Fluxblog #273: Madonna • Guns N' Roses • Genesis • Whitney Houston
I took a little break from writing about new songs this week to focus my attention on some longer entries about some major hits from the mid '80s through the early '90s. I'll be doing a few more in the near future, along with more new stuff as well.
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July 20th, 2020
Don’t Go For Second Best, Baby
Madonna “Express Yourself” (Shep Pettibone Remix)
The Shep Pettibone remix of Madonna’s “Express Yourself” – the famous one used in the genuinely iconic David Fincher-directed music video, the version that was a hit – is maybe the best ever example of a remix being so much better than the album recording that the original is made obsolete by its existence. It’s not that the version that appears on Like A Prayer is bad – it is still the same song in structural terms and has the same vocal take as far as I can tell. But Pettibone’s arrangement strips out all the dorky ‘80s-specific elements of the album version, like the horn arrangement and the campy male vocal part, and finds the appropriate level of energy for the song. Pettibone’s aesthetic is sleek and elegant in a specifically turn-of-the-’90s way, and just as with his production on “Vogue” a year later, he found a sound that’s very much rooted in its moment but still feels incredibly stylish today.
This is a quote from Madonna about this song from an interview with Stephen Holden published in the New York Times in 1989 that has really stuck with me, both adding some extra depth to the music but also just functioning as very good life advice:
”The message of the song is that people should always say what it is they want,” Madonna said. ”The reason relationships don’t work is because they are afraid. That’s been my problem in all my relationships. I’m sure people see me as an outspoken person, and for the most part, if I want something I ask for it. But sometimes you feel that if you ask for too much or ask for the wrong thing from someone you care about that that person won’t like you. And so you censor yourself. I’ve been guilty of that in every meaningful relationship I’ve ever had. The time I learn how not to edit myself will be the time I consider myself a complete adult.”
Madonna was 30 years old when she said this, and in the process of finalizing her divorce from Sean Penn. 31 years later, I wonder if she still feels this way.
“Express Yourself” is generally understood as a female empowerment anthem, and it is, but more than anything it’s Madonna singing about the value of communication. Without communication, there is no happy relationship. Without communication, there’s no negotiating for what you deserve personally or professionally. Without communication you can’t authentically express your identity. And communication in a relationship is a two-way thing, so if you can’t make your partner open up it doesn’t matter how well you advocate for your needs. This last part is so crucial to the character of the song – Madonna’s lyrics acknowledge the shortcomings of most men raised with stifling heteronormative gender roles, but she’s telling you to not bother with those guys. The song allows for the existence of good men, and considers them a luxury she’s earned. She’s begging you to do the same, and for the men who aren’t up to the standard to level up.
It’s notable that the verses of “Express Yourself” make a point of contradicting pretty much everything she sang a few years earlier in “Material Girl.” Madonna did not write that song, but its sassy cynicism was so aligned with her persona in 1984 that it’s been understood as a sort of mission statement through her career. She’s always said she liked the song because it was “ironic and provocative,” which it absolutely is, though it’s hard to fully buy it when she says she’s not actually at all materialistic. But still, the lyrics in “Express Yourself” – which she wrote herself – ring a lot more true to her actual personality. It’s easy to take this song as being from the perspective of the Material Girl a few years later, with the experience to know that the fancy sheets and expensive jewelry aren’t enough of a reward for having to deal with some dull, shallow rich guy.
Nearly ten years ago Lady Gaga released “Born This Way,” one of her best singles even if a lot of the lyrics are clunky for various reasons. The common complaint about “Born This Way” then and to this day is that it sounds too much like “Express Yourself,” as if this could ever be a bad thing or that there were too many other songs like it, which there are not. This criticism frustrates me to no end, partly because I find it rather insulting to Lady Gaga. The songs are similar but not the same. There’s a clear line of inspiration, but of course Lady Gaga is inspired by Madonna. Madonna practically invented the lane of pop stardom Gaga exists in, it’s no different from how there’s countless artists directly inspired by previous template-setters like The Beatles or James Brown. To act like spotting this influence is some career-undermining “gotcha!” is absurd, and furthermore is a standard not applied to artists in other genres, most especially rock and rap.
I’ve been writing this site for almost 20 years, and in that time I’ve been sent a few thousand records and I’ve screened a lot more looking for songs to feature. And in all that, I’ve probably basically heard the same stupid punk rock song thousands of times by hundreds of bands. No one complains about this, though if you ask me, they should because it’s tedious and lacking in imagination. But to people who like punk rock songs, there’s never enough of the same damn thing. But somehow the notion of there being one other song that sounds like “Express Yourself” is offensive to people? This boils my blood. I’d much rather live in a world full of “Express Yourself” copies.
Madonna, no stranger to these sort of disingenuous criticisms and a shameless magpie herself, was a good sport about “Born This Way.” When she tour for MDNA in 2012 “Express Yourself” was part of the show, and near the end of the song she seamlessly integrated the song’s chorus. It rules.
Buy it from Amazon.
July 21st, 2020
Everybody’s Doing The Time
Guns N’ Roses “Paradise City”
I’ve come to the conclusion that when people think abstractly about the concept of the “rock star,” whether it’s in casual conversation or corporate rhetoric or in hugely successful rap songs, they’re basically thinking of Guns N’ Roses, and Axl Rose in particular. While there are other figures who probably are mixed up in this – Kurt Cobain for the people fixated on authenticity, Jagger/Richards or Led Zeppelin for ‘70s classicists – Axl Rose represents all the attitude and every excess that goes along with the term.
To some extent, this is by Rose’s own design as Guns N’ Roses is the postmodern synthesis of nearly all the major tributaries of popular rock aesthetics up through the mid ‘80s: metal, glam, blues, and punk most obviously from the start. By the time they released the Use Your Illusion albums that would expand to prog, folk rock, rock opera, and Beatles-derived pop. Guns N’ Roses united all of this with a musical and visual aesthetic that was as iconically rock as it gets while rooted specifically in the late ‘80s. The look they and their cohort in the Los Angeles scene in the ‘80s refined and codified the appearance of the “rock person,” and their stylistic influence continues to this day.
Guns N’ Roses made themselves a living, breathing representation of rock values and aesthetics at a time when this canon was becoming formalized both in the development of the “classic rock” radio format, the recent opening of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and in the pages of Rolling Stone, a magazine with a vested interest in establishing and maintaining a canon built around what they had been covering for 20 years. While the construction of a critical canon is always self-conscious affair, the beauty of Guns N’ Roses’ achievement is that their synthesis of all this rock history was almost certainly an intuitive move coming out of natural fandom for all the popular bands of the past 15 years or so up to the point they got together. It looked and sounded authentic because they’d internalized all the same things their audience had – they were sharp critics and analysts of all that music, but that was filtered through strong songwriting instincts and a genuine “give ‘em what they want” populism.
“Paradise City” is the pinnacle of that impulse in their catalogue. The song, written and recorded long before they’d ever played arenas much less a stadium, is built to be the ultimate mass-scale rock experience. It’s hard to imagine the starting point for this track not being something along the lines of “we need the best concert-ending song ever.” It’s starts off as a cousin to “Sweet Home Alabama,” is built around a big sing-along chorus hook, and moves through big riffs, punky verses, solos and more and more opportunities for everyone to sing along. “Paradise City” is extremely eager to please, but it never feels cheap or condescending, and there’s so much momentum in the song that it never feels overwrought, plodding, or clumsy. As with everything on Appetite for Destruction, Mike Clink’s production is sleek and professional but allows for a ragged, wild energy to come through in a way that sets it apart from most other big mainstream rock albums of the mid ‘80s. “Paradise City” is mixed to evoke a massive scale so that it feels like you’re front row in your personal stadium concert.
This much is clear if you listen to the earlier version of “Paradise City” recorded live in session at Sound City that is featured on the expanded “super deluxe” edition of Appetite for Destruction. It’s a great raw version of the song and it feels a bit more edgy and ferocious, but the song doesn’t ask to just sound like five guys in a room playing instruments. “Paradise City” demands to be presented as an idealized experience of rock music, performed by untouchable iconic figures. The sound of it needs to imply your presence, to make you feel included. A lot of rock music thrives on feeling like a document of a special moment in a studio, but songs like “Paradise City” are more like works of fiction that ask you to complete it by imagining the most perfect and magical experience of the music.
Buy it from Amazon.
July 22nd, 2020
A Built-In Ability
Genesis “Invisible Touch”
Try to imagine “Invisible Touch” without any of the ‘80s-ness of its arrangement. It’s not easy, given how overwhelmingly ‘80s it sounds. You have to strip away the keyboards, the drum machine, the echo effect on the guitar, the very sound of Phil Collins’ voice. Like a lot of beloved ‘80s hits, “Invisible Touch” is essentially a Motown-style R&B song played in a completely new style utilizing then-cutting edge technology. Collins and the rest of Genesis were working from a structural template and an approach to singing rooted in Black music, but the result is so transformed by their aesthetics that it barely registers as direct influence. From the perspective of the early 2020s, this looks like a very responsible sort of appropriation.
Phil Collins’ fascination with drum machines in the ‘80s is interesting to me because as a very technically gifted drummer, there was very little he could do with programming that he could not emulate at a drum kit. He was going after a sound – modern, fresh, colorful. The programmed drum fills in “Invisible Touch” have a timbre closer to keyboards than any acoustic percussion instrument, and that’s the appeal. Drums without drum sounds, keyboards that sounded like no analog instrument: We’re so used to artificial textures in music now that it’s hard to get a sense for how revolutionary this was at the time, and how quickly the technology moved that early iterations of these new sounds could be horribly dated and unfashionable within a couple years.
As massively popular as Collins and Genesis were in the ’80s, a lot of people reacted poorly to this sort of drum programming and I think to a large extent it’s because in addition to the false notion that programming drum machines was “easier,” the synthetic sound removed the physical elements of drumming that could be respected as a show of athleticism – a performance of masculinity. “Invisible Touch” has all the function of an up-tempo R&B-based rock number but excises everything that could be interpreted as macho. Artists working in the industrial and hip-hop spaces would go on to convey an aggressive masculine-coded energy to drum machines by the end of the decade, but Collins and a lot of new wave, dance, and synth-pop acts were deliberately rejecting all that.
“Invisible Touch” is sung from the perspective of a guy who is absolutely terrified of a woman he believes is attempting to seduce him, possibly with nefarious goals. I hesitate to say this song is misogynistic, but it is expressing a level of distrust in female sexuality that suggests a lot of unflattering things about Collins, who wrote the lyrics. The paranoia is focused on this woman, but it sounds to me more like he’s projecting a lot from a deep fear of sex in general. The words present this woman as having some special power – an invisible touch, yeah – but I get the impression that this character would see sex as a corrupting influence regardless, and a way of losing a sense of control over himself. It’s a remarkably anti-horny song, and when the song modulates upward for that big key change in the final third it’s almost as though he’s leaping up to evade the clutches of this scary sexy lady.
Buy it from Amazon.
July 23rd, 2020
From The Moment I Saw You I Went Out Of My Mind
Whitney Houston “I’m Your Baby Tonight”
From the first few seconds “I’m Your Baby Tonight” feels slightly, imperceptibly wrong. It’s something about the beat – is it too fast? Or too emphatic too soon, like it’s somehow starting with the climactic fill? There are pop songs that sound like an idealized experience of cocaine, or like the music one might make on cocaine, but this song is like being around someone who’s totally coked up in the most cartoonish way while you’re stone sober.
The frantic energy of the music feels incongruous with the song on a compositional level, but it does suit the lyrics, in which Whitney Houston sings about obsessive, yearning lust. It’s an interesting contrast with her earlier hit “How Will I Know,” which approaches similarly neurotic crush feelings from a more wholesome perspective. That song is also quite energetic, but it’s stable and grounded and as much she overthinks her situation in the lyrics the music conveys faith in a positive outcome. “I’m Your Baby Tonight” feels frazzled and insecure. Whereas “How Will You Know” is confiding in someone else about a crush, this song directly addresses the object of affection and while that’s drastically bolder, it’s also significantly more nerve-wracking. The words are direct and frank and sung by one of the most confident vocalists to ever live, and yet when paired with this percussion all of that is undermined. But then again, the lyrics also contain some rather morbid asides like “from the second you touched me I was ready to die / I’ve never been fatal, you’re my first time.”
“I’m Your Baby Tonight” was written and produced by L.A. Reid and Babyface, and the latter’s involvement is made obvious in the bridge to the chorus. It’s the best part of the song and the melody is so obviously Babyface, not too far removed from his then-recent solo hit “Whip Appeal.” The song falls in a strange spot on the R&B timeline – it’s part of Babyface’s ascendency as a major figure in the genre through the ‘90s, the verses are seemingly influenced by Michael Jackson’s 1987 hit “The Way You Make Me Feel,” the production is adjacent to Teddy Riley’s emerging New Jack Swing style. It’s a few too many things at once, but in a good way – it sounds like a specific moment in time, and the musical decisions are risky as so much of it is a step away from the aesthetics that had made Houston a superstar.
Houston’s first two albums present her a safe, idealized young woman and the focus of every track is on her enormous technical prowess as a vocalist. Her last major hit before “I’m Your Baby Tonight” was “One Moment In Time,” a ballad recorded for the 1988 Summer Olympics and that makes all kinds of sense because her approach to music up until that point was more similar to an Olympic athlete than a typical R&B or pop vocalist. Showcasing this vocal talent remained the focus of her work through the rest of her life, but “I’m Your Baby Tonight” was the first single of her career to offer up a version of Houston that was allowed to seem less than superhuman. I’m not sure if the goal was for her to return with a song that conveyed anxiety and vulnerability or if that was just the organic result of the artistic process, but it was nevertheless an important step in her progress.
Buy it from Amazon.