I am listening to the top 1000 singles of the 1970s (as determined by Billboard) on shuffle play on my mp3 player, and gradually weeding out the songs I don't want to hear anymore.
Kenny Rogers, She Believes In Me
"I stay out late at night and play my songs / and sometimes other nights can be so long." Poetry. Boy, this is a gloopy song. There's nothing about the melody or arrangement worth mentioning, and the lyrics rival "Beth" for self-involved musician paying lip service to the woman who loves him: "I told her someday if she was my girl I could change the world with my little songs. I was wrong. But she has faith in me, and so I go on trying faithfully; and who knows, maybe on some special night, if my song is right, I will find a way, find a way." Her faith in him, though, is shaky: "While she lays crying, I fumble with a melody or two." She certainly has reason to be jealous: "I stumble to the kitchen for a bite, then I see my old guitar in the night, just waiting for me like a secret friend, and there's no end." It's unclear what there's no end of. Molasses, maybe. She comes back around, though: "She says to wake her up when I am through. God our love is true." Well, hers anyway. Strings: Yes. Portentous drum fills: Yes. Written by a fellow named Steve Gibb, though not the heavy-metal playing son of Barry.
Peaches & Herb, Shake Your Groove Thing
Reasonably funky. I don't think I can spin you like a top while shaking my groove thing, though. The verse is in two parts, and there's an odd little key-change (I think) bridge that descends in steps ("there's nothing more that I like to do"), followed by a horn break and the second part of the verse near the end. It's more musically interesting than a lot of disco, but the only part I like a lot is the bridge.
Five women have played Peaches opposite Herb Fame; this was the third Peaches, Linda Greene. "Shake Your Groove Thing" was written by Freddie Perren and Dino Fekaris. Perren was part of the Corporation, the songwriting team that wrote hits for the Jackson 5. Perren is all over the hits of the late seventies, co-writing "I Will Survive", "If I Can't Have You", "Boogie Fever", "More Than a Woman", "Reunited", "Love Machine", and many other hits.
Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes, Wake Up Everybody (Part 1)
A McFadden & Whitehead song. Not bad, kinda groovy. Cool harp-like keyboard glissandos at he beginning. Nice rhythm section. One of those earnest songs that meander wordily because it needs to fill out lines ("the world has changed so very much from what it used to be"), and reaches for rhymes that bring the sentiment down with a thud ("the only thing we have to do is put it in our minds / surely things will work out, they do it every time"), and awkward rhymes on unstressed syllables ("there is so much hatred, war and pover-tee"). And then there's the exhortation to the doctors: "Make the old people well. They're the ones who suffer and who catch all the hell. They don't have so very long before their judgment day. Won't you make them happy before they pass away?" Under the morbidity, I think the idea here is that if we can't cure old people of being old, maybe we should give them happy drugs. Anyway, one good lyric in a song whose heart is in the right place: "The world won't get no better if we just let it be." (So, uh, forget what I said about things just working out every time if we think good thoughts.)
Tom T. Hall, I Love
Let's get something straight right away: Tom T. Hall is one of the great American songwriters. "Turn It On, Turn It On, Turn It On", "I Hope It Rains at My Funeral", "I Washed My Face in the Morning Dew", "Salute to a Switchblade", "I Flew Over Our House Last Night", "Hang Them All", not to mention "Harper Valley PTA": that's just a beginning. Tom T. Hall is a treasure. That said, "I Love" is a serious contender for worst song by a great songwriter. It has the depth of a Hallmark card. It cries out for parody ("I, love, mangled baby ducks, rubber hockey pucks, tennis shoes that fit, and grit"). It is thankfully short -- two minutes six seconds, all verse and no chorus, unless "and I love you too" qualifies as a chorus -- and I doubt it took him much longer to write. It is pure sentiment, ungrounded in story or character. Strings: Yes. Key change: Yes. Profound: You be the judge.
New York City, I'm Doin' Fine Now
You could make a reggae song out of this pretty easily with that guitar just hitting the three beat every measure. There's strings and horns all over the place, not just coloring the song but carrying the melody. The arrangement has a lot of attention to detail but nothing arresting; the lyrics are neither good nor bad. It's hard to hear what made this a hit, especially by an unknown band. A Thom Bell production, which certainly helps. Their road band included Rodgers & Edwards pre-Chic.
Tony Orlando, Tie a Yellow Ribbon
Velma and I just last night watched Michael O'Donohue's Saturday Night Live "impression" of Tony Orlando and Dawn with fifteen-inch needles plunged through their eyes. Anyway. It is weird how this song -- the number one song of 1973 -- loaned its metaphor to people welcoming the Iran hostages home, inasmuch as the song is about a guy coming home from prison. If I were a hostage, or a soldier in Iraq, I don't think I'd appreciate the equivalence. It's one of those cheesy songs that it's hard to hear with fresh ears. My enjoyment of the bouncy melody is undercut by the smarminess of Orlando's delivery -- I swear I can hear the glittering suit -- and the uneasy marriage of the chipperness of the melody (and the oompah bassline) with the anxious lyrics. (By the way, could he not receive letters in jail? Was he in solitary for three years?) I like the way the verse modulates (if I am using the word correctly) into the chorus, and the harmonica. I'm a sucker for harmonica. Dawn barely make it into the song, and I don't think it would have been any less popular without them.
Pete Hamill, who'd written a piece called "Going Home" about an ex-convict looking for a yellow handkerchief tied to an oak, sued for infringement even though he admitted he'd heard the story in oral tradition. He lost.
Rhythm Heritage, Theme from S.W.A.T.
Curtis Mayfield lite. Man, I loved this when I was a kid. It's still pretty great as tv themes go: it's got two main riffs, each of which is memorable, and the connecting passages between the riffs are nicely executed, too. It does have a dull (but brief) bridge that briefly sounds like it's going to break into "Brickhouse" and instead just sways in place for about fifteen seconds, apparently as an excuse to work in silly siren and car skidding noises. Both of the main riffs are so simple that they wear out easily, and after a few plays I'm ready to let this one go. Written by Barry de Vorzon, who I had only previously known as the cowriter of "The Young and the Restless" (aka "Nadia's Theme"), but was also the lead singer for the Tamerlanes on their 1963 hit "I Wonder What She's Doing Tonight."