Who says chores have to be a punishment?
I had a Swiss friend, a dancer, who told me once that his solution for vaccuuming - which he hated - was to run around the house with the vaccuum cleaner, naked except for a pair of high heel shoes, playing disco music (yes, I had an image of that scene in Working Girl where Melanie Griffith does much the same thing). Made sense to me.
Fully dressed, snas high heels, I was doing the dishes the other evening, and realized the silence was killing me. So I got out the iPod and put on my favorite mix of songs. I got through about 6 songs in the Bs. And then I thought... you should add this to the singalong.
- Janet Jackson, Because of Love. It's amazing to realize how much material Jackson managed to produce with Jam and Lewis at the height of her career (and let's be honest... that moment has passed). Because of Love is really something of a throwaway single on janet, but it shows how she managed to master the kind of strength Diana Ross has as a vocalist - the voice may be thin and best in high, breathy range... but if you showcase it right. Exuberant and lively, Because of Love exudes a cheerful, sexy playfulness. Hard to resist. I don't even try.
- Pet Shop Boys, Bet She's Not Your Girlfriend. True fans of PSB know that there's more to the story than hits like West End Girls; the Boys were big proponents of sharing their extra output as B-sides, hidden singles and the like. And so there's this delicious secret for true fans of knowing about stuff like Miserabilism and I Get Excited that others have no idea about. Bet She's Not Your Girlfriend is from the nineties, and is probably aimed at George Michael, among other British pop stars who were trying to keep their gay lives out of the tabloids. The real power of the song is that it's a damn fine dance single, and was a pretty big underground dance hit.
- Kylie Minogue, Better The Devil You Know. I mentioned this before, but there is a reason it's in my Top 25. It never fails me. Never.
- Big Fun, Blame It On The Boogie. Another hit from the Stock Aitken Waterman era, a remake of the Jacksons single from the seventies. Big Fun was a high singing trio of boys from London, modestly successful here, mostly on gay dance floors. The original had a certain sense of menace (see below), while this version is pretty darn sunny and cheerful (and smooths out much of the original's adventurousness), still "that dirty rhythm moves me" is hard to dispute.
- Michael Jackson, Blood on the Dance Floor (TM's Switchblade Edit). My friend will harass me for this one, but for me, this is one of Jackson's better later singles, especially this expansive rethinking/remix by Tony Moran, which uses Moran's usual tricks (a strumming acoustic guitar, beefed up background singers, and a better propulsive rhythm track) to improve the song's bitter elements. Moran transforms Jackson's moody paranoia into a striking, angry house jam... which, like the remix of Scream, is how I'd prefer to remember him.
- Jesse McCartney featuring T-Pain, Body Language. McCartney has managed to transcend his boy-ish band origins (he started out pretty similar to Aaron Carter), mostly by embracing a new form blue eyed soul, probably best described as blue-eyed hip-hop. Like Usher or Jay Shawn, McCartney adds street cred to his vocals by throwing in hot rap collaborators (Ludacris on How Do You Sleep, T-Pain here), and he's gifted with one of the best tenors going in pop music right now. Add in inventive lyrics ("Parlez-vous Francais? Konichiwa, come and move it my way") and a slow percolating rhythm track and it's pretty damned hard to resist.
you know, recently discovered DNA evidence has completely exonerated the Boogie
Posted by: jinb | December 20, 2009 at 02:05 PM