Whilst I will always be a pop kid at heart, I have a strong dislike for excessively chirpy records. As an insomniac, I frequently find myself tormented by certain tunes that seem to squat in my brain and thumb their noses at me all night, relenting only when that ultimate of chirpy taunts – the dawn chorus – begins.
In an attempt to exorcise some of these smug ditties (that’s what they are: ditties), I hauled myself up at 4am yesterday morning and wrote a list. Here are ten tracks that have an unacceptable chirp-to-tune ratio. They will never be played at Pop ‘Til You Drop. They are the musical equivalent of someone tapping you urgently on the shoulder for twelve hours, and then shouting ‘NOTHING!’ when you finally turn around.
1.Maria Muldaur – Midnight At The Oasis
2.Jim Noir – Eany Meany
3.Jon Cutler featuring E-Man – It’s Yours
4.The Velvet Underground – I’m Sticking With You
5.Peter, Bjorn and John – Young Folks
6.Luther Vandross & Janet Jackson – The Best Things In Life Are Free
7.OutKast – Hey Ya!
8.Len - Steal My Sunshine
9.Joni Mitchell – Big Yellow Taxi
10. Presidents of the United States of America – Peaches
I have done my best throughout my life to avoid the work of Whitney Houston. That never-ending winter of 1992 still casts a shadow. There was I, fifteen years old, miserable, watching ‘I Will Always Love You’ on The Chart Show for the umpteenth week, just yearning for something (anything) else to hit the number one spot. And there was Whitney, splay-legged, hands in that saintly clasp, wobbling her jaw to achieve maximum vibrato… God, she made me want to slash my armpits with boredom. No wonder records like this sounded so good.
But recent events have forced me to re-evaluate one tiny section of the Twitney back catalogue. At the second Pop ‘Til You Drop back in April, my partner in crime DJ Danielle Moore dropped ‘Love Will Save The Day’. I had just wedged myself into the toilet and was happily adding to the graffiti (I <3 Shep Pettibone) when the disquieting realisation that I was enjoying a Whitney Houston record hit me. Then, seconds later, lettuce barely shaken, I found myself careering around the dancefloor like an inebriated farmhand whilst paying customers looked on aghast.
By coincidence, last Monday evening, during an extravagantly lubricated Spotify session here at Pop Heights, ‘Love Will Save The Day’ surfaced again, confirming my suspicion that the tune is a wig-lifting, wab-wobbling, gusset-splitting anthem of titanic proportions, in spite of its cloying ‘message’.
The next day, after a couple of light ales, I was persuaded by my Whitney-loving friend to investigate the White Vest album further. One fraught listen off cassette on a car stereo, during which I left bite marks on my own fist, revealed there is little else on there for the taking. Whitney’s version of ‘I Know Him So Well’, performed with her mother (somewhat inappropriately), sounds like two car alarms arguing in an empty turbine hall. ‘Didn’t We Almost Have It All’ is another wallpaper-stripping ballad that Ms. Houston approaches with all the subtlety and restraint of a newly promoted Drill Sergeant. The whole album is plastered in the kind of electric piano that makes you feel like you’re having the contents of a Cadbury’s Creme Egg squeezed into your earhole as you listen. It really does make a girl want to smoke crack.
Which I almost did, back in 1993, when eventually Whitney was knocked off her perch by this:
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