To be sure, the news wasn't all good then: the newfound sexual freedom led to newfound aberrations, dark spots in the human psyche that needed to be reined in BY things like political correctness, lest our society collapse completely into some modern day Gomorrah. But that being said, it must have been a great time to be young - before Madison Avenue took over and image really did become everything. By the time I was "young", about ten years later, AIDS had already entered the scene, as had corporate America's stranglehold on every move we make. From these turns of events, an intractable cynicism and jadedness became as much a part of a free lifestyle as anything for disaffected Gen X'ers.
Maybe it was always that way, I don't know. But in any case, the bass line in "Rapture" is itself a sexual expression, as are the drums, and the horns, and the bells, all chained together by Debbie Harry's voice, which is crystal clear and angelic sounding, and at the same time enticingly amoral and untrustworthy. As a song, a "jam", it's dated...definitely sounds like a disco ball monument to the hedonistic 70s...and yet, it's not dated the way, say, an Andy Gibb song might be. It's better than that. Much better. It stands the test of time. Try NOT to listen to it. Ain't easy. And for that matter, Harry, as an object of desire, was herself impossible to ignore.
But there is something else about this song that makes it special:
Recently I was driving with my youngest son, who is 19. This song came on the radio and played through without evoking comment from him, that is, until the end, when Harry begins her rap verse, to which it might be said the title of the song, "Rapture", owes part of a double meaning.
The boy, a fan of rap and hip hop (and like many 19-year-olds, a self-styled music authority, the finest kind, in his young mind...;-), went off at what he saw as her clutzy, white girl flow - rolling his eyes, snorting, scoffing, making sarcastic fart sounds, even rapping along mockingly.
I just kept driving, let him unload, wear himself out. There was no way I could have effectively explained what it was he was listening to, how unwarranted (and/or unfair) his mockery was. I could have tried I guess, popped the balloon of his indignation with a few heavily barbed words from my own music "authority", but I have absolutely no interest in bridging the generation gap. I'm confident he will learn eventually; he does know music, knows "things" in general...he'll figure it out (once his balls drop fully...;-). Or he won't. That's okay too.
You have to put Harry's rapping in perspective. My son was judging it by the modern day rubric, which in terms of popular music has seen countless artists come and go over the last thirty-plus years, each contributing to the standards and best practices of the craft. Over time, there has been great rap music produced, and horrible rap music produced. And it's not really a race thing. There are black people who simply should not be rapping, and every once in a while, an Eminem comes along...(well, okay, just once, but still...)
But in 1980, there was none of that. There was the Sugar Hill Gang's "Rapper's Delight" from 1979, which Deborah Harry borrows a line from in her verse ("Rapture" is notably derivative in other ways, actually, though that's another post...), and not much else. There was certainly nothing on Top 40 radio at the time that could have been considered "rap", and really no chance for such a thing in an age when Juice Newton, 38 Special, and Alabama were scoring No. 1 hits.
Is Debbie Harry's flow ice cold? (I dunno...Epic Rap Battles, I think...) Not quite. Admittedly, it's pretty lukewarm, actually, by today's standards, sounds a lot like a suburban housewife rocking mom jeans and the family karaoke machine during a Saturday afternoon cook out. This is the kind of tragically myopic thinking my son, God bless him, was pinned under as he launched his barrage of snickers, snorts, chortles and horizon-to-horizon eye rolls.
But she was one of the first to do it, one of the first to step outside the box, rethink her whole musical brand, and give this crazy new thing a try. In '80, this was ground-breaking, and I would say it's possible it excited the hell out of people, in mainstream America at the very least, to hear for the first time. It was something nobody else was doing, tacked onto a song that didn't really need it and yet strangely benefited from it. I was eight...I don't remember the song in its day. But I'd bet that while I was lying on my bed, playing with action figures and picking my nose with Air Supply, Hall and Oates and Rick Springfield (or the Oak Ridge Boys! 8-[ ) dribbling from the little pinhole speaker of my transistor radio, in some club somewhere, some 19, 20, 21-year-old kid, standing on the cusp of discovering his or own own definition of rapture for the first time - and on his or her own terms - was probably pretty blown away.
"Cause the man from Mars stopped eating cars and eating bars and now he only eats guitars! Get up...!"
#199) "Drops of Jupiter (Tell Me)" by Train - This is an odd piece of music for me: breezy, upbeat and inspiring, just pleasant to listen to, like a sunny afternoon in June...and at the same time one of the saddest songs ever.
Like all of Train's music, I hated it when it was released in 2001 (Pat Monahan and crew trying too hard, in my view, to be or say something...). But like much of Train's music, it's grown on me over time, and has come to represent how things felt, generally speaking, when I was in my twenties - that sense of invincibility you don't get in any other phase of life: you're not a kid anymore, you're an adult, but you still have so much time ahead of you, all the time in the world (you think). That joyous sense of unbridled anticipation, fueled by all the wide open possibilities, can be found in "Drops of Jupiter's..." bouncing piano and windy string arrangement.
But the song also touches on one of the saddest tropes in story telling: the possibility that one person might outgrow, and thus leave behind, another. Goodbyes are a bitch in any scenario, at any age, but it's one thing if a relationship stalls out from mutual dissatisfaction, or a mutual acknowledgement that everything has changed, or (of course) if there is abuse or cheating going on.
If it's just because one person has changed while the other one hasn't, either because they can't, or they won't, that's heart-breaking. The notion of two people drifting apart, one person moving forward, the other held back, their bond corroded by the slow, unstoppable grind of time as assuredly as something left out in the rain will eventually return to dust, is discouraging, to say the least.
And from what I remember of so many moments in my twenties (not all of them, but some....a few that had nothing to do with me...), I'd say the guy in this song, the protagonist, so hopeful that he was "missed" while his girl was off on her "soul vacation", is a dead man walking. It's been my experience that "soul vacations" are kind of like Stephen King's "Pet Sematary"....people say they'll come back, and they may actually come back, but they're never quite the same when they do.
That's just my interpretation. If nothing else, "Drops of Jupiter (Tell Me)" is a fantastic song to drive to. ALSO on account of the bouncing piano and windy string arrangement.
"Tell me, did the wind sweep you off your feet, did you finally get a chance to dance along the light of day...?"
#200) "Ironic" by Alanis Morissette - Yes, I know, I've heard it many times before: there isn't really anything ironic in this song. To be honest, I don't know if that's true...at least, I'm not quite as sure as I was twenty years ago. The balloon of my indignation may have been popped by the testimony of a person much smarter than I, some on-line blogger, who suggested everything in the song actually IS ironic, if you accept a broadened definition of the word. Or if nothing else, the WHOLE of the song is ironic BECAUSE nothing in it is.
I've always understood that the song is pretty much just Morissette's list of coincidences or bad luck episodes. What WOULD have been ironic in this song, for instance, is if the man who waited his whole damn life to take that flight, started screaming (as the plane crashed down), "Okay, everyone start flapping your arms!"
Whatever, I still like it a lot. Its breezy message of hope glowed especially bright in the midst of the drearily jaded music scene of the 1990s...and I especially enjoy the video, with Alanis playing all four girls on a road trip. I'm not sure why...there's just something about it: the winter scenes, the way the washed-out sunshine crashes through the windshield as they cruise along some desolate two-lane highway, the clumps of snow and ice covering the car...it's always really pleased me. Reminds me, perhaps, of something seminal to my young life. And I suspect this is what they were going for (indirectly, at least), but I feel like I've dated some version of all four of those girls at one point or another in my life.
And IN that very car, come to think of it...gotta love the old 70s boats that got me around then. ;-)
