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20 October 2006
The Pina Colada song: Worst song ever recorded or menace?→[More:]No, I'm not providing an mp3. I may be an asshole, but I'm not cruel.
Communist. That song is a near-perfect piece of popcraft. What are you, a Yes fan or something??
(I've always been of the opinion that you can gauge the quality of an era most accurately by the quality of the ephemeral crap it produces. And the 70's beat the 80's hands down. I'll listen to "Brandy" and "The Pina Colada Song" and "Love Grows Where My Rosemary Goes" over "My Obsession," "Two Of Hearts," and "Hungry Like The Wolf," any day of the week.)
Oh yeah, I loved "Brandy" -- we named our beagle after that song. She was a sweetie, I still miss her.
jonmc -- I remember sitting in the hallway in grad school (we didn't have a lounge) in the mid 80s, listening to jaded poetry types talk about how awful 70s music -- well, not just the music, but the entire 70s pop culture -- was, which, given some of the stuff that was big right then, is really funny in retrospect.
I'll listen to "Brandy" and "The Pina Colada Song" and "Love Grows Where My Rosemary Goes" over "My Obsession," "Two Of Hearts," and "Hungry Like The Wolf," any day of the week.
Point taken. . .so Tony Orlando and Dawn also take up honored disk space on your 'pod, I take it.
Nah, Tony I can't take, but those other songs and plenty of similar ones, I love unironically. (Also, plenty of the best punk, Ramones, Dictators, Blondie, B-52's etc, was built on an appreciation of such ephemera).
Wolfie: maybe you stayed up late that new years listening to the radio.
Forgot to mention that that's latin for, "Gee, I like Duran Duran, myself."
You're excused. You're a girl. You only liked them for their non-threating cuteness.
I see your pina colada song and raise you You're Having My Baby by Paul Anka, the song that made my mother shriek in outrage every time it played in our station wagon in the 70s.
Brandy is one of my favorite songs. For years I've sworn up and down that I'm gonna develop a cover of it, but I've never been willing to sit down and track through the inverted jazz chords. (It would be great segued into "Baker Street"). A fine song! A timeless story! I have visions of busting it out at the folky-crunchy Sea Music Festival in Mystic one year.
And while discussing 70s earworms, the Four Seasons' "December 63".
During the 70's in LA I used to KNOW guys with perms, bell bottoms, big mustaches, and those faux tinted aviator glasses who were trying to make it in the biz, with the next "Brandy," or "I Wanna Make it with You."
Now the guys with perms, bell-bottoms, big mustaches and faux tinted aviator glasses are 23-year-olds with myspace pages who clutter up my favorite dive bars and obsessively play The Killers on the jukebox.
Fuck it! I can't stand for this bashing of Duran Duran! Girls on Film is fuckin awesome, and Hungry Like the Wolf? Come on! They Might Be Giants is nonthreatening cuteness. I like them too.
Duran Duran was annoying fey dance music with those hellishly bright synths and annoying overloud drums. Plus they came out when I was a hormone-flooded 13 year old, so stuff like that wasn't cutting it and I got into Twisted Sister, Iron Maiden & the Ramones and the rest is history... or something.
Hey, the Pina Colada Song was what Rupert Holmes was driven to when nobody bought the intelligent, witty music he did on his first two albums. I'll make some mp3s available later to demonstrate.
Hmph. I like the Pina Colada song and I have the mp3 to prove it! I specifically bought the Billboard cd it's on just to make an mp3 of that song. So there!
And I'm sorely disappointed in you, jon. Duran Duran are gods; no ands, ifs or buts about it.
I used to play Brandy's cousin Mandy on my clarinet, with as much schmaltz as I could muster. And my 45 of Please Mr. Please was my prize possession when I was nine. (I'm waitin' on the Shatner version of Pina Colada.)
I do. 70s pop music was much better than 80s pop music. I hated 80s pop music. I like a lot of different 70s music, but I think I mostly miss the singer/songwriter era.
please tell me you people don't like "Cheeseburger in Paradise" as well...
I thought that song was stupid until I started sailing. Now I understand it completely. Enjoying a warm, juicy, meaty cheeseburger in a comfy safe portside pub after spending hours in the screaming cold wind and bright sun working hard and jostling up and down on a sailboat is one of life's greatest joys. I'm not saying it's a good song, just that it makes much more sense once you've earned one of those burgers.
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