All posts tagged: Katrina and the Waves

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Like, Omigod! Digging Through the ’80s Pop Culture Box, Part 21

Published by Popdose Staff

We’re on to Disc Six of this seven-disc set this week, and man oh man do these silly pop songs elicit some strong opinions. Put your helmets on, kids, cos we’ve got a passel of fightstarters this go-round… #1 Animotion, “Obsession” (1984) A Top Ten around the English-speaking world, peaking at #7 US. Feerick – Another cast-off from the 1983 flop movie A Night in Heaven, sort of; Michael DesBarres and Holly Knight wrote and sang this for the soundtrack. Their version went nowhere, til they gave it to Animotion, who blew it up huge. Poor Michael DesBarres; relegated to footnote status again. Medsker – It’s all about the 12″ mix to me for this one. The album version is flat and airy, but the remix has some serious balls. Cummings – Certainly a candidate for Worst Music Video Ever Attached To A Top-10 Hit. Yet “Obsession,” for all the ickiness of its general theme and lyrical specifics, is somehow awesome — a classic that doesn’t seem to age. In its era it found a …

Cutouts Gone Wild!: Katrina & the Waves, “Waves”

Published by Jeff Giles

Katrina & the Waves – Waves (1986) purchase this album (Amazon) Last week, we looked at poor Gregory Abbott’s second album, and the way R&B stardom can evaporate in the blink of an eye. This week’s subjects prove that pop listeners are no less fickle, and that you can go from walking on sunshine to collecting dust in a cutout bin in the length of time it takes to write and record a poorly conceived follow-up album. Like, say, this one. For an ’80s one-hit wonder, Katrina & the Waves have a pretty interesting history. They took awhile getting around to adding “Katrina,” either to their lineup or their name, starting life as a mid-’70s Cambridge outfit known simply as the Waves. We probably wouldn’t talking about the band, in any of its incarnations, if not for its guitarist, the minor pop deity known as Kimberley Rew. He’s probably best known for his brief stint with the Soft Boys, but Rew’s C.V. is impressive no matter which way you look at it — he claims …