’t see the point in getting angry about it anymore. There’s always been a place in pop for her type, and there always will be. I’d sooner accept that she exists, and do my best to ignore her.

Jon: I believe that rusty nail quote accurately describes my vasectomy. Except that, as my (admittedly traumatized) memory has it, I may have been subjected to both the nail and Celine in that doctor’s office.

Because I find myself incapable of drumming up the energy to snark on this piece of dreck, let me instead bloviate on the extraordinary cojones of director Jon Avnet and the other Hollywood types who allowed a bio of the talented-but-doomed Jessica Savitch to be transformed into a mushy Star Is Born ripoff that could spawn a single like “Because You Loved Me.” I mean, honestly, how did this go down? Did Michelle Pfeiffer sign on, but then get nervous and ask the studio, “What if we cut out some of the darker stuff — like her death?” Or did Robert Redford say, “You know what? I’ll do your movie, but you’re going to have to make me more prominent. How will the ladies continue to dig me if the broad becomes a junkie and dies?” I’d like to see a movie about Savitch someday; this ain’t even close to it.

Jon: It’s Levi’s song! “Sorry, Ms. Palin, I am for real/Didn’t know you’d be the VP pick/If I’d known I might have kept it zipped.”

John: Love the song, hate that every time I go to karaoke some lame white dude feels the need to attempt it.

Will: Proof that OutKast was awesome even before “Hey Ya,” certainly, but also clarification as to why they weren’t a huge mainstream success any earlier.

Zack: After the last two, this song is like manna from heaven. For some reason hearing it causes me to picture crashes from the X-games inside my head.

Medsker: First song I ever heard from the band, and like nearly everything I’ve heard from them since, I like Andre’s contributions to the song far, far more than Big Boi’s. Andre’s a pop boy, I’m a pop boy. That’s just how I roll.

Jeff: If I live to be a hundred, I don’t think I’ll ever forget this song’s hook, or stop singing the chorus whenever I hear a phrase that begins with Ms.

Dunphy: If anyone heard this tune and then was shocked by the breakout success of “Hey Ya!” an album later, I would seriously doubt their abilities. “Ms. Jackson” was technically hip-hop but was already chock full of crossover goodness. Hell, even I was blasting “I’m sorry Ms. Jackson / I am for real / Never meant to make your daughter cry / I apologize a trillion times.” Incidentally, the daughter would be Eryka Badu, Andre 3000 would be that baby-daddy and Ms. Jackson would be… eh… Ms. Jackson.

What would you do without me to make it all manageable?

Mike: Ooh! It’s the song where white folks discovered OutKast!! Not to downplay the awesomeness of this song, but “Bombs Over Baghdad” was much better. It sure would be nice if Andre 3000 and Big Boi recorded a record, like, together again. Actually, considering Big Boi’s crappy new solo single and the fact that Andre has pretty much stolen every song he’s appeared on for the past year and a half, I’d say that one needs the other more than the other needs the one, if you know what I mean.

Robert: But “Morris Brown” was the best song I heard from Idlewild, and that was Big Boi’s. And even though The Love Below got more attention when it and Speakerboxxx came out five years ago, they’re equally good. Big Boi’s the underdog in that group, and probably the one keeping the brand going. Maybe Andre 3000 would have a huge hit on his own, but I’m not so sure. They might the rap equivalent of Hall & Oates — we thought John needed Daryl more to succeed, but Daryl didn’t blast off on his own.

Which songs has Andre guested on? I read about his cameos a few months ago, but I never heard any of them. And does Big Boi have a solo album coming out?

Mike: Agreed that “Morris Brown” was the best song on Idlewild. However,that song was way more exciting musically than it was lyrically. And I’m pretty sure Andre 3000 produced it (yup, he did…thanks, Wikipedia).

To be fair about Daryl’s solo career, he only seemed to release albums when Hall & Oates were on the low side of their popularity. Three Hearts in the Happy Ending Machine and Soul Alone are actually decent albums. Have never heard Sacred Songs, though.

Big Boi has a single out currently with Mary J. Blige called “Something’s Gotta Give” — basically a 4 1/2 minute-long endorsement of Barack Obama. This would be fine if Big Boi didn’t pull out the most cliched socially conscious lyrics in the history of rap. Andre, meanwhile, has guested on John Legend’s “Green Light,” UGK’s “International Player’s Anthem” (with Big Boi) and the remix of Rich Boy’s “Throw Some D’s,” among a handful of other songs. He is quite possibly the most talented mainstream emcee working these days. He makes Lil’ Wayne sound like will.i.am.

Jeff: I don’t know you anymore, Mike. Soul Alone is a horrible, horrible album. The best songs on it are a Mariah Carey co-write and a Marvin Gaye cover.

Mike: Agreed on the two best songs. However, the album’s really not bad! It’s not Abbey Road (hell, it’s not Private Eyes or H2O), but it’s listenable enough for me to not sell off…I guess I should temper that by saying that it took me something like 12 or 13 years to come to this conclusion.

C’mon, Jeff! Don’t do me like that!! (makes innocent, but-I-also-like-New-Kids-on-the-Block puppy-dog face)

Jeff: Hearing that come out of Daryl three years after Change of Season was, for me, one of the most painfully jarring listening experiences of the ’90s. I also hate it because it marks the spot where he stopped being a real vocalist and started relying on leftover vocal tics from the New Jack Swing playbook. I’d like to slap him in his puffy middle-aged face.

Jon: Tell us how you really feel, Jeff. Suddenly I’m not feeling so guilty about having ignored every H&O album since Change of Season.

Only a bunch of very-white boys could turn a conversation about OutKast into a colloquy on Daryl Hall’s solo career.

Mike: With a little splash of color thrown in…(oh, and the last two Hall & Oates albums — Do It for Love and Our Kind of Soul — were actually pretty good. Holy shit, when did I turn into a Hall & Oates apologist?)

Lifton: Was there ever a more annoying genre than the monster ballad? I find it inherently dishonest for a band to record a whole album about doin’ it hot and sleazy, then go all sensitive and shit on us. I mean, AC/DC have never released a monster ballad (that I know of), and that’s why they still have credibility and can sell out anywhere they play, while Bret Michaels wears a mandana underneath a cowboy hat on a VH-1 reality show that nobody watches. As our beloved Jefito would say, fuck that guy.

Jon: I believe Bret stole that black hat right off Richie Sambora’s head. You gotta give him one thing, though — he seems to have been rockin’ the 8-Minute Abs video, considering the minor six-pack he’s sporting when he gets up out of bed at the beginning of the video. I didn’t know it was kosher for ’80s hair-metallurgists to be in such good shape. Emaciated, yes; but buff? That’s kinda like putting on a bunch of makeup, or something.

Oh. Right. Forgot who we were talking about for a minute there.

Dunphy: Like the sound of the universal big bang, listening to this song represents the birth of a million jokes. Bret Michaels is so earnest! Screw VH1, this is the rock of love (yo). Every cowboy sings a sad, sad song. The saddest being that, after Bon Jovi saddled up to the hombre cliches, every hair metaller was dropping C-Bombs (of the bovine persuasion).

So deep. So meaningful. So Bill and Ted did it much, much better.

Zack: You know, when Bill S. Preston and Ted “Theodore” Logan used these lyrics to get into heaven, my faith in their musical taste was seriously shaken. This song is to Monster Ballads what Die Hard is to action movies. As much as I detest the actual concept of the power ballad and the bands that produce them, I can’t help but respect this Poison song as a picture-perfect example of the genre.

Will: I’m…I’m sorry, I…(wiping away a tear)…I must have something in my eye. Damn you, Brett Michaels, for your sad, sad string of cliches…

Medsker: My favorite part of the Poison song is the melodramatic, heavy sigh at the very beginning. Makes me laugh every time.

Dunphy: Even Brett knows this is a bad, bad idea.

Mike: Much as I’d love to hate this song (sigh), I just can’t. Although now I think of the awesome Chappelle’s Show skit featuring John Mayer and a couple of dudes dressed as NYPD cops whenever I think of this song. “I can’t help it, man! I’m from the suburbs!”

John: DAISY WAS ROBBED! WHO’S WITH ME? Oh, and Brett, take off the fucking hat and bandana. WE KNOW.

Jeff: The last show of my performing “career” was spent opening for Matt Nathanson at a house concert. During my set, I had to contend with one guitarist who didn’t really know any of the songs, another guitarist who snapped two strings and ended up switching to the bass, and my traditional inability to sing. After I told the audience that I was going to go drown myself in the toilet, Nathanson came out with an acoustic guitar and slayed the crowd, closing with a version of this song that had everyone singing along so loud the cops came to shut it down. Moral of the story: I hate Matt Nathanson, and Poison.

John C. Hughes: Puppets!  Well, marionettes.  Everything is better with puppets/marionettes.  Except for this.

Jon Cummings: In which the Dead pretended to be a mainstream rock band for, oh, 4:43, and the folks at corporate radio said, “What the heck, let’s play along.” Of course, it’s a damn catchy tune, and a fun and inventive video. I just noticed something in seeing this for the first time in years: Jerry’s voice, at times, sounds distinctly like late-period George Harrison, and the song’s ironic-oldster stance would have fit perfectly on the Traveling Wilburys’ records.

Dw. Dunphy: Twenty-plus years, a couple thousand shows and a couple thousand drugs, and it was 1987 when The Dead finally had a hit. The power of persistence, I guess. And while I never minded the band in passing, I was never a fan, not even of this, their poppiest tune. An injection of bounce in the song is about all that separates it from standard Dead. Listen carefully, and you recognize their sound owed a whole lot more to Chet Atkins than the Haight.

The Grateful Dead? Country pickers? Don’t act so shocked!

Zack Dennis: This is the only Grateful Dead song I can remember ever hearing on the radio. With my secret love of Phish, I was always predisposed to like the Dead, but when it comes down to brass tacks, I’ve never found their music particularly engaging. This is a nice, light song, nothing for me to complain about, but nothing to really get excited about, either. I remember finding it amusing to see Jerry Garcia described as a “skinny kid” in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, and later there was an idiotic “dramatized” documentary about his death, which basically showed a faceless chubby guy rolling around a few times on a cot, apparently having a heart attack.

David Medsker: I am just not a Dead kind of guy. I can see why people like them, and even I love “Friend of the Devil.” Good for them that they finally cracked the Top 40. Now please leave.

David Lifton: I have a thing for fluke hits, and this was definitely one of the biggest and best of the decade. It’s cool that the Dead did it without having to change their sound to fit Top 40 radio (compare the flat snare drum with its sample-triggered counterpart on You Can Call Me Al). I’ve always liked the chord structure in the verse, and the chorus works. What’s to hate about it, besides their audience?

Mike Heyliger: I’m with David. I just don’t “get” The Dead. I used to feel the same way about Pink Floyd and Bob Dylan, until I realized that I actually liked The Floyd and the only thing I didn’t like about Dylan was his voice.

I dig “Touch of Grey,” though. I’d heard the song a handful of times when it was popular, obviously, but I’d never actually listened to it until the afternoon after Jerry Garcia passed away, when the manager on duty at the Tower Records in Lincoln Center (R.I.P.) took whatever was playing off mid-song, announced “this one’s for Jerry,” and blasted this at top volume. If more Dead songs sounded this…uh, commercial-sounding (wrong choice of words…maybe more “’80s rock” sounding?), I’d probably like ‘em more. I certainly have nothing against their fans. How can I be mad at Deadheads when I follow friggin’ Dave Matthews around like a lost puppy?

Will Harris: Okay, I’ll admit it: this was the first Grateful Dead song I ever heard…or, at the very least, it was the first song I ever heard by the Dead that I knew was by them. I was certainly aware of them, given how many times they played Hampton Coliseum, but I was mostly a top-40 guy, and it’s not like they had a major MTV presence until this track came about. I liked this song from the first time I heard it, though, and with that catchy little keyboard riff, I’m not surprised that it finally earned the band a mainstream hit. One of my greatest regrets is that I never saw the Dead live. I might’ve hated the experience as much as I hated my first Dylan concert (the second one redeemed Bob in my eyes, but enough to see him a third time), but I still wish I’d gone at least once, just to say I’d gone.

Zack: Is there any voice in rock and roll that’s more distinctive than Richard Butler’s? Actually, if you threw in a few more witticisms, these lyrics would sound like it was written by Morrissey.

Mike: This is the only song in my Chartburn tenure that I’d never heard before. All I knew of the Furs was “Pretty in Pink.” I actually like this song. Now where do I go next?

John: Ah, the retreat from the super gloss of Midnight to Midnight and “Heartbreak Beat.” You really can’t go wrong with producer Stephen Street. The entire album they eventually did with him, World Outside, is a bit of a lost classic. Catch them now, flogging the past at an ’80s reunion tour near you!

Darren Robbins: One of my absolute fave Furs tunes. Funny, it’s easy to spout off about Matthew Wilder than a song/band you think fucking swings. Fuck, I got nothin’…

Medsker: I will confess to being a Butler apologist, even when he rips himself off every other song. Having said that, this song does nothing for me.

Dunphy: Didn’t mesh with The Furs. Did even worse with Butler’s post-Furs outfit, Love Spit Love, proving to be one of the dumbest of the Dumb ’90s Band Names. Still, I can’t say that I’m minding this song…

Will: I’m sure I won’t be the first person to give a shout-out to the USA Network’s late, great “Night Flight,” which was at least as awesome for turning me on to new alternative music as MTV’s “120 Minutes.” I love the Furs, and this track gets forgotten too often because of its status as the obligatory new track on their best-of collection, All of This and Nothing. But, then again, pretty much everything after that collection gets forgotten, too, and that’s a damned shame. I love ’89′s Book of Days and 1991′s World Outside as much as anything else in their discography. For that matter, they teased me with a fantastic new studio track on their 2001 greatest-hits album — “Alive (For Once In My Lifetime),” but never followed it up with a new full-length. Oh, sure, there was Richard Butler’s solo record after that, but it’s just not the same.

Jon: It’s a nice track, but I don’t remember it getting much traction at radio, even at modern rock. It definitely represents a step back from the brass-ring-grab that was “Heartbreak Beat” from the previous album. The Furs’ music holds up astonishingly well these days–”The Ghost in You” and “Love My Way” are all over LA’s “Jack” and “the Sound,” just as they were backbones of KROQ back when KROQ was a great station.

Zack: KROQ still is a great station, at least for the four minutes every afternoon when they play Dramarama’s “Anything.”

Darren: Totally agree. I worked the night shift at eHarmony back in ’04-’06 and befriended Dramarama guitarist Mr. E (Mark Englert), who also worked there (still does, as a matter-of-fact). To this day, I’m continually stunned by the life he leads. He does quality control of customer service emails and phone calls by day and, maybe a handful of times a month, gets to go out and play rock star.

It must be hard going back to eH after performing to an SRO crowd at the Greek Theatre, or whatever.

It took me a solid year to get beyond his gruff exterior shell (a result of some tough pre-reunion years). In the end, it was him seeing me listening to a Dandy Warhols CD that finally broke the ice…seems he’d been in a shortlived band with Courtney Taylor.

We ended up becoming friends, but everytime I hear that tune getting love on L.A.’s premier alt rock station, I can’t quite put my head around the fact that the guy in the grey cubicle is the guy playing guitar on one of the all-time coolest alt. rock tracks ever.

Jeff Giles: Wasn’t Dramarama the subject of an episode of Reuniting the Band, or whatever that VH1 show was called? A surprising number of the musicians featured in that show were toiling in office jobs when Aamer Haleem walked in on them.

Darren: Yeah, Bands Reunited. Mark was actually working at an insurance company at the time (prior to eHarmony). His exact words were, “I was stoned out of my gourd, just coming back from lunch when one of the mailroom guys tells there’s an MTV camera crew here to see me.” On camera, he comes across all smiles and happy; inside, he said he was tripping bigtime.

Ken Shane: They are, of course, a Jersey band, so I was paying particular attention to that one. I recall that one member was driving a tractor or some other machine when they found him. Easdale continues to play now and then in this area.

Medsker: Did you guys ever read Information Society singer Kurt Harland’s blog about VH-1′s grossly misleading edit job of their episode? It’s fascinating, and rather sad that they would go to such extremes for the sake of “drama.”

Giles: I think that’s one of the only episodes I haven’t seen, actually. I miss that show. Stupid VH1.

Medsker: I’m sure the reason they don’t do the show anymore is because the musicians all called their friends and said, “Do NOT talk to these people.”

Ken: My favorite one was when they tried to reunite Extreme. Gary Cherone was into it, but when they found Nuno, he refused to even be on camera. It seems that someone had been, or still was, sleeping with someone else’s girlfriend/wife.

Giles: And now they’re back together again. Funny what a few years of releasing records in Japan and fronting a Who cover band will do to your disagreements.

So Cherone was porking Nuno’s wife? Maybe he thought he was sleeping with Nuno. Have you ever seen the cover of Nuno’s first solo album? Jesus.

Lifton: In entirely unrelated news, I was at lunch today and saw a woman who was about 6’4″ and looked like Geddy Lee.

Jon: I will now commit the hipster hari-kari of admitting that, for a couple of years, my wife and I did the handclaps every time this played over the “Friends” credits. (C’mon, somebody else admit you did it too!! Millions of us did, I’m quite sure of it … don’t let me go down alone here.) As Top 10 TV themes go, this sits a notch above “Happy Days” but a notch below “Welcome Back.”

Will: I have no legitimate reason for still loving this song, but I have never gotten tired of it, and I’m fucking Pavlovian in my need to clap at the appropriate moment after the opening lines. That should’ve been in The 40-Year-Old Virgin. “You know how I know you’re gay? After the Rembrandts sing, ‘So no-one told you life was gonna be this way,’ you fucking clap.” But I do. Every fucking time.

John: I never imagined the fine power-pop duo I loved for “Just The Way It Is, Baby” would become one of my most hated nemeses. Hope the money’s worth it, boys (of course it is).

Medsker: For a brief moment, I put my dislike for this aside and was happy for the Rembrandts that they were making some money. I liked their first two albums (the second one in particular), and hoped they would be more than that “That’s Just the Way It Is, Baby” band. As it turns out, they’re the “Friends” band, which is much, much worse.

Mike: This song is awfully corny, but hell, it’s the theme to a TV show. It’s supposed to be! I could definitely do without hearing this song again, but LP is actually a pretty good album. There’s a song on there called “Drowning in Your Tears” that blows me away every time I hear it.

Dunphy: And this is the moment where power pop fans knew the party was over. Sure, The Rembrandts had a hit previously and they had some fair-to-middling critical respect, but then they hitched themselves to this Friends phenomenon, forgetting that the lyrics they would sing were as stupid as a chihuahua humping a pit bull.

Then the theme became a HUGE hit, obliterating all that came before in their career and, virtually, obliterating anything that would come after. It’s like a chihuahua being blackmailed by fellow chihuahuas with incriminating photos of tawdy kenel misdeeds.

Remind me never to Chartburn while Animal Planet is on.

Zack: Wait, this was an actual song that existed outside of the framework of “Friends”? It’s so peppy and sweet that I turned it off halfway through for fear that I’d get Type 2 Diabetes if I listened to the whole thing. It’s kind of depressing that Phil Solem and Danny Wilde, each of whom have a fairly extensive catalogue of music, will only ever be remembered for a TV show theme, but hopefully they managed to pull down some decent royalties for it, at least.

Darren: I dunno how common-knowledge this is, but when the band did the theme song, it was just what you heard on the show. There was no full-length song. My buddy Jordan at Yellow Pills had actually talked to Danny Wilde about doing a full-legnth version of the song, to which Danny said, nah…never happen…next thing you know, the fine folks at Atlantic snap their fingers and blammo…full-length version suddenly appears. While it’s great to see guys I’ve long admired have such success, I can’t help but wonder if they really saw all that much cash from the tune. There’s like eighteen people listed on the writing credits for that thing. I’ve seen Danny’s house, though…he’s made money from somewhere!

Lifton: I can’t believe nobody’s mentioned the very obvious nod to “Pleasant Valley Sunday” that starts off this song.

John: Some things just aren’t meant to be clicked upon.

Medsker: Am I the only one that’s never heard this song before? It’s not bad, though I wonder if his subsequent lack of chart success was due to his lack of melisma in his singing. Come on, you need to sing MORE, dude! Don’t just hit the note, that’s boring. Dance all around that motherfucker! No, don’t want to do that? You’re fired.

Mike: Donell Jones was pretty anonymous as far as R&B vocalists go. That said, this is a nice little upbeat summery record. Is it me or was Left Eye the only talented member of TLC?

Will: I’d never heard this until this very moment, but I really liked it up until Left Eye opened her mouth. Many a great song has been ruined by an utterly unnecessary rap break, and this is but one of them.

Mike: The album version is Left Eye-less. If you dig this, you might wanna check out the whole CD. I’m sure you can find it dirt cheap.

Jon: Ah, Left Eye, we hardly knew ye… I had never heard this song until just now, because “me and my people be rollin’” in England in 1999, where this song wasn’t a hit until after we’d come back to the States early the next year. It’s very nice, really–it’s lodged in my head and having a lovely time bouncing around. I give it a 78!

Dunphy: You know what’s up? My blood pressure. I blame my salami sandwich because it is chock full o’nitrates. I blame Congress for jerking around and getting nothing accomplished, then ditching for their month-long vacation. Mostly my blood pressure is skyrocketing because this song is a repetitive hunk of junk that got by with a quasi-famous Feat. and the employment of every crap trick in the pathetic modern R&B book!

Deep breaths, deep breaths. Calm, blue ocean; calm, blue ocean… Serenity now.

Zack: If I couldn’t understand a single word in the song, I’d actually probably like it better. The beat, melodies, and harmonies are actually pleasant enough to listen to. It’s the five-cent lyrics that kill it for me. And Left Eye’s portion grates against my ears the exact same way that throwing a handful of sand onto a spinning vinyl record would.

Zack: Belinda, why are you into that snobbish jerk, anyway? He can’t love you like I can, baby. Still…I think your lipstick might have smeared a bit. Here’s a tissue. I don’t want to be seen in public with you if you’re going to walk around with a whore’s mouth like that.

Jon: I believe this is Exhibit A in the argument for the auto-tune. Easily the most cringe-inducing of Carlisle’s solo hits, it proved beyond doubt that she should never be asked to hold a note longer than two beats. (Have you ever heard recordings of early Go-Go’s concerts? The caterwauling is outrageous!) Don’t get me wrong — I love the Go-Go’s, I adored “Mad About You” (Belinda’s debut solo hit, not the show, but I figured I’d make the distinction as long as we’re Must-See-TVing). But Belinda’s solo thing got tired pretty quickly, and mostly went to show what a good group of girls with guitars can accomplish when Jane Wiedlin’s one of them.

Will: I love Belinda so much that I bought that issue of Playboy where she got all nekkid, so I have no complaints about a video where she’s rolling around in silk sheets for part of the proceedings. I hope she fired her hairdresser, though. I still think this is one of her best solo singles.

Mike: I forgot Belinda posed in Playboy. I gotta admit, even when she was a little chunkalicious, she was pretty sexy. And she has aged quite well. Still, this is no “Heaven is a Place on Earth.” Hell, it’s not even “Mad About You.” And it’s certainly no “Rush Hour” (the best solo single from a Go-Go ever). But it’s way better than “Circle in the Sand.” As much as I sorta dig Belinda and love Stevie Nicks, don’t they both kind of sound like bleating sheep?

Will: Even though I love her, I once reviewed a later album of Belinda’s by accusing her of falling prey to Stevie Nicks Syndrome, where tense of the verb “to bleat” are used to describe her performances on some songs. I’ve never quite forgiven myself for that, but it made me laugh too much to cut the line out.

John: I always imagined her recording her vocals for this while sitting on a washing machine during the spin cycle. Hence the vibrato PLUS pleasurable tone!

Dunphy: We’ve discussed the Carlisle / Merchant Doppler Effect before (listen to how she ends every verse) but after finding out she was the original drummer for Pat Smear and The Germs, I can’t rag on her. She has punk cred now. I am not backpedaling because she was hot. I’m not that shallow. (But she was very, very hot.)

Medsker: Did you ever hear Belinda’s version of “Submission” with the band Radiator? Awesome, baby! As for this one, I was working as a club DJ when this album came out, and I remember being amazed when I saw that not only was there a dance mix for this song, but they recruited remix god Shep Pettibone to do it. We played it once. People barely lifted their feet. We never played it again.

As for the song, cute chorus, certainly better than the dreadful “Heaven Is a Place on Earth.” But not exactly danceable.

Beau Dure: Anyone else wonder if there’s any tension in the Carlisle-Mason household since he’s a former Reagan aide and she’s endorsing Obama?

Part of my teen innocence died when I found out Belinda married a political dude. The rest of it died when I saw the Go-Go’s’ Behind the Music.

Mike: I’ve never seen the BTM, but I’ve heard great things about this supposedly drunken video they made where Belinda talks about what a slut she’s been and I guess a roadie gets violated or something. Sounds like must-see-TV! Anyone know where this video can be located?

Medsker: When I was living in New York and broke (and lonely), I was fascinated with that cable access porn channel that had Robyn Byrd’s show, or whatever her name is. They ran these ads for a video called “Is This Chuck Berry?” (“Is this Chuck Berry fucking? Is this Chuck Berry getting a blowjob?”) Order now, and they’ll send you, absolutely free, “Is This the Go-Go’s?” Man, was I tempted to order that.

Jon: I only ever watched Channel 35 for the interviews–the naked ones, on the bed, with that fat fuck Al Goldstein.

Medsker: Oh, I remember that guy. I only saw one interview, but it was memorable because of how sorry I felt for the girl he was talking to.

Dunphy: I never had cable TV so I never had the pleasure of the Robin Byrd show. Of course, when she hawked her wares on regular TV I was certain that there was no pleasure there anyway. What a homely, homely woman.

And while I may have been able to resist “Are These The Go-Gos,” I probably would have caved for “Are These The Bangles?” Annette and Vicki? Yes! Debbi? Uh… Maybe…

Jon: Don’t be ragging on Debbi, man. I had the privilege of hanging backstage at a Bangles show in ’86, and Debbi and I had an actual conversation for upwards of an hour. She’s very sweet. Plus there’s that whole business of “Walk Like an Egyptian,” and how she didn’t have anything to do because the drums were programmed and she didn’t have a singing part. Poor thing.

I have trouble objectifying either the Go-Go’s or the Bangles, for some reason.

Giles: Even Susanna Hoffs? Jon, I…I don’t get you, man.

Will: I have never had a problem objectifying Susanna Hoffs. I’ve done phoners with her on two separate occasions, and both times I kept thinking of this scene from The Allnighter.

Jon: No, I’m sorry. Even in the Allnighter clip Susanna looks like a 14-year-old, and while that’s not always a problem for me…(Clair! Clair! Sorry–flashback to a months-old Popdose-perversion thread…)

When I was introduced to Susanna after that gig in ’86, I came face-to-air with how unbelievably SHORT that woman is. She’s shorter than PRINCE, for cryin out loud!

Now, Vicki on the other hand–she was smokin’ back then, and still kinda is now. She sat near me at a Holsapple-Stamey gig a few years back, with Susan Cowsill, and Vicki still looked good.

Darren: Damn you, Will… I seem to have misplaced my pants.

Giles: Didn’t her mom direct this terrible movie? Strange, man, strange.

Still, I must confess to staying up late to catch it on cable when I was 13.

Dunphy: She sure did, adding the flavor of creepy!

Darren: Strangely enuff, this is the first I’ve ever seen of it. I totally washed my hands of her when she turned a cool band into the Susannah Hoffs googly-eyed pose-fest. After seeing that clip, all is (BOING!) forgiven.

Will: What’s funny is that the first conversation I had with Susanna was one where Matthew Sweet was also on the line (it was in conjunction with their covers album), and when she gave me the opening to ask about the flick by referencing that her mother had heard something about the Rainy Day album being reissued, Matthew made it very clear that he was a fan of the film, too.

Will: Okay, and since you mentioned your mother, I do have to say this: I’m a big fan of The Allnighter.

Matthew: Wooooooo!

Susanna: You’re kidding!

Will: I am not. It’s on my shelf as we speak.

Susanna: Omigod! My mother’s going to be so thrilled! She’s so, like, thrilled when people tell me about liking The Allnighter. There are a lot of fans of it, although I always turn five shades of red when people bring that up. Do you know about that movie I made, Matthew…?

Matthew: (slightly lecherously) Oh, yeah.

Susanna: (laughs)

Matthew: I just don’t remember it that well. I think I need to see it again.

Susanna: Oh, come on! Don’t!

Will: I can lend you my copy, if you’d like.

Matthew: Okay!

Susanna: I’ll pass that along to my mom, Will.

Matthew: (dreamily) Oh, do I know about The Allnighter…

David Lifton: You couldn’t get a more perfect crossover record than this in 1986: A classic rock legend duetting with an R&B diva on a modern-sounding piece of synth pop-soul. I loved “While You See a Chance” from 1980, so it was good to hear him back on the charts, and shortly after that, I began learning about Traffic and the Spencer Davis Group.

Beau Dure: I don’t begrudge Steve Winwood his ’80s success, but “While You See a Chance” is a worthier song than this.

Ted Asregadoo: I’m not sure if it’s the buildup of toxins in my body due to overexposure to this song, but it seems that ever since “Higher Love” came out, I have not been able to escape it. It might be the fact that I spent 11 years working at an Adult Contemporary station where this song never went away, but I can’t even appreciate it for any of the reasons stated. It’s sludge to me.

Dw. Dunphy: I just had to smile when this came out. Many of Winwood’s contemporaries who were still in “the biz” were so far away from where they once were, in style, in sound, and then he just shows up as soulful, youthful and cool as ever. He did it yet again this past winter at the Clapton / Winwood shows. Clapton, brilliant though he may be, looked ancient next to Steve.

The whole Back in the High Life album is darn near perfect, especially “Freedom Overspill.” You’ll get nary a snarklette from me on this.

Ken Shane: For me, Steve Winwood has rarely missed a step in a career that goes back to the mid-’60s. He was called Stevie then, and why not, since he was only about 15 when he made his debut with the Spencer Davis Group. The first time I heard that voice on “Gimme Some Lovin’,” I knew that he was going to be a talent to reckon with, and I’ve enjoyed all of his work since then.

Arc of a Diver had me falling in love with his sound all over again, and then along came “Higher Love,” which just jumped out of the car radio speakers. Funky, upbeat, jubilant, Chaka Khan, Chaka Khan …

Jeff Giles: I didn’t like this song when it was popular, but now that I’ve had 20 years to let Winwood’s late ’80s beer jingles wear off, I can appreciate his late-period stuff for what it is — solidly written, impeccably performed, grown-up rock & roll. And there’s never anything wrong with a little Chaka, is there? Still, I prefer “Back in the High Life” to this — I was too young to really hear it when it was popular, but it’s just a devastatingly beautiful song.

Jon Cummings: I retroactively downgraded my opinion of this song a bit in light of the whole Winwood/Genesis/Michelob fiasco — I took the whole “let’s write songs with the word ‘tonight’ in the title so we can get paid” thing pretty hard. Still, it’s a nifty little pop confection, and it was great to see that Winwood still had his mojo and could still top the charts. 1986 was such a great year for geezers…see also Paul Simon’s Graceland, Peter Gabriel’s So, and even Paul McCartney’s Press to Play.

Mike Heyliger: This is the first Winwood song I was conscious of, and I still can’t get enough of it. Very upbeat and summery. And he did the right thing by hiring Chaka to put some stank on it. Actually, 1986 appears to be the year of Chaka appearing on just about every album by a male Brit vocalist over 30. She did the vocal arrangements for Robert Palmer’s “Addicted To Love” and she also appeared on a song for whatever album Bowie had out at that time (“Never Let Me Down”?). Then she released her own album that year and it flopped. Oops.

David Medsker: Who wasn’t thrilled to see this become a smash hit? And as it was pointed out earlier, 1986 was a good year for geezers. Along with Gabriel, Macca and Winwood, even the Moody Blues and Monkees scored big hits that year. This, of course, would never happen today.

Anyway, I loved Russ Titelman’s white-boy-funk production, Chaka’s backing vocals, and Winwood’s hair. Strange to think he was a mere 38 when this came out, though. Damn, I’m older than that now. Oh, I’ve wasted my life.

Giles: As raw and emotionally honest as anything by Boston. Velveeta with chords.

Beau: I maintain that Fuel has some decent songs. I even have a CD of theirs. Not this one, where they started to get a little repetitive.

Mike: What do they call this? Post-grunge? I call it completely generic and anonymous. Throw this up against any Creed song or “Hanging By a Moment” by Lifehouse-they all sound the same, right down to the constipated growling.

Ken: The best thing I can say about this is that it was a welcome break from “Shimmer.” It’s not that I dislike either single or the band, but in those days I was hanging out with friends who were in various cover bands. N.J. is the cover band capitol, in case you weren’t aware of that. Every cover band played “Shimmer” every night, and when “Hemorrhage” came along, they played them both. This is just a case of being overdosed on these songs. I wonder what happened to the band. They sure disappeared quickly after two pretty big hits.

Jon: This is a pretty good song for its genre — nice chorus, particularly. But the cookie-cutter nature of so much post-grunge modern rock was exposed after Chris Daughtry sang this song on American Idol and he later was offered the lead-vocalist slot with Fuel. Any one of a dozen or more already-established bands could have done the same thing. So of course Daughtry says no, has the good sense to hire a band and name it after himself, and becomes a gazillionaire with music that sounds an awful lot like Fuel and a dozen other bands.

Ted: I think I was on another planet when this song was released because I think this is the first time I’ve ever heard it. It’s forgettable, by the numbers alt rock that came out in 2000. Now I know why Daughtry said no to the lead singer gig with Fuel: he had his own by the numbers alt-ish sound pop rock to produce.

Medsker: I did a very good job sheltering myself from bands like Fuel and Hoobastank in the early part of the decade. To this day, I couldn’t name a single one of Fuel’s songs, either by name or sound. So here goes…

God, I hated videos like this, with the overacting musicians and the vein-popping singers. Look at that drummer POUNDING those skins. Clown. As for the song, meh. Part of the Rob Thomas Effect, where safe and non-threatening suddenly meant good. Those were dark, dark times.

Dunphy: The only thing I thought of when reading this song title was a skit from the long lost Spitting Image TV show where puppet Ronald Reagan says something about his heavy metal group Cerebral Hemorrhage. I’m loathe to admit an American Idol made a smart move, but I suppose Chris Daughtry did… dammit…

Ted: My god what an earworm this song was. I wasn’t too thrilled with the lead single, “Leaving Las Vegas,” but once “All I Wanna Do” starting getting massive airplay, it was enjoyable for about a week. Then slight fever started, followed by a dryness of the throat. The song then penetrated my red blood cells. I became dizzy and began to experience an itchy rash, followed by muscle spasms and drooling. Soon my entire digestive system collapsed and I was plagued by uncontrollable flatulence. By the time I was hospitalized, I was quivering piece of jelly.

Ken: Her first album was a breath of fresh air, and this first single was certainly interesting. Unfortunately, I can only listen to this in the context of her entire career, which on the whole, I’d have to call disappointing after an audacious debut.

Jon: I like the story of this song — how she cribbed much of the lyric from a Wyn Cooper poem she found in a used-book store, raising Cooper’s profile dramatically based on his songwriting credit. A quick Wikipedia search notes that Don Dixon more recently recorded a song, “40 Words for Fear,” also featuring a Cooper lyric. All of that said, was any single song of the 1990s more overplayed than this one? Hard to believe it only made #2 (fuckin’ Boyz II Men). Anyway, since moving to L.A. I must admit that I’ve once or twice looked for bars that sit across the street from carwashes on Santa Monica Blvd. I guess I didn’t look too hard — but Santa Monica Blvd. is a pain in the ass.

Dunphy: I know people love this song, and Crow’s white trash songbird status, but I always felt she was in conflict with herself, trying at once to be too clever and then just trying to be a little down-home and skeevy (“I like a good beer buzz early in the morning”) as both ethics clash. It works for some, but not for me.

And I’m still having moral difficulty with Miss Poopy Pants after that one-square toilet paper tirade, saving the world one turd at a time.

Mike: I’ve always had a soft spot for Sheryl Crow, although “All I Wanna Do” is my least favorite of the four singles from Tuesday Night Music Club. A little too much free-association and not enough actual singing. Hey, did you consciously toss two Grammy-voted Records of the Year in here on purpose?

Beau: I’m really going against the crowd this week, apparently. I like some of Sheryl’s later stuff, but I think this one’s kind of flimsy. Maybe it’s because I’m no fun and therefore can’t relate to it.

But I’m always defensive about Sheryl’s later stuff because some wind-up ex-jock commentator ripped her on an NFL playoff broadcast, saying it was inappropriate to start a song in hard-working Pittsburgh with the line “My friend the communist.” Yeah, Mr. Fratboy Pundit, did you listen to the rest of the verse?

Giles: I’m a David Baerwald fan, and picked up a copy of this album based on his involvement. I was disappointed, to put it mildly, then baffled by her enormous success — and then when I found out about what a glory-hungry bitch she is, and how her dishonesty on a Letterman appearance left Baerwald on the outs with John O’Brien at the time of O’Brien’s suicide, that was the capper. I can’t listen to any of her shitty music without thinking dark thoughts.

Lifton: Oh, crap. Looks like I’m going to have to be the schmuck who defends the unpopular popular song this time around. Yeah, this got overplayed like crazy, and she didn’t handle her initial jolt of fame too well, but I still think this is a good song. I like how she thinks she’s having fun when she’s surrounding herself with miserable LA drunks. They’re the same losers in “Piano Man,” but at least Billy Joel didn’t choose to hang out with them.

And it rips off “Stuck In The Middle With You.”

Medsker: Wow, a dance video that doesn’t cut every nanosecond. You mean we can actually watch them dance? That’s just crazy.

The song seems harmless enough, but I never got into that whole 70 BPM thing. I can see that it’s tailor-made for choreography, but how do you dance to this in a club? That’s just too damn slow.

Dunphy: The legend of Aaliyah is based only on her early death and the R.Kelly speculation. While she was a competent performer, there was nothing in her catalogue that screams out “legacy” and, I do believe, that I couldn’t pull one of her tunes out of my memory right on the fly. Not one.

Jon: I like the sound effects here, but this is a prime example of the 100%-melody-free fare that has made R&B music largely intolerable for the last 15 years. Speaking of 15 years, that’s how old Aaliyah was when she married R. Kelly. Gross. She’s dead, so I’ll speak no more ill of her. As Timbaland productions go, however, I’d rather listen to that bleepy-bloopy OneRepublic song 100 times than hear this once more.

Mike: Lord forgive me, but someone’s gotta say it: Aaliyah was overrated. Yeah, her voice was pretty, and I respect her for not giving in to over-the-top wailing in the vein of every other female R&B singer in the Nineties, but she was a B+ singles artist at best, and her albums were all mediocre. That said, this is one of my favorites from her, it’s probably one of Timbaland Mach 1′s best productions (before he discovered the Human League and all his productions started sounding like Arthur Baker circa 1983) and the video is cute.

Giles: I could take or leave most of her stuff, but this is one instance where I think Timbaland did right by Aaliyah. Yes, it’s missing a real melody, but the production is otherworldly in the best possible sense of the word. And to think this was tagged onto the Dr. Doolittle soundtrack.

Ted: This was the year that I felt completely out of it when it came to music, but this song kind of renewed my interest in R&B. I found the phrasing of lyrics and the odd sense of rhythm really captivating. Plus, the song made good use of a baby laughing. Take THAT, Tellybubbies, with your “Laughing baby” sun and that cute, adorable Noo-noo.

Ken: Okay. I’m a sucker for these big romantic ballads, and you have two great voices on this one. Plus, if I remember correctly, there was a little mouse involved in this somehow.

Medsker: Ah, the Fievel the Mouse song. I love Ronstadt’s voice as much as any, but I never liked any of these pop versions of the animated songs, not one. “A Whole New World,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “Go the Distance” (Michael Bolton, shudder)…blah. I get cavities just thinking about them. The version of this that’s in the movie, though, is heartbreaking.

Jon: This song makes me want to light every match in an oversize pack, letting each one burn…until Fievel is reduced to a pile of ashes on the bar. Still, as drecky La Ronstadt duets go, at least this is better than the horrible, horrible “Don’t Know Much (But I Know You’re Using Too Much Gratuitous Vibrato)” with Aaron Neville.

Giles: See, now these were the days when a vocalist could cut three back-to-back albums of American Songbook classics and still find her way back to something resembling a modern sound. She did it just in time, too — one look at Ronstadt in her mom jeans during this era was enough to let you know that she was headed out the back door at Top 40 radio. Elektra must have known, too, judging from the Maddie Hayes-style soft focus they slathered on her when it came time to release Cry Like a Rainstorm, Howl Like the Wind.

Dunphy: Wheee! Moonlighting reference! I swear, I was pretty young when that show was on and I thought Cybil Sheppard was cursing me with early-onset glaucoma.

There are only two mouse songs that readily come to mind – this one and Radiohead’s “Knives Out” (“Squash his head, shove him in your mouth.”) And where the song is poignant in the movie’s somewhat sentimental and manipulative context, this ballad bombast has all the emotion of friggin’ “My Heart Will Go On” by Celine DeShe-bot.

I have no problems with pop interpretations of cartoon musicals. That’s just how they sell the soundtrack, but who got the word about sad, separated mice and immediately said, “…and you Woo, Woo, Woo on Blue Bayou”?

Ted: All those guys who were lusting after the 1977 Linda Ronstadt were in for a big surprise 10 years later when this video starting getting airplay. I’m sure we could compile a list of moments when famous boomers turned a corner and became yuppies. And if such a list were ever compiled, I think this video would be in the top 10. Forget about the hair, just look at those glasses! “You’re a yuppie, you’re a yuppie, you’re a yuppie. Linda, you’re a yuppie.” (Sorry about that — I thought I was Bill Murray on SNL for a moment.) Where was I? Oh yeah, “Somewhere Out There.” As a song, it serves the purpose of forcing an emotional connection with the film, but hearing it after all these years makes we want to go back an listen to those mid-’70s Ronstadt albums, ’cause I forgot what a great voice she has.

Beau: The Linda Ronstadt episode of the The Muppet Show is charming. She comes across as easygoing and sweet.

Obviously, she has a great voice. But I still feel like she only picks good material once a decade or so. All due credit for giving Warren Zevon some recognition and royalties, but she’s not convincing on “Poor Poor Pitiful Me.”

Mike: Shoot me now. This song brings back bad memories of choir class in middle school. We had to sing this, “Cherish” by Kool & the Gang, and…I forget what else, but even at 10 years old, this song was too sappy for my liking. I’d trade this and the rest of Ingram’s and Ronstadt’s catalogs for one “Yah Mo B There” and be satisfied that I did the right thing. And I’ll admit that I’m not up on my Ronstadt as much as I should or could be, but didn’t she cover some Elvis Costello stuff at some point? The thought of hearing her sing “Alison” makes me throw up in my mouth a little, which is why I must now go search for it.

Medsker: “Mr. Plow is a loser and I think he is a boozer…”

That’s my favorite Linda Ronstadt song outside of “You’re No Good.”

Lifton: I prefer the Spanish version of Mr. Plow. She really gets back to her roots on that one.