July 01, 2004
TEEN UP THE RADIO
You might have noticed that I've changed the music on the Radio.Blog.
There's a theme here.
Two weeks ago, I attended a journalism conference on covering teens beyond the fads. So I thought it might be fun to throw some music on that sort of reminds us all that teens have pretty much had shitty taste in music. From Frankie Avalon to John Travolta to Britney Spears. All pure, Grade-A crap. That's why God created college, quite frankly. To cleanse the bubblegum from our souls and feed us real music at used record, and now, CD stores.
Of the ones I posted, my favorite has to be The Knack's "Good Girls Don't." I was about 14 when that came out. The Knack was on the cusp of New Wave and made decent music for one album and one album only. I still can't believe that a song that's so blatant about putting out made the charts in 1979. Then again, Donna Summer moaned for 43 minutes straight on "Love To Love You, Baby" in 1975, so maybe I shouldn't be surprised.
The most unlikely teen idol? Gotta be Bobby Sherman. The guy was almost 28 when he hit it big on the charts in 1970 with "Easy Come, Easy Go." And his songs were so... bad. I get the sense that with his silk shirts and dangly necklaces and foppy hair, Bobby Sherman may have been the American archetype for Austin Powers. Just a theory.
Alarmingly, six of the songs on the blog have ties to television - The Archies' "Sugar, Sugar" (cartoon), Rick Springfield's "Jesse's Girl" (General Hospital), David Cassidy's "I Think I Love You" (Partridge Family), The Monkees' "Daydream Believer" (The Monkees), John Travolta's "Let Her In" (Welcome Back Kotter), Aha's "Take On Me" (MTV). Of these, Springfield's is probably the best written and produced, but you can't deny the Velveeta goodness of Travolta's ballad. The man was born to sing... uh, nothing.