Fluxblog Weekly #170: Prince, Madonna, Deee-Lite, Robbie Dupree/WPIX Archives
I am still writing about old favorites this week. I may or may not keep this up into next week – I kinda needed a break from covering new stuff, and I'm just having a lot of fun diving into songs I've loved for ages but feel fresh to me right now.
July 27th, 2018
Sheer Perfection
Prince “Take Me With U”
“Take Me With U” contains one of the most charming moments in the history of pop music: The bit in the third verse in which Prince sings “you’re sheer perfection” and Apollonia replies “thank you.” The very idea of this exchange is cute, but the exact tone of their voices is what makes it so special – he’s so thirsty and earnest, and she’s so polite and demure. She sounds like she’s blushing. He sounds like he’s sweating.
“Take Me With U” is one of the few songs where Prince sounds genuinely nervous, like he’s trying to be chill about his love but is failing completely. He’s desperate for her company, he just wants her soooooo much. He can’t hold back anything, so he’s laying it all on the line: “All I want is to spend the night together, all I want is to spend the night in your arms.” To me, this is Prince at his most romantic. His desire is so pure, his love is so respectful. There’s no trace of toxic masculinity, there’s nothing controlling or manipulative or selfish. It’s just this guy declaring exactly what he wants, and being a real sweetheart about it.
And uhhh, she has a mansion? That’s cool, I guess.
Buy it from Amazon.
July 26th, 2018
Strangers Making The Most Of The Dark
Madonna “Crazy for You”
“Crazy for You” is Madonna’s best love song and finest ballad, in large part because she so fully commits to the forthright earnestness of Jon Lind and John Bettis’ music and lyrics. It’s not unusual for Madonna to be so heart-on-her-sleeve, but her most famous songs from the ’80s often have some arch or ironic quality. Here she’s tender, direct, and incredibly vulnerable as she confesses to huge, overwhelming feelings: “I never wanted anyone like this, it’s all brand new.” That last bit is what really gets me about this song – she feels out of her depth, she has no roadmap for this. What she’s experiencing is beautiful and exciting, but also quite scary. But regardless of the fear and possibility of rejection, she is absolutely certain of how she feels. It’s such a pure sentiment.
The clarity of the chorus is in sharp contrast with the verses, which look outside her feelings to observe the space around her. Lind and Bettis’ language is so vivid here, sketching out a scene in which other people in the club pair off and clear out, but Madonna’s character is waiting for something to happen. I love how this raises the stakes of the song – you feel the time slipping away, heightening her anticipation and longing. She’s trying to find a way to express herself, to make it happen. “Can’t you feel the weight of my stare?,” she wonders. “If you read my mind,” she fantasizes. As the song progresses she seems to get closer to the one she wants, but you never get any sort of resolution. There’s a very good chance that the intense love she feels goes unrequited and she heads home alone.
Buy it from Amazon.
July 23rd, 2018
Your Groove I Do Deeply Dig
Deee-Lite “Groove Is In the Heart”
“Groove Is In The Heart” was released in the summer of 1990, in the middle of a three–year period in which music culture was transitioning between the aesthetics of the 1980s and what would become the 1990s. This phase of music history is fascinating to me because it has an aesthetic unto itself – creatively ambitious as artists and labels attempted to envision a fresh pop future, colorful and glossy, generally upbeat and optimistic in tone, and gleefully eclectic in its embrace of hip-hop, house music, and retro kitsch.
If you imagine all of that as a Venn diagram, “Groove Is In The Heart” is at the center. The track is one of the finest sample-based compositions of all time, with at least a dozen samples weaved into a seamless, ecstatic pop tune. Super DJ Dmitry’s craft is impeccable – he borrows a few grooves outright, but the bulk of the sampling is piecing together flourishes from small moments of disparate recordings. This is masterful audio collage on par with the best of the Bomb Squad, the Dust Brothers, and Prince Paul, and something that would be prohibitively expensive to create and release today. It’s an art form almost entirely snuffed out by commerce.
As glorious as Dmitry’s track gets, this song is still all about Lady Miss Kier. Her style, confidence, and enthusiasm is so strong that it’s nearly overpowering, and you don’t need to actually see her to understand that you’re listening to the coolest, foxiest woman in the universe. (But it certainly does not hurt to look! These videos are astonishing.)
“Groove Is In the Heart” is one of the world’s greatest crush songs. The music has a generous and playful tone, and conveys the euphoric rush of infatuation but without a trace of anxiety or melodrama. I love the way Kier expresses a deep appreciation for the person she’s addressing – she sounds so excited about them, and so inspired by their presence. (I love the phrase “your groove I do deeply dig!” so much. All I really want is someone who deeply digs my groove.) She gets silly, she gets sassy, she gets funky. The way she sings “I couldn’t ask for another!” is thrilling, and easily one of the most deliriously joyful bits of any song in pop history. The best part of this is that her bliss is contagious, and this song is one of the most effective ways humans have ever devised to induce crushed-out feelings.
Buy it from Amazon.
July 22nd, 2018
Glancing My Way
Robbie Dupree “Steal Away”
The WPIX Archive is one of my favorite things on the internet, as it combines two things that will always fascinate me: Generally quite banal footage from the 20th century, and New York City history. The stuff I love most in the archive are from the ’70s through the mid ’90s, as they are glimpses into the world just before my existence or the adult world I only partially perceived as a child.
But one clip from the 21st century stands out – the last live footage WPIX shot of the World Trade Center on the morning of 9/11. It’s not even a good shot of the buildings; it’s just a helicopter view of the skyline. The footage wouldn’t even be all that interesting if not for the context – the chatter of the Good Day New York hosts wrapping up their program for the morning, and that it’s soundtracked by Robbie Dupree’s “Steal Away.” Everything is cheery and relaxed. It’s just another boring late summer day.
“Steal Away” is a very appropriately titled song, given that it flagrantly rips off key elements of two major hits that came out in the two years before its release – The Doobie Brothers and Michael McDonald’s soft rock classic “What A Fool Believes,” and Eddie Money’s radio staple “Baby Hold On.” But please do not hold this against “Steal Away.” It’s a magnificent song in its own right, and frankly, more songs should have keyboard parts like “What A Fool Believes.” How many terrible punk songs are essentially the same damn thing, and no one complains about that? I could do without a hundred thousand of those, and but would be grateful for just one other good “What A Fool Believes” ripoff.
“Steal Away” is a song about an affair. It’s unclear what the entanglement is – is Dupree simply the Other Man, or is he cheating on someone too? It doesn’t really matter. The point is that despite knowing that he’s doing something wrong, he definitely can’t say no. The interesting thing here is how the chill vibe of the music defuses the conflict in the lyrics, and how despite the “into the night, I know it ain’t right” refrain, there’s almost no trace of guilt in the feeling of the song. Dupree tips back and forth between passivity and action, guided mainly by lust and excitement. This isn’t a song concerned with the aftermath of actions, it’s all about a moment. And that moment is quite romantic. I like to think that song is the start of one of those relationships that begin as some illicit affair, but end up being stable, loving partnerships.
Buy it from Amazon.