Today’s Random Weekend selection is similar to the Lucinda Williams track posted last Sunday — a raw, acoustic demo of an album cut.
In this case the performer is Elvis Costello and the song is ‘Tramp the Dirt Down’ from 1989’s Spike.
This is a song — in both its finished form and as a demo — with which I have lost patience over the years.
Plenty of 80s songs were used in 80s movies, kind of by definition. But there aren’t many 80s songs that I immediately associate with certain films.
Two that leap to mind are ‘Jesse’s Girl’ and ‘Sister Christian,’ both used to tremendous effect in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights. But of course that was a movies made in the late 90s about the 70s and 80s.
Given all of the sampling of 80s music done by modern rap artists, it’s refreshing to listen to an 80s song that was actually inspired by a rap hit.
Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe, the writers and performers who made up Pet Shop Boys, have said that their 1985 hit ‘West End Girls’ drew inspiration from ‘The Message’ by Grandmaster Flash.
If you listen to it with that in mind, it totally makes sense.
It’s taken me a long time to realize that there is no shame in liking something you really have no good reason to like.
I guess you can call that embracing a guilty pleasure, but I don’t see it that way exactly. It’s more a matter of deciding once and for all that taste is subjective and if some cheesy soft-rock ballad works for you — against all logic — well, then it works for you. No need to second guess it.
I’ve always wondered why one-hit wonders, if they’re capable of writing and recording a song worthy of hit status, aren’t able to keep it up? Do some bands really just have one good song in them? That doesn’t make sense.
Recently I realized that at least a few of the one-hit wonders I’ve always assumed were original composition were in fact covers of old pop standards. Soft Cell’s ‘Tainted Love,’ for example, was first recorded as a B-side by Gloria Jones in 1965.
No wonder Soft Cell didn’t go on to greater things… they weren’t even responsible for the one hit they did have!
