One person’s view: “If there is any saving grace to this song, it’s Olivia Newton-John, who is the only one who sounds like she can sing. She’s not great, but she’s at least passable, which is more than can be said of anyone else.” – Valeyard’s Music Corner
The public’s view: 2.94 / 5.00
This project has forced me to reassess many beliefs that I once firmly accepted. For example, I had always assumed that everyone of all demographics loved Grease – the top-grossing film of 1978 – and most of the songs from it. Today I’m hearing for the first time that Grease is dominated by bad acting, terrible singing, flimsy character development, and a plot that requires our suspension of disbelief at every turn. Its script is also now deemed “troubling” like so many artistic works of its unenlightened era, and the same is true of the Grease soundtrack single “Summer Nights”. So I guess we have to make room for another “bad” top ten hit. Wella, wella, wella, hmmph.
Part of Grease’s appeal is the plentiful sex banter that amuses adults while going straight over children’s heads, enabling the whole family to enjoy the movie on different levels. I can remember a girl bringing the soundtrack album to school when I was 8 or 9 years old, along with a lyric sheet that had been censored to delete a few risqué lines. She asked our class to listen to “Greased Lightnin’” and help her figure out the missing words. (I don’t know what our teacher was doing during all of this, but I presume that she was too hungover to object.) We were stumped on one of the lyrics in the chorus. John Travolta was saying “the chicks’ll cream”, but none of us could understand why this phrase would be considered objectionable. We incorrectly concluded that the line must be “the shit’s a dream”. We also correctly concluded that whoever had censored the lyric sheet was a “dickweed”.
“Greased Lightnin’” demonstrates how Grease weaves sex into an otherwise G-rated storyline. It is superficially a song about fixing up an old car and winning a race with it, but it’s clear that Travolta’s character Danny doesn’t give half a poo about the thrill of racing. He is only using the racecar to attract chicks who put out on the first date. If he discovers that girls prefer guys who drive practical and efficient vehicles, he’ll happily push Greased Lightnin’ off a cliff and buy a Nash Rambler. “Summer Nights” offers a similar blend of innocence and lust, but the concept is not as strong. The song is built around a background chorus of “teens”, all of whom evidently did diddly-squat with their summer break. They must live vicariously through the tale of Danny’s brief fling with Olivia Newton-John’s character Sandy, which isn’t exactly a Shakespearean love story for the ages.
The male background singers in “Summer Nights” are interested solely in how much backseat action that Danny got. The female singers are the complete opposite, and they don’t ask Sandy about sex at all. They want to hear only about her cute little crush on a nice guy who probably bought ice cream for her and protected her from bees. In the real world, however, ladies have at least as much of a depraved obsession with sex as we gents do. This is evident from the types of TV programs that they watch. Women gravitate to soap operas full of sex, “reality” shows full of sex, true murder stories involving sexual jealousy, and game shows in which the host (usually Steve Harvey) is perpetually exasperated by contestants’ lewd answers. Meanwhile, cable networks can hypnotize male viewers for days without relying on sex. Men watch endless poker tournaments, old westerns, documentaries about Hitler, and panel discussions in which Stephen A. Smith debates two other people about which current junior high players will be selected in the 2032 NBA draft. So, we see that “Summer Nights” is not just based on a gender stereotype. It is based on a wildly inaccurate gender stereotype.
In fact, Grease is full of such shockingly outdated biases and behaviors. The T-Birds wantonly spew carbon into the atmosphere during their drag races. Principal McGee never apologizes for Rydell High’s location on stolen Native American land. The only example of diversity in the student body is the Australian immigrant Sandy, but even she flaunts her white privilege at every opportunity. And in “Summer Nights”, some creepy dude asks Danny, “Did she put up a fight?” This is one of the few interjections by the background chorus that can be clearly discerned amid the obnoxious accents and overpowering music, and it’s also the most indefensible.
Clearly, the characters in Grease are all sociopaths who should not be emulated in any way. And “Summer Nights” is a missed opportunity to explore truthful gender stereotypes, like why men can’t wrap presents and women can’t read road maps. There are worse crimes than making a politically incorrect pop record, however, and the song’s catchiness almost outweighs its multiple annoying attributes. So please don’t throw moldy cabbage at the folks who brought us “Summer Nights”. We will cover other songs that are far more cabbage-worthy over the coming weeks and months.
My rating: 6 / 10
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