I’m currently reading Matthew Perry’s memoir, and it’s giving me a bit of the sad feels. I don’t really understand addictive behavior, but I can certainly empathize with having a hole in your heart, or feeling less-than for some reason, and searching and searching for something to make you whole, and finding refuge in substances. I grew up thinking that drug and alcohol addicts (particularly wealthy ones) were people to be pitied, weak somehow. The more I understand mental illness, though, the more I understand everything from the stigma around therapy to male stoicism to the barriers to entry for help, the more I understand addiction is a disease. And it’s not as simple as a lack of willpower or…I don’t know, whatever other excuses people use to explain away addiction. The world is rough. We’re not given a lot of tools to deal. So we deal with the world the best way we know how.
I’m sad he’s gone. He seemed like a nice enough guy. I wasn’t much of a Friends fan. I think I’ve watched ten episodes of it in my entire life. When it initially became popular, I was almost always working on Thursday evenings. In its heyday, I didn’t even own a TV (not trying to be precious, I literally could not afford one). And at the end of its run, I just didn’t have any interest in watching a show about well-to-do White folks only slightly older than me in the same city where I was busting my ass to make $30K (which was my salary in 2004, give or take a couple grand).
The weirdest thing? The evening Matthew Perry died, I was on a date. The guy’s name? Chandler. Now that’s creepy. I am 100% not bullshitting you.
OK, time to talk about music.
“All Around the World” by Lisa Stansfield (Arista, 1990)
Lisa Stansfield was hot shit for a minute. She popped onto the scene during a time when British soul singers were all the rage—her contemporaries Soul II Soul ruled R&B during 1989. “All Around the World” was the song that introduced Lisa to a wider American audience, and it’s a light, breezy, semi-danceable tune with an instantly memorable chorus. It was massive in New York City. Every car stereo, every radio station, every shopping mall seemed to have Lisa’s voice coming out of it. This song got vague Barry White comparisons, and I see some vague comparisons (the string arrangement is vaguely Gene Page-ish, Lisa speak/whispers the intro). I think she even did a version of “All Around” with Barry himself. Their singing voices project different emotions, though. While Barry was often stuck in “seduce” mode, Lisa’s singing was (and is) more torch-y, in the vein of her fellow Brit soul sisters Dusty Springfield and Annie Lennox.
I wonder if she ever found her baby.
Also, to be an annoying nerd for a minute, in the chorus Lisa sings about wondering why he’s gone away. But in the first verse, she literally explains why he went away. Continuity, people!
“All Cried Out” by Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam with Full Force (Columbia, 1985)
Univision (UHF channel 47 in New York City) was the only all-Spanish television station available to those of us who didn’t have cable. Spanish was one of the languages spoken at home (especially when relatives from the Dominican Republic, most of whom barely knew English, were visiting), and even though I barely understood a word of what was being said, the dialogue of the Spanish soap operas (or telenovelas) didn’t need much translating. The over-the-top dramatic acting told me all I needed to know.
The George family, who comprised the majority of hip-hop/R&B band Full Force, grew up mere blocks from my grandparents in East Flatbush, Brooklyn. I’m willing to bet that they watched their share of telenovelas (or got hip to them via their Latinx neighbors or girlfriends). “All Cried Out” is a fucking telenovela set to music.
It’s a mournful, dramatic love story in two parts, set to music and timed at four minutes. The lyrics are beyond corny, but not formulaic. Lisa represents teenage heartbreak (“set this place on fire ‘cause I’m tired of your lies” is an instantly memorable line). Full Force’s Paul Anthony is the cad who realizes the error of his ways, there is a very ‘80s guitar solo, and…it’s so messed up that contemporary pop music has moved so far away from this kind of emotional storytelling, as cloying as it may feel to some.
I went to 4th, 5th, 6th and about a month of 7th grade in suburban Detroit. We had not one, but two music classes in middle school. In one, we learned instruments (I played violin, badly.) In the other, we sat at our desks while a teacher handed out sheet music and we performed the age-appropriate hits of the day (much easier to find in 1986 than they are now). “All Cried Out” was one of the songs we learned, and I’m fairly certain the fact that it’s one of the very first songs I sang in public (thankfully, with at least 10 other pre-teen boys accompanying me) adds to my appreciation of it.
“All Fired Up” by Pat Benatar (Chrysalis, 1988)
I had my finger on and off the “4 star” button for a minute when I came to “All Fired Up”. Ultimately, I went ahead and rated it with a 5. Several reasons behind that: one, it popped up on shuffle as I was coming home from work earlier this evening and sometimes, one listen at the right time is all it takes to get you off the fence. Also, it’s my favorite Pat Benatar song that’s not canon (at least two other songs of hers will appear on this list and they’re the two you’d absolutely expect). Finally, Pat (who is an opera-trained vocalist) fucking shreds this song. Musically, “All Fired Up” leans into hair-metal territory. Vocally, Benatar leans into the huskier side of her voice and puts more muscle into her performance than Vince Neil or Bret Michaels ever could. This version of the list is heavy on the Brooklyn (Pat is a native)! I love it!
“All I Do” by Stevie Wonder (Tamla/Motown, 1980)
After ruling the 1970s with a streak of four classic albums (although some would increase that to five or six), Stevie Wonder closed out the decade with a somewhat obtuse soundtrack to a movie about plants. There are some gems on Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants, but most of the public didn’t take the ride with Stevie. The album was a relative flop, and Wonder, who was all of 30 years old, recalibrated a little bit. The resulting album, 1980’s Hotter Than July was tighter and more commercially-oriented. It restored his commercial glory somewhat. Personally? I think the album veers wildly between genius and…less than genius. “All I Do” is a gently pulsing tune, a stepper’s jam that slides just left of disco. The 4/4 is there, but there’s a subtle insistence in the beat as opposed to a flat out call to the floor. Stevie actually wrote “All I Do” nearly a decade and a half before including it on July. Motown initially cut it on Tammi Terrell, and that version is slower and sounds a bit more of its time. It’s kinda Supremes-ish. Wonder may not have recorded it first, but his version is the definitive one. “All I Do” has gone on to a long life as a beloved album track, well-known despite not being a commercial single. This may be at least partially due to a murderer’s row of background vocalists on this song. They include Eddie LeVert and Walter Williams of The O’Jays, Betty Wright (of “Clean Up Woman” fame), and a young man who was a labelmate of Stevie’s, but by this point had moved on to greener pastures and at the time of Hotter Than July’s release was the biggest-selling Black artist in the country: Michael Jackson.
“All I Do is Think of You” by The Jackson 5 (Motown, 1975)
Oh hey there, Michael! Been so long since the last time I wrote anything about ya!
“All I Do is Think of You” has the distinction of being the final single released by the Jackson Five while they were still signed to Motown. It’s worth noting that every song the quintet released while signed to the legendary Detroit label hit the R&B top 10 (including this one). That’s six consecutive years of smashes.
Mike was 17 or so when “All I Do” was on the charts, and the song strikes the perfect balance between adolescent butterflies (the song begins with MJ singing about how he can’t wait to get to school every day so he and the object of his affection can cross paths) and adult love. I’m sure that this 45 was a staple during the “dim the lights and dance to slow jams” sections of house parties in chocolate cities across the US, especially if the partiers were in their late teens. The song’s had legs—R&B quintet Troop took it all the way to #1 on the R&B charts in the summer of 1990 (in between my freshman and sophomore years of high school), and boy band B5 had a minor hit in the 21st century with the same song, under the aegis of an in-the-process-of-unraveling hip-hop executive (and occasional “artist”) whose name I will try not to use.
I’ll also add that maybe we give Jermaine the short end of the stick when it comes to the J5. Many of the group’s best songs (especially the slow ones) feature some sort of interplay between the two brothers, with “All I Do is Think of You” a prime example. I would posit this Soul Train appearance as an example of this interplay, and although Jermaine’s vocals are clearly on the song, he ain’t there singing it. By the time this segment was recorded, the brothers had already severed their contractual ties with Motown, and Jermaine (married to Motown head honcho Berry Gordy’s daughter) left the group and stayed behind. Jermaine’s vocals are mimed by brother Marlon in this clip.
Running tally-type shit because I like stats:
Total songs: 32
4 songs from the 1960s
9 songs from the 1970s
14 songs from the 1980s
2 songs from the 1990s
3 songs from the 2010s
10 songs by male solo artists, 12 songs by duos/groups/bands, 7 songs by female solo artists, 2 collaborative performance by two (or more) solo artists, 1 collaborative performance between two groups (although what did Cult Jam actually do?)
Michael Jackson appears on five songs on this list so far (one as a solo artist, three as a member of the Jackson Five, one as a background vocalist.) Relax, I think he’ll be missing from the next few installments. Maybe that’ll give someone a chance to catch up.
The duo of Marvin & Tammi are the only other act to appear more than once.
Next up, a ‘90s alt-rock classic, the Queen of Motherfucking Christmas, and we get a repeat artist that isn’t Michael Jackson!