A Friday night in an Indian restaurant somewhere in Belgium, and the conversation is getting heated, more so than even the Madras.
“It’s rubbish.”
“Yes, of course it is, but, but, but but there are some tunes that are not bad, pretty good, even, aren’t there?”
“It’s rubbish. It’s all rubbish. Rubbish.”
I just want to reassure everyone: Viv is not opinionated (she’s the italics in this exchange). She’s right. Well, on the whole, she’s right. The trouble is that, because her opinion sounds opinionated, she has effectively closed this correspondence, in which the core matter under discussion is pop music.
If I could summon the fortitude to endure her repeat of the word rubbish and still feel about this song as I now do, then that would say something about either familiarity breeding contempt or what doesn’t kill us making us stronger. Perhaps she might even say, “That’s not bad.”
The song this Sunday is performed by the writers themselves, under the improbable title Boy Meets Girl. Indeed, boy did meet girl, and they married after this song was issued, divorced in the new millennium, but retain their professional relationship.
The tune was rejected by some pretty big names: Whitney Houston, Belinda Carlisle and Deniece Williams all shunned it for one reason or another. It was then that George Merrill and Shannon Rubicam decided to cut the single themselves as part of their album Reel Life.
Quiz shows like Name That Tune, in which contestants vie to identify a certain piece of music from a cryptic clue, and challenge each other to name it in fewer and fewer notes, revel in this kind of tune. I could confidently say, “Name that tune in one.”
The lyric itself tells a fairly banal story, akin to the Perry Como classic It’s Impossible or Frank Sinatra’s Nancy With The Laughing Face. However, while, with the crooners, the hyperbole has a field day, this one is actually rooted in reality. It was inspired by a falling star that the composers observed whilst attending a Whitney Houston concert at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles, California (they wrote the hits How Will I Know and I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me) from her first album).
Image: it’s the fact that the Los Angeles Greek Theater, like all Greek theatres in their hayday, has no roof that facilitates the audience’s astronomical observation of celestial wonders when the concert gets a bit boring.
Here’s my unprofessional view: it starts distinctively, with an air of anticipation, which develops with musical lines that sweep you into a varied, constructed, foot-tapping melody, with a real sub-format in the verses and an ebullient I’m in love feeling to the chorus (ably aided by the saxophone and the soaring backing vocals). The harmonies build tension, and release tension. Unlike at Eurovision (where it’s merely a device to squeeze another thirty seconds out of the melody), the key change sounds natural, and it brings new freshness after the bridge featuring saxophonist Andy Snitzer (it was law in the 1980s: all hit records had to have a saxophone solo).
Anyhow, if, unlike me, Los Angeles, California, is where you happen to be right now, this will not be a very long excursion for you. Nevertheless, I hope it’ll be a happy one.
George, Shannon and their daughter Hilary feature in the video (pre-echoes of Demi Moore and Woody Harrelson …?) Some day, some clever Dick will come up with the phrase 1980s brown, and everyone will immediately know what colour is meant. (I think I just did.)
Now, there’s a B side this week, an old favourite of mine from the 60s: The Seekers singing When The Stars Begin To Fall (just for the eventuality that they, in fact, do).
Waiting For A Star To Fall
Written by George Merrill and Shannon Rubicam.
Performed by Boy Meets Girl.
From their 1988 album Reel Life.
