Posts Tagged ‘Aaron Neville’

  
Friday, October 23rd, 2009

CHART ATTACK!: 10/19/91

by Jason Hare

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Welcome back, everyone, to yet another latest edition of CHART ATTACK! As you know, we take the good charts with the bad charts ’round here. Two weeks ago, we covered a pretty stellar week from 1980. This week? Well, while we have some strong tunes this week, there are also some clunkers, too. Check ‘em out as we attack October 19, 1991!

10. Love…Thy Will Be Done — Martika null
9. Can’t Stop This Thing We Started — Bryan Adams null
8. Everybody Plays the Fool — Aaron Neville null
7. I Adore Mi Amor — Color Me Badd null
6. Good Vibrations — Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch Featuring Loleatta Holloway null
5. Something to Talk About — Bonnie Raitt null
4. Hole Hearted — Extreme null
3. Romantic — Karyn White null
2. Do Anything — Natural Selection Featuring Niki Haris null
1. Emotions — Mariah Carey null

10. Love…Thy Will Be Done — Martika (download)

You’ll be forgiven if you don’t remember this song — I know I don’t have no recollection of ever hearing it on the radio. “Toy Soldiers” might be the only song you remember of Martika’s (perhaps helped by Eminem’s sample of it in his 2005 song “Like Toy Soliders”), but she also reached #18 with “More Than You Know” and #25 with her cover of “I Feel the Earth Move,” in addition to peaking here at #10 with this song. You’ll also be forgiven if you knew this song but had no clue it was actually sung by Martika, since she sounds nothing like she did on “Toy Soldiers.” No, she sounds like she’s been taken hostage and forced to sing this song exactly the way someone else wants her to sing it…wait a minute, this song was written by Prince! Story checks out!

So yes, it’s true — for a brief, shining moment, Martika was a Prince Girl, which I think is something like being a Bond Girl but with a lot more patchouli. And she does a fine job with this song, although anybody really could’ve sung it; in fact,parts of her vocal are reminiscent of the Prince/Madonna “Love Song” duet from Like a Prayer. Musically, the song itself is a bore — the bass and drums are static throughout — but somehow ends up being oddly compelling. Prince created his own mix of the song (available on Martika’s greatest hits collection, which I double-dog dare you to buy), and he’s performed it live himself, too — our buddy (and diehard Prince fan) Pete from Ickmusic has gifted us with this version from 3/8/95, live from The Astoria in London. It’s just drums and bass until the three-and-a-half minute mark, but after that, we get a pretty good vocal from Prince. I’d say I prefer Martika’s original, but still, it’s pretty cool to have. Thanks, Pete!

Prince — Love…Thy Will Be Done (live) (download)

Curious what Tika’s up to these days? Well, she hasn’t released an album as “Martika” since this one, 1991’s Martika’s Kitchen, but she’s released two albums with her husband, Michael Mozart (I don’t know if that’s his real name, and I don’t care) as part if the group Oppera. And more recently, she’s going by the stage name Vita Edit and starring as “Lolly Pop” in a web series entitled j8ded. Mozart is in it too, billed as Michael Daemon. Martika, how the hell did you wind up being stranger than Prince?

By the way, don’t be surprised if this song is in your head all day. I keep singing it to myself, but I replace the word “love” with random one-syllable words, like “scones” and “balls.” (more…)

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Posted in Chart Attack!, Featured, Featured - Frontpage, Music | Comments

Monday, May 18th, 2009

Jesus of Cool: We Wuz Robbed! Great #2 Hits of the ’60s

by Jon Cummings

Welcome to the second installment of an ongoing series celebrating songs that fell excruciatingly short of ascending to the top of Billboard’s pop singles chart. In the course of compiling and monitoring responses to the series’ first column a couple weeks ago, I learned a number of things, the most important of which were:

1. Unbeknownst to me as I wrote about the #2 hits of the ’50s – and in the process wrote the snappy sentence, “You don’t see Fred Bronson compiling five editions of The Billboard Book of #2 Hits, do you?” – it turns out that a Billboard Book of Number 2 Hits was indeed published in 2000. I have chosen to invoke the Pelosi defense: I was misled by the book’s obscurity into thinking it didn’t exist. My case is bolstered by the facts that Bronson had nothing to do with it (some fella named Christopher Feldman wrote it), and that the book went out of print without ever reaching a second edition. So, ha! You may read much of it on Google Books or buy a copy at Amazon Marketplace, or you may purchase a digital copy for the Amazon Kindle. (Don’t everybody run out all at once to blow $359 on a Kindle.) Needless to say, I didn’t use Feldman’s book as a reference in the first column; I make no such promises from here on out.

2. As I slog through six decades’ worth of fodder for future editions of this column, I’m going to have to dig deep for euphemisms that put some pizzazz behind the idea of a song being kept out of the #1 slot by another song. I believe that my low point in the last column came in the teaser for this one, when I left the distinct impression that Smokey Robinson might once have been “cock-blocked” by Lawrence Welk (see #4 below). Whoever the object of Smokey’s thwarted affections might have been in such a scenario, I am now convinced that at no time was Welk ever involved in blocking Smokey’s cock, and I apologize for the inference.

As a reminder, we’re giving extra weight to hits by artists who never reached #1, to songs that were far superior to the rivals that overtook them on the charts, and to plain old great songs that deserved the extra glory that the top of the Hot 100 brings. I’ll follow my choices with a list of other #2 hits of the decade, and we can debate their merits in the comments section. Now, on with the countdown!

11. “She’s Not There,” the Zombies. Keyboardist/songwriter Rod Argent made the Top 10 four times between 1964 and ’72 – three as leader of the Zombies, before he got greedy and named his next band after himself. Colin Blumstone sang lead for the Zombies, and just as his vocals offered more nuance than most of his early-British Invasion counterparts, “She’s Not There” was an awfully sophisticated single for an era when even the Beatles were still cranking out “I Feel Fine” and “Eight Days a Week.” Sadly, “She’s Not There” was left knocking on #1’s door while Bobby Vinton came through the window with “Mr. Lonely.” Even more annoying, Vinton’s hit version used the exact same backing track as Buddy Greco’s #64 smash of two years before! That’s just not right. (more…)

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Friday, April 10th, 2009

How Bad Can It Be?: “Oh Happy Day: An All-Star Music Celebration”

by Jack Feerick

Rock ‘n’ roll and Gospel music have a long and contentious history, traditionally operating at odds to one another; and while it’s tempting to view that divide as entirely racial, that’s a needlessly reductive reading; and so we must guard against the temptation to find racial subtext everywhere.

Let’s look instead at the evidence. Both genres arise from the same musical wellsprings. Both depend on a certain level of ecstasy, although the sources, sacred and profane, are very different. And on a personnel level, there seems to be a competition for resources; Gospel artists who cross over to a mainstream audience often end up leaving sacred music behind, and — more rarely — secular artists such as Little Richard and Al Green have abandoned pop (temporarily or not) after a religious awakening.

When the two forms are hybridized, all too often it becomes a race competition to reach bottom, as lowest-common-denominator signifiers are shoehorned into one genre, like troweling makeup onto a drag queen — only less convincing. There’s more to rock music than a few power chords; there’s more to Gospel than tambourines and wailing vocals.

The multi-artist compilation Oh Happy Day: An All-Star Music Celebration — out this week from EMI/Vector — brings together Gospel and pop performers, and showcases a few ways to try to split the musical difference. Three Doors Down demonstrate what might be called the Foreigner option. The only God being revered in their “Presence of the Lord” is Eric Clapton; it’s played as a straight rocker, with the Soul Children of Chicago choir mixed low, providing color texture — felt, more than heard.

(more…)

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Posted in CD Reviews, How Bad Can It Be?, Music | Comments

Monday, October 13th, 2008

Hooks ‘N’ You: The Devlins, “Drift”

by Will Harris

Has this ever happened to you?

You’ve bought a new album. You put it on and hit “play,” and as it’s playing, you find that you’re enjoying it well enough, but it’s not really grabbing you…until, suddenly, the album hits a particular song, and – bam! – you’re in love. You play the song again. Damn, that’s good. And now that your ears are open, you find yourself wondering if the remainder of the album is just as good, so you let it continue playing…and you find that, yes, it is! Then, you realize that you need to go back and start the record over from the beginning, since you weren’t really paying enough attention when it first started….and, holy crap, you must’ve been drunk or something, because it’s so obvious to you now that this entire album is brilliant!

That, in a nutshell, is what I experienced when I first heard The Devlins’ “Alone in the Dark,” and it’s how their debut album, Drift, became one of my favorite albums of 1993.

Devlins Drift

“Alone in the Dark” is, for my money, one of the sexiest and most sensual songs ever written. It has been included on many a mix tape over the years…though, of course, the only one that matters is the one I made for my wife when we first started dating, and any claims to the contrary are damned dirty lies. (Today is our seventh wedding anniversary, as it happens. Happy anniversary, sweetheart!)

It’s a song which begs to be on the soundtrack to a romantic movie, playing as the couple you’ve been rooting for throughout the entire film finally comes together, and if you don’t believe me, just read these lyrics:

I feel the storm, but it’s so strange
To feel desire without the pain
And I feel your eyes search my soul
For sometime sacred, for something more than you need

Your words are lost, but there’s no aim
It’s pure emotion that holds this flame
And the rain will fall and touch your heart
It’s pure devotion, alone in the dark

So tell me what you feel
Tell me every little thing
Tell me all that you are now
And tell me what it’s like to see
From your own heart
Now I’ve got you…alone in the dark

Goosebumps, I tells ya. Goosebumps!

(more…)

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Posted in Hooks 'N' You, Popdose, Popdose Interviews | Comments