Songs that Changed the Landscape of Human Thought and Understanding: Paul Evans and the Curls' "Seven Little Girls Sitting in the Back Seat"

Automobile safety is one of the most important issues of the automotive age. According to Wikipedia, over 100 Americans own automobiles. And you know what that means. To quote Elvis Costello, "Accidents will happen!" Accidents are totally unnecessary and unwanted. Accidents are real jerks. They can make you late to see the game at Buffalo Wild Wings. They can destroy entire municipalities. Who needs them? But there are ways of preventing them or, at the very least, minimizing their damage. The first approach is to make well-built automobiles. But since that never happens, at least in the United States (ZING!), the other tack is to put out public service announcements, really super duper cute ones that get stuck in your head, that way you will always remember the proper protocol for avoiding accidents. Well, in 1959, the same year Ralph Nader released his first study on automobile safety, another cutting edge artist, Paul Evans, who co-wrote one of the greatest songs ever to appear in the movie GoodFellas, "Roses are Red (My Love)," recorded his masterwork, the top ten hit "Seven Little Girls Sitting in the Back Seat," with his backing group of unknowns, The Curls. (There is literally no information about them anywhere, ever. Though it is rumored that one of them was named Sue.) The song accomplishes two things, a combination of which had never been done before--or since--in the annals of music: 1) tell a cautionary tale about keeping ones "eyes on the road," and; 2) recount the legend of Fred.

The premise of "Seven Little Girls" is one we can all relate to. The narrator of the song, an unnamed teenage male, is driving a car, in the front seat all by himself. Meanwhile, in the backseat, there are seven "little girls ... kissing and a hugging on Fred." Keep in mind that cars were way bigger in the 1950s than they are today. Most cars were the size of a seventh-floor walk-up apartment in lower Manhattan. The driver, feeling left out, asks one of the girls if she would like to join him in the front seat. They all respond, simultaneously, "Keep your mind on your driving. Keep your hands on the wheel. Keep your snoopy eyes on the road ahead." The girls' advice about proper driving technique are totally accurate and commendable. But the next thing they say must really perturb the driver: "We're having fun sitting in the back seat kissin' and a huggin' with Fred." OUCH! Everybody knows that kind of pain. He later tries to persuade them that they are being chauffeured around in a sweet ride, with a triple carburetor, which I know is supposed to mean something important. But they remain steadfast in their viewpoint that he must obey proper driving etiquette while they engage in an eight-way make-out session with the inexhaustably lusty Fred.

One of the many reasons why this song is so great is that the narrator is faced with moral and ethical dilemmas. He realizes he has a duty to obey the traffic laws of our country (ethics). But he also wants to make out with at least one of the seven girls in the back seat, and possibly Fred as well, even if it is discordant with the good ol' American values his parents endowed him with (morality). The song concludes with the narrator saying he wishes he was Fred.

This is understandable. According to the Made Up Oxford English Dictionary of First Names, "Fred" has Gaelic origins and means something, loosely translated, like, "Fearless, Ripped, Enigmatic Dude." This gives him the power to make out with seven girls while simultaneously getting them to completely ignore their gracious host. Fred has probably convinced them that the driver is a peeper. This is but another part of the legend of Fred. I conclude that, in conclusion, despite the totally sketchy sexual politics of the song, Paul Evans and the Curls' "Seven Little Girls Sitting in the Back Seat" is a Homeric odyssey that weaves, like Penelope, an etiological lesson about car safety with the mythical legend of Fred as a way of reaffirming all within us that is proud, headstrong, charismatic, aroused, prudent, and full of Hater-ade. How many other songs achieve all these things? None, I say. None.

 

Songs that Changed the Landscape of Human Thought and Understanding: Rupert Holmes' "Escape (The Piña Colada Song)"

Monogamy is a tradition that extends all the way back to 3989 B.C., when the first humans began to begat. The concept of fidelity is codified in Exodus 20:15: "Thou shalt not commit adultery." This concept is elaborated on a few verses later: "thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's." As such, coveting ass, from thy neighbor, or from Ashley Madison.com, has been socially taboo ever since. The "free love" movement of the 1960s attempted to put a few dents in monogamy's armor, but ultimately failed. However, in 1979, a French philosopher from France by the name of Jean-François Lyotard, in a book title La Condition Postmoderne, defined postmodernity as "incredulity towards metanarratives." Oh no he didn't! But, seriously, yes, he did. Deal with it. Not coincidentally, that same year, the brilliant singer-songwriter Rupert Holmes exemplified Lyotard's erudite maxim in glorious yacht rock technicolor when he problematized the entire notion of monogamy--and to a certain extent, the self--in his masterpiece "Escape (The Piña Colada Song)."

Holmes, who cut his teeth writing the only Billboard Top 20 Hit about cannibalism some ten years earlier, had touched on some of life's meatier topics in the intervening decade, such as drinking, rum, getting lunch, and the consumption of alcoholic beverages. Therefore, it was not surprising when he cut a single that addressed three issues with heavy moral and metaphysical implications: 1) that promiscuity, if properly executed, can be a whizz-bang idea; 2) that contrary to earlier scientific discoveries, one can cheat on their significant other WITH their significant other; and, 3) that piña coladas and champagne are a perfectly reasonable means for getting adult humans tore up.

The narrator is a man who is bored with his "lady." He decides to emotionally stray from her by examining the personal ads. He finds one that tickles his fancy, and by fancy, I mean the cockles of his heart, which, for the record, are now warmed. She happens to be looking for a man who likes "piña coladas," "getting caught in the rain," and "making love at midnight," while at the same time being not particularly fond of "yoga." The narrator sees himself in this description and writes back the following poem:

Yes, I like Pina Coladas,
and getting caught in the rain.
I'm not much into health food,
I am into champagne.
I've got to meet you by tomorrow noon,
and cut through all this red tape.
At a bar called O'Malley's,
where we'll plan our escape.

Exquisite! This poem makes William Shakespeare's sonnets seem like a fishy flu fart in comparison. I mean, come on: GAME OVER. Rupert Holmes' real coup though is the song's twist, which reportedly inspired the ending to every single M. Night Shyamalan film. When the narrator goes to meet up with this date, it turns out to be, GET THIS, his current girlfriend. What?! At this point, the foundation of Enlightenment culture begins to erode. Can somebody cheat on their girlfriend with their own girlfriend? Is it even cheating? Is this just a strange Ouroboros loop? Is it possible that bears can read minds? Rupert Holmes incredulity toward the metanarrative of monogamy--as well as faithfulness, "the keys to a successful relationship," and girly drinks--in "Escape" is without question the single act of artistic expression that ushers in the postmodern age.

Songs that Changed the Landscape of Human Thought and Understanding: The Floaters' "Float On"

LIBRA. AND MY NAME IS BRIAN.

When the members of Modest Mouse were still in short pants, the Detroit-based soul group The Floaters released a song for the ages called "Float On" in 1977. This thoroughly visionary track foresees the 21st Century's renewed enthusiasm for the accurate predictive process of Astrology, online dating, and an anonymous woman finding out how sweet it was to share her love with Larry.

After doing extensive research on astrology, I was shocked to discover that it was not--in fact--invented by Miss Cleo in the 1990s. Who knew?! It turns out that Astrology dates all the way back to the 1960s. A formerly agnostic astronomer by the name of Dr. Lowell Astor was employed at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona. The observatory is known for having some huge ass telescopes. He noticed that Mars, the Red Planet, temporarily entered the constellation Sagittarius. About two weeks later, a bit of good luck came his way. From this humble moment, the astrological arts arose, and became a phenomenon during the 1960s and 1970s. It's popularity started to wane during the presidency of Gerald Ford, for obvious reasons: he was a Leo. But thanks to the sexy powers of The Floaters (who were, collectively, "Aquarius, Libra, Leo, [and] Cancer" and "Ralph, Charles, Paul, [and] Larry," respectively), astrology came back into full force.

In the song, each member of the group reveals: 1) their astrological sign; 2) their first name; and, 3) what kind of woman they are looking for. By doing this, they set up the entire paradigm of online dating. More on this later. They continue their quest for the woman of their desires by "taking" their hand and inviting them to a place called "Love Land," which is presumably somewhere in the greater metropolitan area of Detroit, Michigan. Finally, each member promises to show the lady how sweet it will be if she shares "her love" with him. The combined effect of this amorous barrage is that one will "float, FLOAT, float on." The light doo-wop singing of The Floaters, combined with the smooth funk of their backing band, amounts to a dulcet online dating profile.

Now, at the time this song was rising up the charts, the phrase "online dating" meant about as much as "snarg friltawog tigghol" did. Sure, matchmaking services existed. One such system is documented in the classic Bernard Malamud short story "The Magic Barrel" (1958). Some even utilized phones, newspapers, and computers. But by launching a full multimedia campaign, including TV appearances and live shows, The Floaters were promoting themselves across purposes: first, as great soul singers, and, most importantly, as all around good dudes who want to meet some compatible nice ladies for possible connubial relations and even a potential relationship. "Float On" served as their irresistible profile. Its continued play on the radio served as the contemporary online dating equivalent of men constantly bombarding women's inboxes with pervy notes. (Forgive the poor phrasing of the conclusion of that last sentence.) According to my in-the-know imaginary friend, Dr. Fred "Forklift" Quarg, the prototype for match.com's first profile page was based on this song. For instance, under the prompt, "Come with me baby to _______," you would enter the name of the place you would like to seduce your prospective date. Apparently, the standards and practices team at the aforementioned dating site thought that was pretty creepy.

Thanks to "Float On," astrology became a healing power of love, subverting the then-popular claim, made so eloquently by the female news broadcaster in the film Kentucky Fried Movie (1977), that it was meant "merely to support people who [could not] take responsibility for their own lives." Similarly, by providing a general outline for what online dating should look like, it subsequently replaced beer as the way most awkward people hook up. It never really helped Larry, though. All he needed was the glorious majesty of sweet sweet song.

*-For the purposes of full disclosure, I candidly admit that the name of the group discussed (The Floaters) and the name of the song discussed ("Float On") played no part in my selection for its entry in this series of song profiles, even if it very closely resembles my last name.

Here's a sexy clip of the song:

Songs that Changed the Landscape of Human Thought and Understanding: Men Without Hats' "The Safety Dance"

Societies demand safety. That's a fact. Why do you think prisons exist? Long before Michel Foucault examined the prison as a metaphor and tool for authoritarian control of the populace in his highly influential study Surveiller et Punir (Discipline and Punish) in 1975, America's first goth kid, Nathaniel Hawthorne, was making similar observations. In his cheery piece of fiction, The Scarlet Letter (1850), his narrator makes the following statement: "The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison." While this is unmistakably true, because Hawthorne was NEVER wrong, one thing Utopias have long overlooked, for some unknown reason, is dancing kids. According to our society's elders, these spastic little jerks have been wreaking havoc on the world since they first decided to swivel their hips and gyrate in sexually-suggestive ways. History is filled with examples of dancing kids messing things up. William Shakespeare's tragedy Romeo and Juliet is fully based on the notion of these fools and their disruptive, lascivious ways. Years later, Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise brought this tale to the big screen in the form of West Side Story (1961), which filled with racist, finger-snapping kids with social diseases. In 1978's blockbuster Saturday Night Fever, dancing kids who are into disco get into more gang fights, have unprotected sex, rape a woman, do more racist stuff, commit suicide, and wear horrible shoes. Fortunately, the geniuses in Men Without Hats provided an alternative, a social salve, if you will, when they unleashed "The Safety Dance" on the great unwashed dancing masses in 1982. Because it championed safety in the art of the dance, it instantly became the greatest song of the 1980s, even better than Joe "Bean" Esposito's "You're the Best."

With its throbbing, minimal bassline and infectious hook, Men Without Hats, led by the great Ivan Doroschuk, found a simple way for kids to dance without unleashing their homicidal, herpes-infected ribaldry upon the poor proles who just want to go to their jobs in peace, drink the weekend away, and continually ruin their credit scores. Doroschuk's solution: an enclave for dancing kids away from the rest of society. He sings, "We can go where we want to / A place where they'll never find / And we can act like we come from out of this world / Leave the real one far behind." Furthermore, if you don't dance, then "you're no friend of mine." Soon, the powers that be took notice of Men Without Hats' brilliant scheme. By establishing dancing "zones," or what the Reagan administration would soon name "dance clubs," these "imbecile(s)" who are always "out of control," according to Doroschuk, could fraternize with each other, frolic, and basically do their thang all over each other. The most brilliant thing about Men Without Hats' "The Safety Dance" is that comes across as pure anarchy in dance, giving it an edge for all those would-be nonconformist dancing kids. Really, though, the dance is all about safety, as the title suggests, because the main move in the dance involves "look(ing) at your hands." Clean hands help reduce sickness and The Safety Dance, with its insistence upon hand-looking, reduced instances of the common cold by one million percent, according to the Wikipedia entry on hyperbole. Because of "The Safety Dance," the tyrannical terrorism of dancing kids has been blotted out completely ... Well, unless you count Footloose, or the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001.

Songs that Changed the Landscape of Human Thought and Understanding: Spandau Ballet's "True"

It was 1983. People drove to work in horseless carriages. They used telephones with wires attached to them. They wondered how Ronald Reagan's hair got so darned black. It was also the year that we learned the truth about truth. Spandau Ballet's tasty piece of "sophisto-pop," "True," is easily one of the most mind-blowingly brilliant singles ever committed to any recorded media. Gary Kemp, the song's writer, penned the perfect melody for the group's baritone singer, Tony Hadley, who articulately communicates, to his audience, the essence of truth. In the process, he makes a mockery of Western philosophy with brilliant ease.

Philosophers had been contemplating truth for years, from the Platonic ideal to the Nietzschean will to power. A breakthrough occurred in the 1930s, when philosopher Alfred Tarski gave the following example: "Snow is white if and only if snow is white." You can't argue with that logic. Well, Spandau Ballet decided to revise this precise if nonsensically coined formula by way of a fruitful combination of British New Wave and Yacht Rock. Tony Hadley seemingly non-verbal singing during the chorus actually packs plenty of meaning. "Ah ah ah ahhhh ah," he sings, in sexy croon-breaths. What most listeners fail to realize upon first listen is that this utterance is the crystallization of all truths. He explains, "Why do I find it hard to write the next line? / Oh I want the truth to be said," continuing, "Ah ah ah ahhhh ah / I know this much is true." What could quite plausibly be understood as an admission of writer's block is really a profound, mind-blowing truth in and of itself: "Ah ah ah ahhhh ah" is truth and truth is "Ah ah ah ahhhh ah." Suck on that, Alfred Tarski.

The key to understanding the perspective of Spandau Ballet is hidden within its chorus as well. Hadley sings, "I bought a ticket to the wor-or-orld, but now I've come back again." Clearly, Spandau Ballet was collectively abducted by a super-intelligent race of skinny tie-wearing aliens who taught them their culture and all of their knowledge. The only thing they couldn't teach Spandau Ballet was how to alleviate homesickness and how to give up the desire to feel sexy. So, after some time spent in space, probably in the months between their 1982 album Diamond and the one this appears on (clearly also titled True), they purchased tickets to return to Earth. Fueled by this new knowledge, as well as months of pent-up sexual frustration, they were inspired to tell us "this much is true" as well as include one of the decade's hottest slow-burn sax solos during the bridge.

It cannot be denied, ever, that "True" has fundamentally changed both the perceptive and linguistic truths of humankind. In the years since, we've had Madonna's "True Blue," P.M. Dawn's "Set Adrift of Memory Bliss," as well as The Truth About Cats and Dogs. Probably the most telling way it has affected culture, at least in the United States, is that when a witness has to take an oath in the courtroom, they now just sing, "Ah ah ah ahhhh ah."

Songs that Changed the Landscape of Human Thought and Understanding: USA for Africa's "We Are the World"

There has never been a song in the annals of history that has fused egoless philanthropy with pure pop-songwriting chops the way USA for Africa's mega-hit "We Are the World" did in 1985. This supergroup, this X-Men of musical acts, reminded us who "we" are, that WE are "the world," and that it is indeed a heavy burden, literally. According to Wikipedia, the Earth weighs over seven gajillion tons. And that's heavier than two stoned hippies* having a conversation about how "we are the world." So how are we the world exactly? That is the question Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie, the song's composers, set out to ask. And, fortunately for us listeners, they answer the question with ease. They also make us feel good for solving what had previously seemed to be a problem without a remedy: WORLD HUNGER. Through sheer hope, starpower, and the insane amount of cash money generated by the song, the people of Ethiopia were able to forget about an unforgiving climate--which provided the region with a historically devastating drought and subsequent famine--and the long history of European colonization of the African nations surrounding them. I bet you never did anything that cool. Seriously. I know I haven't. Feeling special because I once helped out my grandmother during her walk for Breast Cancer Awareness just makes me feel like a great big jerk in comparison. Perhaps the song's greatest achievement, though, is that it presents a universal, timeless picture of who "we" are.

Who are we, then? Well, we are a bunch of popular musicians from the mid-1980s, that's who! We are Michael Jackson, Lionel Richie, Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder, Willie Nelson, Hall and Oates, The Pointer Sisters, Kim Carnes, Cyndi Lauper, Huey Lewis and the News, Steve Perry, Sheila E., and James Ingram. We are pop-rock legends Bob Dylan, Ray Charles, Billy Joel, Harry Belafonte, Smokey Robinson, Dionne Warwick, Paul Simon, Kenny Rogers, the living half of The Blues Brothers, and Lindsay Buckingham. I think we can all relate to that. As an added bonus, the presence of the British musician Bob Geldof (the brainchild of Band Aid) on the track lets every listener know that one of the goals of "We Are the World" was to make the world forget about "Don't They Know It's Christmas," the most religiously presumptuous song ever recorded (well, except for Carrie Underwood's "Jesus, Take the Wheel").

The song also speaks generally to the human condition. There are most certainly always times "When we heed a certain call / When the world must come together as one." Since we are the world, we are also "the children" as well as "the ones who make a brigher day." Because, ultimately, this is an existentialist "choice we're making," as we are a part of "God's great big family," there is only one choice: to "[save] our own lives." Cool beans. Most people can't handle the responsibility of their own job, let alone feeding and clothing the entire populace and knowing that their actions are, essentially, the actions of all seven billion people on this planet. Therefore, "We Are the World" is the most reassuring song ever recorded. Whenever we slip up--like, say, we forget to pick up our kid from school because we were deep into a game of World of Warcraft--we can realize that we are just a microcosm of this world that we also are, that for every mistake, we are actually our own lives, and we are curbing world hunger while we're at it. And for those critics who think this message is convoluted, well it's not. You are. Get me? Or, rather, get we? Are the world?

The knowledge that we are all helping goes down so much more smoothly with great vocal performances. And "We Are the World" has 'em by the boatload. The song is highlighted by that most dulcet of crooners, Bob Dylan. When he sings, "There's a choice we're may-can / We're saving aaaahhhh own liiiiives / It's trooooo we make a bedduh day / Just yooooooo and meeeee," you can literally feel that same burning passion in in the pit of your stomach. Similarly, Bruce Springsteen feels so committed to this message that apparently he didn't have a bowel movement for two weeks before he recorded his take. It meant that much to him. And with that kind of focus and determination, USA for Africa's "We Are the World" was and will always be a song that changed the landscape of human thought and understanding.

*-I'm fully aware that the phrase "stoned hippies" is redundant.

Below is the rousing video for the song. Try not to shed a tear for our greatness:

Songs that Changed the Landscape of Human Thought and Understanding: Baha Men's "Who Let the Dogs Out?"

Last Friday, my office-mate Jill told me she had to go home in order "to let the dogs out." Ergo, in true Jeopardy fashion, "Jill" is the answer to the notoriously prickly question asked in 2000 by the Baha Men in their riddle-for-the-ages anthem "Who Let the Dogs Out?"

Songs that Changed the Landscape of Human Thought and Understanding: Rebecca Black's "Friday"

People make a really big deal about certain days of the week. Nobody likes Mondays. Out of the seven days in a week, most die on a Tuesday. Wednesday is rather perversely known as "hump day." Thursday ... well, I honestly can't tell you what the hell is Thursday good for. But we all know the one day of the week that undoes the previous four days and gets us ready for the next two: Friday. Thankfully, thirteen year-old Rebecca Black reminds us how much this day of the week totally dominates in her 2011 smash hit aptly titled "Friday."

Friday hasn't always been the most popular day of the week. In fact, it is common knowledge that Saturday was THE DAY throughout most of human history. This changed, however, in the 17th Century, after the first performances of William Shakespeare's comedy As You Like It, when it appears that Fridays and Saturdays became tied as the favorite days of the week. In it, Orlando commands Rosalind to "love" him. Rosalind replies, "Yes, faith, will I, Fridays and Saturdays, and all." From this point until the release of the double-whammy of the 1975 television comedy show Saturday Night Live and the 1977 film Saturday Night Fever, it appeared that people still preferred Saturdays. However, the following year saw the release of another disco classic, Thank God It's Friday, and the tables forever turned. From this point on, Fridays were King. The film itself is solely responsible for this exultation. Subsequent studies have in fact proven that Friday itself is absolute proof of a Judeo-Christian God, hence the very phrase "Thank God it's Friday," and, of course, that glorious chain of fine dining establishments, whose food has more product in it that Guy Fieri's hair. Plus, would the formerly most pissed-off rapper in the world Ice Cube have made THREE films about the day if it wasn't so inherently excellent? I think not. When he says, "Damn it was a good day," it's of course Friday he is talking about, not lame ass Tuesday. Seriously. Besides, who would ever eat at a place called Thank the Absence of a Deity It's Friday? TTAOADI Fridays just doesn't roll off the tongue well at all.

Like blue moons, or people who have watched Showgirls all the way through sober, Friday's are rare. They only happen once every seven days. As a result, we need to be constantly reminded about them and their genius. Fortunately, Rebecca Black reminds us, and how. Nestled over a Euro-dance groove, Black's mixolydian dulcet drone of a voice presents Fridays for what they really represent: possibility. According to Black, Friday's present all kinds of crazy options. Should one be "kickin' in the front seat," or perhaps decide on "sittin' in the back seat"? "Everybody's looking forward to the weekend," she sharply observes. She points out how strong desire really is, in ways no other human has so directly expressed. While people have "fun, fun, fun" and like to go "partyin' partyin'" on the weekends, looking forward to all this fun and all this partying is far more cathartic. The weekends become, to evoke the theorist Roland Barthes, a pleasureable text, a jouissance, as our desire for revelation is intrinsically more pleasurable than the revelation itself. Also, because Friday's are so rare, we often forget "yesterday was Thursday" and that "tomorrow is Saturday" and "Sunday comes afterwards." It's that intense of an experience, this Friday thing.

In short, we should all not only Thank God It's Friday, or Tell God to Shove It Because It's Not, but we should Thank Rebecca Black for Reminding Us How Awesome Fridays Are. Even if that creepy rapper guy who makes a cameo toward the end of the song seems way too thrilled about passing a school bus.

Here's the brilliant promotional clip for the song:

Songs that Changed the Landscape of Human Thought and Understanding: David Geddes' "Run Joey Run"

In his classic text Politics, the philosopher Aristotle correctly observes, "The notion of a city naturally precedes that of a family or an individual, for the whole must necessarily be prior to the parts, for if you take away the whole man, you cannot say a foot or a hand remains." If this is indeed the case, then we all must live in pretty dysfunctional cities. Aristotle's idealistic view of the family's role in society illustrates an unassailable fact: that it wasn't until quite recently in human history that the family unit became such a source of complete befuddlement for its sharpest psychologists, sociologists, and anthropologists. A cursory examination of literature and film prior to the 1950s will reveal that ALL families ran swimmingly. However, thanks to Natalie Wood's role as Judy in the 1955 classic Rebel Without a Cause, that all changed. Her father's rejection of her in the film created the perfect conditions for father-daughter dissent globally. In its wake, popular music responded strongly. Madonna's "Papa Don't Preach" (1986) and DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince's gender-neutral masterpiece "Parents Just Don't Understand" (1988) appropriately reflect this new era of fragmentation in the family structure. However, no song better illustrates this rapid devolution of the family unit than David Geddes' "Run Joey Run," a Top Ten hit that took the entire universe by storm in 1975.

"Run Joey Run" relates the story of an Oedipal triangle of desire featuring the narrator Joey, his, um, ex-girlfriend Julie, and Julie's abusive father. After finding out Joey has gotten Julie pregnant, Julie's father vows to kill Joey. However, because of one of these things--a) fate; b) the father's lousy aim; c) a faulty firearm; d) Julie's secret martyr-complex, or; e) a soul-crushing way to learn about the concept of irony--the father misses his intended target, killing his daughter instead. To keep this story from bumming out an entire generation of teenagers, David Geddes--who was, oddly enough, a law student at the time the song became a raging success--successfully deploys some Socratic method (just kidding!) and a little 60s girl-group melodrama to build up tension within the track. The addition of an unidentified female voice in the role of Julie along with a crescendo rivaling The Shangri-Las' "Leader of the Pack" (1965) make "Run Joey Run" a cautionary tale about how a combination of abstinence-only education and an asshole dad can lead to fatal shootings. David Geddes' achievement with "Run Joey Run" is to signal the unfortunate shift in family relations in the years after James Dean made straight men lust for him in Rebel Without a Cause in an accessible manner. Its heavy story and violent conclusion are completely undermined by its "I'm going for a hard jog" musical backdrop, and for that it is a brilliant achievement. As Matthew Slaughter (acted by Martin Donovan) says in the film Trust (1990, dir. Hal Hartley), "A family is like a gun. You point it in the wrong direction, you're gonna kill somebody."



I don't mean to make light of the serious subject matter of this song. If you or anybody you know is being physically, sexually, or emotionally abused, please check out the following links:

The Hotline: The National Domestic Violence Hotline
Prevent Child Abuse America

Songs that Changed the Landscape of Human Thought and Understanding: Glenn Frey's "You Belong to the City"

Ever since the Industrial Revolution, much of the global population has left rural spaces for urban ones. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, "a whole shitload of people live in the City now." Of course, there are major differences between the City and the Country. Where the Country is full of self-reliant, weather-beaten figures who live off the fat of the land and generate home-spun wisdom like Creationism, the City is filled with "Street Smart" people who can't live without cell phones, public transportation, or Whole Foods supermarkets. These are not stereotypes, but unfalsifiable facts. Where the Country might get you eaten by bears if you're not careful, the City will literally eat you alive. If the City was a person, it would be a cannibal. The growling stomach of this metaphorical cannibal actually produces a soundtrack of city sounds: car horns, corkscrew gusts of wind winding their way through high-rise buildings, subway trains, bass-heavy music, jackhammers, and the intrusive voices of self-delusionally important people talking on their iPhones. But for the real City person, the ultimate soundtrack of the urban existence is the slow-burn saxophone solo. You City folk know EXACTLY what I'm talking about: When you're walking down a poorly lit street in a sketchy neighborhood, brooding and lost in thought, those pesky, puppy-dog sounds of the the slow-burn sax solo follow your every footstep until you step into Starbucks. It took nearly 150 years for a musical genius to put this urban reality into a brilliant pop song. We can thank Eagles veteran Glenn Frey for realizing this in his 1985 classic "You Belong to the City."

Glenn Frey, one of the tortured angels behind the 1970s supergroup the Eagles, proves his solo bona fides once again with "You Belong to the City," as truthful a song as has ever been composed. Completing the career trifecta begun by "The Heat is On" and "Smuggler's Blues," this track is his tour de force and a definitive moment in the history of song. Sure, it's not the first song to prominently feature a sexed-out saxophone lead. We must not forget another one of the 1980s' most fabulous songs, "Careless Whisper," by Wham. The lead that begins that sultry track, played by Steve Gregory, literalizes George Michael's poetry when he sings, "Guilty feet ain't got no rhythm." Truer words have not been spoken.

However, in "You Belong to the City," underrated saxophonist Bill Bergman takes the slow-burn saxophone lead into a whole other dimension of sheer awesomeness. Thanks to Frey's great skills as an arranger, the listener is initiated into this musical cityscape by Bergman's sax. The tone is sensuous yet menacing, approximating the film noir reality of city life, except now it's rendered in glorious Technicolor and stars Don Johnson. Then, brilliantly, Glenn Frey turns on the sweet sounds of the drum machine, which is perfectly timed to the speed of feet walking on city concrete, creating the perfect urban rhythm. I can't even begin to tell you how genius this is. Frey's voice, soothing as lotion, spins a seedy narrative about a man probably not unlike himself, unable to express himself in words--or not without double negatives--a wandering soul, "movin' through the crowd," an apparition, anonymous in the hustle and bustle of the city night. He lives "in a river of darkness / beneath the neon lights," while being "on the run." The only way for him to express himself is for saxophonist Bill Bergman to literally follow him around aimlessly as he broods about the city being "in [his] moves" and "in [his] blood." I think we all know exactly how he feels. After listening to this great cut, we all belong to the city, even if we literally live in vast wilds of Australia or in Wasilla, Alaska. It is exactly Glenn Frey's knack for generic melodrama and 80s music-by-numbers studio wizardry that makes "You Belong to the City" such a universal listening experience.

Here is the monumental video for this song:

Songs that Changed the Landscape of Human Thought and Understanding: Jingle Cats' "Silent Night"

There's no greater time of the year than Christmas, or, "the holiday season," as God-hating philistines refer to it. Christmas brings us many great things: ridiculously long lines in stores filled with cranky employees and impatient customers, pointless gifts from faceless relatives and co-workers, that neighbor with the gawdy Christmas decorations that brings traffic in your neighborhood to a stand-still, all those delayed flights and lost luggage, as well as the endless tears of spoiled children who got tons of gifts but didn't get that one ultra-expensive toy all their friends got. Clearly there is no better way to illustrate Jesus Christ's eternal and peaceful philosophy of free-market capitalism than through these joyous hallmarks of "the holiday season." But one thing that makes this part of the calendar year even more fantastic is Christmas music. Thankfully, it is played on a loop from Thanksgiving to New Years Day. These great tunes have been performed over and over over the years by every great artist, from a place deep within the heart known as "the holiday spirit." No artist has ever recorded a Christmas song because it would be an easy way to generate a quick buck at the end of every calendar year. No. These songs are recorded to pay tribute to the great Baby Jesus and his pagan, apocryphal saint brother, Sir Santa of Claus. There have been many great Christmas songs over the years, including "Feliz Navidad" by Jose Feliciano, "Little Drummer Boy" by David Bowie and Bing Crosby, and, of course, my favorite, "Funky, Funky Xmas" by the New Kids on the Block. There is, though, one breathtaking performance that transcends the holiday, and humanity, in fact.

In 1994, some groovy cats, LITERALLY, got together to record a version of the Christmas classic "Silent Night." The resulting sessions were pure magic. These cats, realizing this hot cut had potential, instantly dubbed themselves Jingle Cats and cut an entire album of classic Christmas carols known as Meowy Christmas. The rest is music-making history. There are several obvious reasons why people responded so posivitely to the Cats' version of "Silent Night." First off, cats are singing the song. We all know that everybody simply loves cats. They are like soft, fluffy pillows that purr and sleep, a lot. However, if you rest your head on the pillow incorrectly, it will scratch the shit out of you with its razor-sharp claws. Plus, cats cannot talk. So to hear them sing, and to sing so wonderfully, is not only surprising and damn near scandalous, but inspiring. Secondly, the gentle acoustic guitar and keyboard accompaniment perfectly complements their soothing little kitty-cat voices. This becomes entirely obvious during the second verse, on which the little tigers modulate their voices. The lyrics in this verse are completely inspirational, especially when the little furballs sing, "Meow meow meow, meow meow, meow, meow meow meow meow, meow meow." So what if their voices sound like they were generated by a state-of-the-art late-1980s synthesizer. These lines give full meaning to both the birth of the Baby Jesus as well as to the joyous "holiday season" he envisioned all those years ago when he was just gleam in his Daddy's eye. As the Jingle Cats so wonderfully remind us, "Meow meow, meow meow / meow meow meow, meow meow." Truer words have not been spoken.

Here's the CUTE video. On a scale of one to ten, it's a BONKERSxINFINITY:

Songs that Changed the Landscape of Human Thought and Understanding: The Pussycat Dolls' "Don't Cha"

According to the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, the concept of "the wish" dates all the way back to the 1992 Disney film Aladdin. Wishes can manifest themselves in many ways. In some religious cultures, they are very similar to prayers. For politicians, they are very similar to hopes and aspirations. If you happen to be goth-rock icons The Cure, Wish is damn-near your "jumping the shark" moment. The point I'm trying to make is that wishes, over most of these last twenty years, have been characterized as coming from a place of universal goodness. Look at these sample wishes that my fictional daughter wrote down six years ago: "I wish there was no more cancer." "I wish there were no more wars." "I wish my head was a big round orange ball." Precious! All of these are a testament to the courage of the human spirit, as well as a not-so-subtle piece of advertising for makers of big round orange balls. However, with The Pussycat Dolls' transcendent 2005 hit, "Don't Cha," the concept of the wish comes from an unwholesome place of jealousy and amorous competition. Wishes would never be the same again. Ever.

The lyrical premise of the song seems relatively simple on the surface: anywhere between one and all six of The Pussycat Dolls desire a male subject ("you") that now has a girlfriend. Apparently, each member of The Pussycat Dolls thinks pretty highly of themselves, as they boast of being "hot," "a freak," "raw," and, last but not least, "fun." What's interesting is that the desired male object in the lyric appears quite happy with his present girlfriend, leaving The Pussycat Dolls to wish he felt otherwise. The lines also imply that the desired male object also prefers women who are cold, cooked, dull, and vanilla -- like a refrigerated wafer. The dynamic present in the lyric recalls René Girard's concept of "the triangulation of desire" as first posited in his 1966 study Deceit, Desire, and the Novel. However, this simple geometry transforms into aeronautical calculus if we consider all six of The Pussycat Dolls, which would make this more akin to something like an OCTAGON OF DESIRE, the ultimate cage-match of jealous lust wherein one or multiple subjects of its powerful geometrical grip may have to tap out under a wide array of sloppy near-kisses, malicious hair-pulling, and sweaty submission holds. To top it all off, the track is magnificently produced by Cee-Lo and features a blistering, but thematically unrelated rap by Busta Rhymes. To accomplish the staggering degree of wish fulfillment in this song, anywhere between one and all six of The Pussycat Dolls would need to magically make their male object of desire actually wish his girlfriend WAS them instead of her, then ditch her for between one and all six of them. This would make him look quite base and shady, and render The Pussycat Dolls as bigamous home-wreckers. Because of "Don't Cha," peoples wishes have become increasingly vicious, bringing to the surface humanity's long-repressed darker impulses. In fact, my fictional daughter's Christmas wishlist includes "an iPad," "a 'water-shaped' water bed" (how messed up is that? especially since water can only take the shape of its container), and, most puzzlingly of all, "death to auto-tune." Where did this desire for violence and destruction come from? The Pussycat Dolls. "Don't Cha" represents our long-awaited fall from grace, from a simpler time, when all we had to do was ask a blue, Orientalized Robin Williams to grant us our benign wishes. Now my fictional daughter's big round orange ball head has turned itself upside down.

Songs that Changed the Landscape of Human Thought and Understanding: Khia's "My Neck, My Back (Lick It)"

Khia's "My Neck, My Back (Lick It)" is such a dynamic and challenging song that it's literally impossible to write about (at least in the United States). In fact, parts of this text have been redacted by the government, who invoked the infamous Too Soon Clause, an obscure part of the USA-PATRIOT Act of 2001, to legally censor the apparently offending passages. So I hope this will not be too difficult to read.

For decades, the Secret League of Wealthy Ass Female Feminists had conspired to make a massively popular song about having their CENSORED CENSORED. They had met severe resistance, however, from the pious yet hypocritically lecherous Super Sausage Team of Money Printing Gentleman, who thought discussing CENSORED CENSORED was in poor taste. Ironically, this was the same Team who allowed The Beatles' "Please Please Me" to be a huge hit in 1963. In that song, John Lennon sings, during the bridge, "I do all the pleasin' with you / It's so hard to reason with you / Oh yeah, why do you make me blue?" Clearly, Lennon is singing about how he CENSORED CENSORED on his female love-interest who refuses to CENSORED, leaving him with an annoyingly painful case of CENSORED CENSORED. Within days of its release, teenage girls around the world were screaming and CENSORED CENSORED for their favorite Beatle no matter where they were. The Super Sausage Team of Money Printing Gentleman was please please pleased (forgive the pun), and they decided to print more money and get the older gentlemen on the team to public slander the lovable Moptops to fulfill the dynamics of Marx and Hegel's dialectic.

Fast forward to 2002. The United States was still emotionally reeling from the terrorist attacks in New York, Virginia, and Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001 that took over 3,000 lives. A little over six months after the tragedy, the Secret League decided to stick it to the man while he was down, with his massively CENSORED CENSORED CENSORED metaphorically CENSORED in New York City. Their secret plan: release Khia's "My Neck, My Back (Lick It)" to a wounded public that needed to forget about the tragic events of that day and hear a brilliant, witty song about a woman demanding that her CENSORED and CENSORED get CENSORED.

The plan worked effectively. Khia's song, which begins rather minimally with simple percussion and speakerbox-rattlin' bass, quickly transforms itself into serious, polyrhythmic, sexual anthem Marvin Gaye would have been jealous of. Khia's insistence that her man "put your neck into it" and "to suck it off til I shake" is completely direct. At first, it appears that she is demanding that this objectified male (much to the chagrin of the Super Sausage Team of Money Printing Gentleman, who had historically only been concerned about their own pleasure) lick her neck, her back, her "pussy" (i.e. feline, or kitty cat), and her "crack" (i.e. her stash of cocaine-infused with baking soda-rocks). But that makes no sense. Cats clean themselves by licking. Cats already hate being washed by humans, tongue or no. And why would you lick a crack rock when you're supposed to smoke it (or so I've read) to get the desired two-minute high? As the song slowly builds, it becomes apparent what she is really telling this soon-to-be-duped Lothario is to CENSORED CENSORED CENSORED and CENSORED CENSORED CENSORED CENSORED until she's "makin' faces 'n stuff." This brings a whole new meaning to the phrase CENSORED CENSORED. When she tells her male love interest to "get on your knees," she proceeds to liberate all CENSORED from the tyranny of the Super Sausage Team which had insured that rap music over the previous fifteen years would be male-dominated. While two big CENSORED in the CENSORED were nothing but CENSORED in the heart of CENSORED CENSORED CENSORED, Americans of all shapes and genders of consenting age could now get licked wherever they wanted and get on their knees and lick whatever they wanted, except for that kitty cat. There's nothing more embarrassing and potentially incriminating than a face full of claw-marks!

Redacted by CENSORED CENSORED.

Songs that Changed the Landscape of Human Thought and Understanding: Mike Reno and Ann Wilson's "Almost Paradise"

Ever since the first moments when humans were able to realize that life on Earth can sometimes be a severe pain in the ass, they have tried to imagine PARADISE. For the Fourteenth Century Italian poet Dante Alighieri, "paradiso" was the ten spheres of Heaven. Similarly, John Milton's Paradise Lost (1667) concerns the fall of man from Paradise, the Biblical Garden of Eden, because of that big-time jerk and perpetual muse to heavy metal musicians everywhere: Satan. Milton writes, "To all delight of human sense exposed, / In narrow room, Nature's whole wealth, yea more, / A Heaven on Earth: For blissful Paradise / Of God the garden was, by him in the east / Of Eden planted." Sounds much better than this window-less office where I write this on the company's dime. Still, in the historical moments following the invention of the light bulb--and, henceforth, all great ideas--many musicians have tried to describe paradise for us in song. Axl Rose of Guns N' Roses, in their song "Paradise City," describes it is a place "Where the grass is green and the girls are pretty." This could be nice. But what if one is allergic to grass and doesn't particularly fancy pretty girls? Then it would be a nightmare. For Meat Loaf, on his epic cut "Paradise by the Dashboard Light," paradise is bangin' in the car when you're seventeen, preferably as a longtime baseball color-commentator provides innuendo-laden play-by-play. Because of abstinence-only education, though, this is no longer a possibility for seventeen year-olds. Since paradise is inestimable, we can only approximate it. It took two great titans of song, Mike Reno of Loverboy and Ann Wilson of Heart, to bring us to this simple but profound realization. Thanks to their song "Almost Paradise," we now have a firmer understanding of this thing poets and philosophers have been trying to describe to us for centuries.

For nearly three decades, the mysteries of Mike Reno and Ann Wilson's "Almost Paradise" have puzzled literary critics. It was long thought that paradise in the song referred to being an oppressed white teenager in a small town who overcomes a variety of obstacles in order to dance and listen to rock music with impunity. But years of scrutiny have revealed that it is about a man and a woman, presumably, who love each other something fierce and can "see forever" when they look into each others' eyes. Now that they "hold the future in their hands," they realize the love they share is not paradise, but "almost paradise." This realization, though, brings with it another, more profound one: that we can only reach paradise when we die. How stupid is that? Reno notes, "in your arms salvation's not so far away." Then, Wilson, now recognizing Reno as her magic man, chimes in, "it's getting closer, closer every day." Reno and Wilson's voices fuse into a sweaty bandana of sweetness. Even if they concede the point that paradise on Earth is unattainable, they persevere knowing their compatible and complementary love for each other is good enough, and that when they die, they can dance all they want [pending they: a) were decent enough human beings to be granted some sort of beneficent afterlife; or, b) invest in the rather expensive technology that will enable their crusty, feeble, old, decaying, dead bodies to dance forever]. Either way, by proving that our mortal selves can only arrive at a place called "Almost Paradise," what they really manage to do is create a living paradise ... FOR OUR EARS!

Here's the video for this unparalleled piece of brutally brilliant music:

Songs that Changed the Landscape of Human Thought and Understanding: Focus's "Hocus Pocus"

You are reading this right now because the Danish progressive rock group Focus made you. Don't believe me? Well, listen to their monstrous 1971 hit "Hocus Pocus" again and you'll find yourself right back here, reading this.

Popular music has long been interested in supernatural forms of magic. Influential acts like Olivia Newton-John, The Cars, Pilot, and America all have songs devoted to the topic. Similarly, Bo Diddley's "Who Do You Love" (i.e. "hoodoo" you love) and The Steve Miller Band's "Abracadabra" have, like Screamin' Jay Hawkins, tried to "Put a Spell on You" with some of their songs. But no group before or since has maximized the ratio of magic to kick-ass rock as much as Focus does on their epic cut "Hocus Pocus." And this doesn't even come close to qualifying the song's importance. It is also one of the few instrumental hits of the pop-rock era. Its existence unquestionably brought about the mainstream popularity of other instrumentals like Harold Faltermeyer's "Axel F." and Perry Botkin, Jr.'s "Nadia's Theme (The Young and the Restless)." Of more importance, though, is the undisputed fact that Focus reclaimed the art of "yodeling" from the Americans. American acts, such as Jimmy Rodgers, Hank Williams, and Sly and the Family Stone, had co-opted the yodel from Europe for their own financially self-serving purposes. Focus corrects this wrong by including yodeling on their incantatory hit*.

Focus's mesmerizing song begins with a seven-chord riff that will literally tear your pants right off your grandpappy's ass. Why he would be wearing your skinny jeans is an issue for you work to out with your therapist. The first two instrumental breaks--and several that follow--feature keyboardist Thijs van Leer's immortal yodeling, communicating a powerful spell that has led you to this very place. Making the song even more magical is that it attempts, within seven minutes, to incorporate as many aspects of traditional European-derived folk forms into its futuristic progressive rock frame as possible, including solos on accordion, mock pan flute, scat singing, whistling, and, of course, vicious guitar leads (by the song's writer, Jan Akkerman) and yodeling. Not only was this song a profoundly important hit that was internationally famous, it magically leads more people to read my writing!

*-Never mind the fact yodeling originated in the Swiss Alps, which are some more than half a day's drive from the Netherlands.

Below is an audio clip of the song. Keep reading ...

Songs that Changed the Landscape of Human Thought and Understanding: Van Halen's "Right Now"

In her 1986 treatise "The Greatest Love of All," philosopher Whitney Houston argues, "I believe the children are our future. Teach them well and let them lead the way." This child-first, future-centric ideology ruled our world for half a decade, and the results were disastrous, because otherwise intelligent people thought they heard her sing, "I believe the children are our present." As a result, every new day was a birthday for the children. National and personal debt soon ballooned. All of our streets were littered with discarded R.O.B.s, gilded rattles, and flattened Pogo Balls. Traffic was THE WORST because kids on their damned Big Wheels were clogging up all the freeways with their insufficiently slow (albeit environmentally friendly) form of transportation. Thankfully, the adults reclaimed their fault-proof logic (example: "Why can't I play with Timmy?" asks unnamed child. "Because I said so," replies fully-grown adult parent, expertly!). And the inspiration came from a most unlikely source: Van Halen's 1991 triumph "Right Now."

For a small sliver of the 1970s and all of the 1980s, no band's music was the soundtrack to every kegger you went to more than Van Halen's. They screamed PARTY. Anchored by the greatest single guitar player in the history of human beings playing guitar in Sir Eddie Van Halen, the group knocked out hit after hit, including "Running with the Devil," "Panama," "Jump," and "Poundcake." Lingering behind this facade of inartful debauchery, the casual spreading of sexually transmitted diseases, 50-yard marker-sized lines of cocaine, and warehouses of zebra-print clothing was our salvation from this Ritalin-happy generation of Whitney Houston future-kids. Apparently, Eddie Van Halen composed the music for his most important anthem during the David Lee Roth years. But it wasn't until deep into his tenure with the Cabo Wabo man himself, Sammy Hagar, that this gorgeous melody would be served by such insight into the human condition.

"Right Now" is great because it least represents Van Halen's usual musical strengths. The track is not frivolous: it is absolutely serious and heart-felt; Eddie Van Halen's tapping and whammy-bar drives are pushed far into the background, substituted by a Bruce Hornsby and the Range-style piano figure geared toward latte-drinking progressives; and Sammy Hagar isn't actually singing about his boner for a change. Instead, Hagar's lyric is a direct subversion of Whitney Houston's philosophy. "Right now is everything," he yelps, passionately, during the chorus, adding, "It's your tomorrow." By actually paying attention to the present, Hagar tells us, we can "catch that magic moment and do it right." Translation: We don't need to wait for no stinking kids to do it for us when we are old, covered with uncomfortable bed-sores, and being totally ignored by them in our smelly and understaffed retirement homes. No truer words have ever been spoken. We were so brainwashed during the reign of the Whitney Houston's enlightenment that we couldn't see the signs in front of us. For example, in the 1989 Peter Weir film Dead Poet's Society, the "children are our future" mindset was subtly subverted when John Keating, played by the venerable Robin Williams, pleads, "CARPE DIEM." But we were too busy tearing up our books to notice. Sammy Hagar's lyric is empowering and immediate, emphasizing that we "turn this thing around" and "do it right." "Why wait another day?" he asks us. Exactly. Thanks to Sammy Hagar and the rest of Van Halen, children no longer ruled, and we were able to become self-centered again, leaving our destructive and extremely expensive legacy to them to repair. Neenerneenerneener.

Songs that Changed the Landscape of Human Thought and Understanding: James Blunt's "You're Beautiful"

Within the matrices of heterosexual romance, good words are hard to come by. The burden placed upon three simple words--"I love you"--to communicate verbally the unarticulable feelings one has for their betrothed has rendered the phrase dull and meaningless. For those in the process of courtship, a well-chosen love sonnet can be a confusing symbol as well. If one were, for instance, to recite William Shakespeare's most famous example of the form, Sonnet 18 ("Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?"), the intended audient might complain of its archaic language and accuse the speaker of plagiarism and unoriginality. Similarly, if the choice was Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways," the recepient might claim that Barrett Browning was plagiarizing from Shakespeare. When old fashioned forms of courtship fail to impress, one can always resort, during the process of initiating a relationship, to the even less-impressive "pick-up line." For men who are not "cunning linguists" like James Bond, the pick-up line can be distastrous, as the deliverer often confuses "wit" with "sexist belligerence." It's just down-right embarrassing for a man to say stuff like "You're like a bass drum / I can see myself banging you hard," "Are you from Nashville? / 'Cause you're the only 'Ten-I-See,'" "Do you wanna see something swell?" or, my personal favorite, "What time is it?" Thankfully, James Blunt solved all of our problems when he released his mind-blowingly genius love song, "You're Beautiful," in 2005. Scientific research suggests that the two-word compliment "You're Beautiful" works every time.


The song begins with an inviting four-note figure played on acoustic guitar, later to be joined by a steady rhythm section and swelling sounds of strings and piano. Blunt has one of those high, thin, sexy British voices that sounds like he had just run for ten miles and smoked a cigarette at the same time before he entered the studio to cut the vocals. While the lyric is essentially a shaggy dog story of unrequited love about a man who sees a beautiful woman "on the subway" with "another man" ultimately to never see her again, nobody ever really notices it. What they do hear, however, is James Blunt's soaring, triumphant repetition of the phrase "You're beautiful!" And that's the most brilliant thing about the song. It is a tragic tale of heartbreak, a classic example of a missed opportunity, masquerading as a self-help book for the verbally-challenged lover. According to the greatest creative thinkers and philosophers in the history of mankind, all women (and many men) want to be told "You're beautiful" AS OFTEN AS POSSIBLE ... in a high, thin sexy British voice coming from a speaker who has just been running for ten miles while smoking a cigarette at the same time. Even though some in the Thespian community, like Christina Hendricks, think it's passe, suggesting we tell our betrothed "You are radiant," James Blunt was clearly a pioneer of Amorous Studies for singing one of the greatest songs of this young millenia, refreshing our language with a simple, effective, sexy, and classy compliment that will NEVER become stale, no matter how many times it is repeated in a span of 200 seconds.

Songs that Changed the Landscape of Human Thought and Understanding: Air Supply's "Making Love out of Nothing at All"

During the height of the Cold War, the Summer of 1983, when the threat of actual nothingness for animal- and man-kind was only one hydrogen bomb-blast away from possibly happening, Air Supply sang about the transformative powers of nothingness on their brilliant hit single "Making Love out of Nothing at All." Written by Jim Steinman, the mastermind behind Meat Loaf's monumental loaf of meatiness, Bat out of Hell, the song not only made Americans aware of Australians for the first time since the year before, when Men at Work popularized Vegemite, but delivered a profound message. In the song, Air Supply resuscitates existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre's concept of nothingness from the daaaaaaaarkly comic pit of despair he had characterized it as into a practical, empowering strategy for embracing life and possibly getting some ass in the process.

At the time, intellectuals criticized Air Supply's hit for "sounding exactly like Steinman's previous hit single, Bonnie Tyler's 'Total Eclipse of the Heart.'" Of course, these coffee-drinking philistines, smoking their clove cigarettes and listening to their Steely Dan, missed the message aimed directly at their demographic. Air Supply's tough-as-nails acoustic guitar and piano approach set the standard for the vanguard of "soft rock" a few years earlier with "Lost in Love." Russell Hitchcock and Graham Russell, the geniuses behind Air Supply, in fact deliver "Making Love out of Nothing at All" as a sermon. Their smooth harmonies blend exquisitely with a twelve-note piano motif to convince the listener that they can make something out of nothing, literally.

In Sartre's Being and Nothingness [L'Être et le néant] (1943), the philosopher correctly notes the predominant view that, historically, nothingness had been viewed on a continuum with being, that nothingness can only occur once being reaches its end. Sartre concludes that nothingness is that "which is not." Therefore, when Hitchcock and Russell run through a litany of various knowledges in their song ("And I know just where to touch you / and I know just what to prove," for example), concluding it with the admission of "making love out of nothing as all," the duo contradict the tendency to perceive "that which is not" (i.e. death) as a negative and, instead, embrace "nothing" as, at the very least, an opportunity to have sex. Since the purpose of sex, ultimately, is to create life, Air Supply greet nothingness as a form of productivity. So, not only do Air Supply know "all the rules" and "how to break them," they also know how to embrace the nothingness of our miserable existences like a valuable opportunity ... to affirm the glory of existence ... and to possibly have some coitus while they're at it. Let's face it: there hasn't been a piece of Existentialist propaganda this effective since the black turtleneck sweater.

Here's the glorious video:

Songs that Changed the Landscape of Human Thought and Understanding: Paris Hilton's "Stars Are Blind"

When people say something hyperbolic like "That song saved my life," they mean that that particular song--whatever it may be--inspired them to change the direction of their life. Maybe it gave them the idea to quit doing drugs, to switch occupations, to be a better spouse, or to join the United States Peace Corps. NOBODY who says something like this, though, has ever had their life literally saved by a song. I know that I generally refrain from disclosing many details from my personal life when I write about the songs that changed the landscape of human thought and understanding. But perhaps you, the ever-so-gracious reader, would be willing to allow this one indulgence? I only ask because a song HAS saved my life. I was only a few seconds from dying when divine intervention intervened, giving me another chance at living this life. For I was resurrected like Lazarus by the dulcet tones of Paris Hilton's 2006 smash hit "Stars Are Blind."

The Spring of 2006 was a bad time for your humble narrator. I was fired from a prestigious, well-paying job, on a late Friday afternoon, because I was "not mean enough." Losing the job didn't hurt my feelings so much as the reason why I got canned. To make matters worse, I received a call from my ex-boss the following Wednesday. She told me that they would have re-hired me if I would have protested my firing and "showed a little chutzpah." Apparently, the cliche "Nice guys finish last" is actually true. To make matters worse, my mother saw a picture of me that I had recently posted on MySpace and said that I "looked way too skinny." My mother, usually a very nice woman, had never, and I sincerely mean this, never insulted me once in my entire life. And she knew I was insecure about being too thin. As a result, I gave up my life-long vegetarianism and began eating MickDonald's and Olive Oyyul's Chicken twice a day (that's right, both of them). I started gaining weight. My mother never even mentioned the weight thing again. Well, around this time, my mother was becoming as moody and erratic as I was. To make matters worse, out of nowhere, my girlfriend at the time left me. She left a note on the front door that read, "I'm leaving." That was it. All her stuff was gone, and, for some reason, she took all of my fishing gear (and nothing else of mine?!). Two weeks pass, and I've eaten nothing but fast food and, curiously enough, haven't heard a word from my mother, who used to call me every day. Then, out of nowhere, she calls, telling me she's on vacation at Niagara Falls. She tells me she has a surprise. She puts my ex-girlfriend on the phone who proceeds to tell me that she's in love with my mother and that they plan on moving to Massachusetts to get married. My pride and masculinity crushed, not to mention being totally weirded out by the Freudian smorgasbord of jacked up family issues at work with this whole scenario, I went to a Patrick Swayze Roadhouse near me and vowed to eat one of their 64 ounce steaks in a hour. Within twelve minutes, I was clearly full and had more than 3/4 of the steak to eat. I decided to jam one rather healthy hunk of the New York Strip down my gullet. I quickly realized this was a bad idea right as I started to choke. I tried to signal to the wait staff that I was choking, but they were all doing a line-dance to Big and Rich's "Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy)." As I almost slipped away, the song stopped and the PA system in the restaurant went right to the chorus of Paris Hilton's "Stars Are Blind," when she sings, "Even though the gods are crazy / Even though the stars are blind / If you show me real love baby / I'll show you mine," and, I kid you not, the song wrapped its arms around my diaphragm and thrust its fists, immediately ejecting the piece of grisly meat from my windpipe. I was saved, thanks to Paris Hilton and her amazing song. She is right on the money when she sings, "It could get physical," and, later, "This moment is critical." Without the physical application of the Heimlich Maneuver at that "critical" moment, I would probably be dead.

Because of that near-death experience, I now see that song in a totally different light. What she's saying is that we are filled with dualities, competing drives, and though we usually choose one over the other, these choices are never so easy, like when she sings, "I can make you nice and naughty / be the devil and angel too / got a heart and soul and body / let's see what this love can do." Before, I just thought the song's lyrics were told from the perspective of a person who was only using poorly-phrased rhetorical pleas to beg for sex. But now, I realize it is so much more than that, its tropical musical backdrop merely providing a mental vacation from the unconscious hard work of our conflicted minds. Even if, as the dead Lester Bangs points out, "There has never been a song that has sounded so much like Blondie's 'The Tide is High' since Blondie's 'The Tide is High,'" that doesn't dispel the true fact that "Stars are Blind" saved my life. Maybe it will one day save yours.

Songs that Changed the Landscape of Human Thought and Understanding: Meat Loaf's "I Would Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)"

Love makes the world go 'round, literally. Every time a person utters the word, draws a heart, or puts "XOXOXO" at the end of a text message, it powers the rotation of our planet. It's science. It's true. It's been that way forever! Because of this, people have done some strange things for love. Wars have been fought for "love of country." People will occasionally murder somebody in "a fit of passion." But, thanks to Meat Loaf and his Wagnerian #1 hit "I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)," we now know that there exists THE POSSIBILITY of things that people would not ever be willing to do for love. Here is just a brief list of some of the things Meat Loaf wouldn't do if we totally run on the assumption that his love-interest has some rather EXORBITANT demands:

--He wouldn't stick his left leg in a wood-chipper.
--He wouldn't get a large tattoo of a swastika on his forehead and walk around Jerusalem.
--He wouldn't eat human flesh marinated in Box-of-Wine puke.
--He wouldn't call his significant other 'Mommy Dearest' during sex.
--He wouldn't get a job as a telemarketer.

For nearly two decades now, people have wondered what Meat Loaf WOULDN'T do for love as they ponder the miracle of this song. During the chorus, when Meat Loaf initially admits, "I would do anything for love," we as listeners assume this is unconditional. However, mindblowingly, he immediately disqualifies the claim, adding, "But I won't do that." This is all just a part of the web that makes "I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)" so genius. The listener is forever left to speculate what "that" really is. Perhaps the most radical achievement of the track, though, is that it undid years of damage caused by the powerful jingle "What would you do for a Klondike Bar?" I'm pretty sure that if somebody did a mash-up of the two songs, a black hole would immediately form.

Marvin Lee Aday, nee Meat Loaf, rose to superstardom in 1977 with the release of his album Bat out of Hell. With its campy lyrics, over-the-top production, and Meat Loaf's dramatic vocals, it went on to sell over 14 million copies in the U.S. Success, though, eluded the Loaf in the years following Bat out of Hell. And by the early 1990s, he was more known, to the kids at least, for his part in The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) than for "Paradise by the Dashboard Light." After patching things up with Bat out of Hell composer Jim Steinman, the two got back together at an unlikely time in music history. The year was 1993. Grunge had dethroned the likes of Michael Jackson and M.C. Hammer from the top of the charts. Bill Clinton was pissing off Republicans. The Clapper was in bedrooms all across the United States. What the world needed was a song that fused that old Meat Loafiness with one of the eight-minute songs from Guns N' Roses' Use Your Illusion II that made us, as human beings, rethink the power of love and its limitations.

The seven-minute song (the album version is twelve minutes long!) is passionately sung by the Loaf as he easily convinces the listener just how HARD he loves. I mean, shucks, he is willing to "run right into hell and back" for it. (Of course, this only seems extreme if one believes there is a hell. Literally running into "an abstract concept" and back suggests he is barely willing to do the minimum amount possible for love.) After making his case, he reaches the conclusion that there are some instances where indulging in outrageous actions for love are just not warranted. He just doesn't provide any specifics, though. The moral of the song is that people are prone to making bad decisions when they are in love (like the inability to recognize they have fallen in love with an utterly horrible person). Clearly, Meat Loaf's love-interest is using him because of his apparent gullibility, but he has been, up until now, unable to realize this dynamic. His love-interest (voiced by the otherwise obscure singer Mrs. Loud) gives Meat Loaf some rather esoteric exercises to prove his love to her near the end of the song, including "build[ing] an emerald city with these grains of sand," "colorizing" her "black and white" life, "tak[ing her] to places [she's] never known," and, weirdest of all, "hos[ing her] down with holy water." Meat Loaf is perfectly willing to do these things, which suggest that the guy is a total freak! However, after her un-named, specifically dubious demand, he now realizes how far he has gone and how much farther it will take for him to get back. I don't know what this means, but neither does anybody else.

The point is this: With "I'd Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That)," Meat Loaf created the most ambitiously ambiguous song in the history of animal-, plant- and man-kind. I still maintain, to this day, she has asked him to punt a football made of broken glass barefooted to prove his love to her. It's totally in the lyrics ... somewhere ... I guess. What do you think?