Dreadful Tunes

I'm willing to bet that this happens to everyone... there are songs out there that, even though they're not supposed to, instill in you a strange feeling that is the exact opposite of what the song is supposed to convey, or at least one that probably isn't what was intended. It might have something to do with the circumstances of how you first heard it, or maybe it taps into something in your psyche in just the wrong way, but you can never hear it the way you know you should. For me, there are a small bunch of these songs, but I've waited until now to discuss them because I've never been quite able to articulate what it is about them. Now, I have three songs that I'm at least somewhat confident I can discuss what it is about them that, well -- not necessarily bothers me, but gives them a weirdly specific emotional resonance. Here we go...

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"Video Killed the Radio Star" by The Buggles (1981) - This, tellingly, was the first song played when MTV kicked off, and I’ll be damned if it wasn't prophetic. Music videos quickly became the propelling force behind the entire music industry for the next twenty years, and celebrity image became inextricably entwined with musical talent forevermore. This song always reminds me of all those artists who weren't photogenic enough to make the transition to video -- people like Peter Frampton, Steve Miller, and Christopher Cross come to mind.

The song itself, written and performed by future uberproducer Trevor Horn and keyboardist Geoff Downes (who would later be a part of my favorite 80s supergroup, Asia), delivers the exact message that the title implies. It's a message to an aging radio star about how different music is now, how the "golden age of wireless" is never coming back, and how the world will be poorer for it. You get lines like this, delivered by Horn in a tinny, lo-fi buzz:

"Now we meet in an abandoned studio"
"Pictures came and broke your heart"
"We can't rewind, we've gone too far"

The whole thing smacks of irrevocable loss, which I'm coming to realize is a real emotional hot button for me. To top it all off, there's the chorus, which is the title phrase delivered over and over by a pair of women's voices, which somehow manage to sound cutesy-poo and robotic at the same time. It's the musical underlining of the song's point: from here on out, folks, surface is all that’s going to matter.

Maybe the fact that MTV predicted its own effect on music is what really makes this song seem deeper than it really is. After all, within ten years, acts like Milli Vanilli and C+C Music Factory would try to prove that it didn't matter if the person in the video was the one who really sang the words (thankfully, we didn't entirely fall for the trick). But the music did become more a part of a package, instead of being the package itself. I'm not saying that music before was less about the celebrity of the musician than the music itself, but substance got pushed even farther to the side. Rock ‘n’ roll became less of a revolution than a movie about a revolution.

Then again, when this song comes on I can't help but wait for the stinger at the end, and it's the only part of the song that isn't delivered in a clipped staccato: it's a woman's voice, distant and echoey, that comes in and repeatedly intones "You are a radio star". It sounds like an afterthought, but I can't help but think that she uses the word "you" for a particular reason. Maybe we're all in the process of becoming obsolete.

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"Somewhere That's Green" from Little Shop of Horrors (1986) - I know, this song is supposed to be hopeful, or at least humorous. The character who sings it, an urban naïf named Audrey, is dreaming of a life away from the squalor of where she currently lives – an unnamed city’s Skid Row in the 1950s. Her dream is simple... what she wants is a husband, two kids, nice appliances, a 12-inch television, and a lawn. That's it.

Now, taken in the context of the film, it's supposed to be fun and clever. This woman wants the most simple things, and dreams of them so rapturously. But to me, a fourteen-year-old at the time it came out, it seemed completely bleak and hopeless. It said to me, "Well, there it is. That's the best you can hope for in life, kid. Not much, is it?"

I probably thought this because I was exposed, at a particularly young age, to the songs of French songwriter Jacques Brel, who I guess can be called the Morrisey of the 60s. The collection of his songs, "Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris", is one of those albums I actively dreaded as a kid for the same reason I hated "Somewhere That's Green"... it’s just too bleak and existentially brutal to be enjoyed on any level. Brel’s songs contain angstfests like "Next", in which a man reminisces about losing his virginity in a dehumanizing military brothel and contemplates suicide, or "The Old Ones", where an old couple waits to die in their increasingly small, silent home, or "Sons Of...", an even more depressing song about children growing up and leaving home than "Sunrise, Sunset"... I had all these memorized by the time I was ten.

So "Somewhere That's Green" hit all the same buttons for me. Mowing the lawn on Saturdays and watching TV in the evening? That's all life is, kid, and you'll be lucky if you even get that.

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"Don't Worry, Be Happy" - Bobby McFerrin (1988). I know this one is the most out of left field. I mean, it's right there in the freaking title. This song is supposed to be a happy one, maybe one to turn your day around when it's all going wrong. But I propose that it is anything but.

Again, I think my original feeling about it was because of the circumstances... the first time I heard it was at the tail end of the summer of 1988. I was away from home at camp for a week, and my girlfriend had just moved to Florida, so this might have influenced my state of mind at the time. The first time I heard the "ooh-ooh"ed chorus, I couldn't help but think that there was a different feeling lurking behind the just-smile sentimentality. I mean, it wasn't a carefree "la la" or its even more carefree cousin, the "na na". It was a string of "ooh"s that descends, and flips into A-minor before resolving. That's the part that got me. It's a vocalized version of a mournful whistle, the joy in which sounded to me like it was only halfhearted.

The verses aren't that much better... Bobby intones a list of bad things that may already be happening to you in a faux-Jamaican accent (if there was ever a shorthand for oppression, that's it!), from being loveless to homeless to being run through the legal system. The solution to all these ills? Be happy! That's it. Then we're back to that somewhat haunting "ooh-ooh" chorus again, each time with more harmonies laid across the top of it. In my opinion, it starts sounding quite desperate by the time the song ends.

One more thing that bugs me about the song... at several points Bobby flat-out states that you shouldn't make *everybody* *else* feel sad by acting that way yourself. Now, I'm all for the idea that changing your physical demeanor and outlook can't help but make you actually feel better, but do we really have to start worrying about how other people feel when they see us struggling? Not helping, Bobby.

As a postscript, let me state that I think Bobby McFerrin is a ridiculously talented musician and vocalist. If you haven't seen his Spontaneous Invention concert video, I suggest you do so immediately. Or at least do a Youtube search of his version of the Beatles' "Blackbird". I just don't think that "DWBH" is what America naively embraced it to be. It's a much more sly commentary than that. But then again, there are plenty of songs that the rah-rah American public took at face value in the 80s (Springsteen's acerbic-in-retrospect "Born in the USA" comes immediately to mind).

As I've said, I'm sure that all these songs are influenced by my state of mind when I first heard them, or what they came to represent afterward. But isn't all art, really? There's some absolute musical crap that I (and you too, I imagine) completely adore, and that love hinges entirely on factors that exist outside the music itself. It's something to consider, when you take a look at what you like and what you don't.