One person’s view: “It’s a sonic swamp of overwrought sentimentality, complete with lyrics so predictable they could have been generated by a heartbroken robot. ... It’s the kind of music that makes you question the very existence of human creativity.” – Dowell De Los Reyes @ I Love Classic Rock (dead link)
The public’s view: 2.54 / 5.00
Late 1981 was a frustrating time to be a music fan. A typical record album cost the equivalent of $30, adjusted for inflation. MTV was on the cable systems in about three cities. AM music stations were dying off, but FM car radios were still a rare luxury. And even an expensive stereo couldn’t save you from the dreaded radio doldrums, which was continuing to rain down a punishing deluge of adult contemporary onto the hapless citizenry.
A radio doldrums doesn’t happen overnight on the orders of the Army. It is a slow-moving frog-in-boiling-water type of situation in which the damage accumulates bit by bit and isn’t fully recognized until later. It’s like how the Fourth Amendment was gradually phased out while no one was paying attention. (The only part of the Bill of Rights still in effect is the clause that says bakeries don’t have to make cakes for gay people. It was for this freedom that our ancestors fought the British.) My interest in music slowly evaporated during 1980 and 1981 without me even noticing. I didn’t know that radio stations were actively pushing me and millions of others away with their stale playlists of lethargic songs.
This realization finally hit me at the end of 1981, when I tried to revive my waning Billboard chart hobby by seeking out Casey Kasem’s annual countdown of the top 100 songs of the year. After hours of twiddling the AM and FM dials in a futile search, I landed on a knock-off show hosted by some no-name DJ who wasn’t fit to skim the dead bugs out of Casey’s heart-shaped swimming pool. This year-end countdown conspicuously failed to include major hits by Rick Springfield, Tom Petty, and Pat Benatar. “Jessie’s Girl” had been one of the few bright spots of recent months, and its omission felt like an act of contempt toward the listeners and an insult to our intelligence.
Radio’s travails continued into the new year. The J. Geils Band’s “Centerfold” was the #1 song in the country, and I was constantly hearing it hummed, whistled, and burped by people at school. (I didn’t know that nuns could belch like that.) The only place I never encountered it was on the airwaves. My radio could summon up Dan Fogelberg’s “Leader of the Band” with the touch of just about any button, but “Centerfold” – the tune I actually wanted to hear – was beyond its capabilities. That finally changed one evening when my parents neglected to enforce my bedtime. I discovered that the local top 40 station aired a late night countdown of each day’s most requested records, and this was where they were keeping the J. Geils Band and other popular acts like the Go-Go’s and Joan Jett. The rest of the station’s schedule was reserved for songs that nobody ever requested, like Air Supply’s “Here I Am”.
I’ve already conveyed my general feelings about Air Supply in the entry for “The One That You Love” on the Bad #1 Hits blog. They were talented and had some catchy tunes, and they don’t deserve their miserable reputation. You could say the same about other acts that are stigmatized by their association with the ‘80s doldrums. Contrary to what many people believe, the era was not defined by the poor quality of its soft rock music. It was defined by the overbearing ubiquity of its soft rock and the smug suppression of music that didn’t fit the prevailing narrative. When we take the media’s misplaced priorities out of the equation, the early ‘80s ballads of love and loss actually stack up well against their counterparts from a few years later. On their worst day, Air Supply could never have come up with something as wretched as “Separate Lives” or “Friends and Lovers”.
“Here I Am” is a lament about heartache, but it doesn’t sound like something that a songwriter created cathartically following a devastating break-up. It sounds like it was commissioned for a scene in a boring movie and written to spec. The most interesting thing about it is its confusing faux pas of a title. “Here I Am” begins with the line “Here I am,” but then never utters its title again. Air Supply had just reached #1 with a different song that used that identical “Here I am” line multiple times in its chorus, and by all rights that hit should have been called “Here I Am”. I have to wonder if the group was deliberately trying to mislead people into buying the wrong record.
The second line of “Here I Am” is “Playing with those memories again.” This lyric will live forever in my mind, thanks to my classmate Jeff who theatrically mocked it as “Playing with those mammaries again.” Hey, he’s the one who said it. Blame him, not me.
I can’t think of any Air Supply hits less enjoyable than “Here I Am” (though “Even the Nights Are Better” comes close). And yet, it didn’t jump out of the radio and pummel us with awfulness. It simply took up a surprisingly large amount of precious airtime that could have been used more productively, while making no cultural impact other than helping some kid named Jeff win a vote for class clown. No one ever hummed or whistled “Here I Am”, and burping it would have been a waste of good air. Save your eructations for the next song I will discuss, which was a far more memorable tear-jerker about a dying relationship.
My rating: 4 / 10
No comments:
Post a Comment