Tuesday, March 09, 2021

Great Recurring Themes in Hit Rock Records (An Occasional Series)

Okay -- apart from all of them being infernally catchy, what do these songs have in common?

Okay, I think everybody here knows the answer, i.e. the lyrics to all three are written from the perspective of a guy who wants a girl who's going with somebody else.

I should add that I'd never seen either the Springfield or Cars live videos before, both of which are a lot of fun.

I should also add (and I've said it before in these precincts) that some day a smart country band or artist is going to do a remake of "My Best Friend's Girl" and have a huge hit with it. I mean, Keith Urban could absolutely kill on that.

5 comments:

big bad wolf said...

i went with a friend to a rick springfield concert in 1981. He was directed to take his little sister and he needed someone for a couple pre-show drinks with him. i was game, so off we went. having come to music at 12 in 1973, i thought the screaming on those 60s live albums and the mid-70s beatles at the hollywood bowl were a studio effect. learned i was wrong. an arena full of young girls can scream for a really long time. and rick and his band were pretty damn good at what they did.

pete said...

When you hear the screams, for Elvis or the Beatles or Frank Sinatra or Johnny Ray, you're hearing the sound of girls discovering a new form of power. They may have been just silly teenagers but together they could produce a sound that drove grown men crazy, enough sound that society was forced to notice, and enough to change the culture. Notice that the artists they screamed for were none of them examples of the post-war he-man. They were all considered objectionably effeminate but the culture had to make room because the sound forced them. It changed society. Steve wrote a book on the subject.

Anonymous said...

Hayseed Dixie did a bluegrass version of My Best Friend's Girl. It's not bad.

Marc

neal t said...

here's the above. doesn't work for me as much as what comes to mind when you suggest a country star cover.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RaksQhYDIc

Mike Bankhead said...

Ah, the question is whether to cover one of these, OR to write a new one based on the same premise...