One person’s view: “Was nobody nearby to shout a loud: ‘Stop singing!!!’ when this was produced?!?” – Headphonian @ Rate Your Music, regarding the Heartbeat LP
The public’s view: 2.52 / 5.00
Miami Vice premiered at the perfect time to grab my attention. I had recently abandoned my favorite TV show, The Dukes of Hazzard, because I was slowly starting to suspect that the Duke boys were never going to successfully assassinate Boss Hogg. I was yearning for a new series to fill the void. However, Miami Vice’s marketing was so off-putting that I never got around to tuning in. It seemed as though the show’s hero, Detective Sonny Crockett (played by Don Johnson), was constantly canoodling with pretty women on yachts while smoking premium cigarettes and eating exotic foods such as braised eagle hearts and Acapulco-style tiramisu. This didn’t hold any appeal for me. A police drama is supposed to be about destructive car chases, not glamour and conspicuous consumption! Crockett wouldn’t last a day in Hazzard County. One speck of mud on his stylish suit and he would be on the first Ferrari back to Florida.
It may be an unfair perception, given that I didn’t actually watch the show, but I saw Miami Vice as emblematic of 1980s entitlement culture. This was the era in which a new breed of entitled twit was invented: guys who can’t understand how poverty exists when the markets are doing so well. Why don’t the homeless simply cash out their stock gains and buy houses? (We still have these twits today, but most of them are either in Congress or are hosting podcasts.) Don Johnson’s brief singing career was also the product of entitlement. If record contracts had been based on musical talent, rather than starring in a hit TV show, he’d be waiting near the back of a long queue for his turn on the Hot 100.
Johnson is really not a bad vocalist as compared to the
average person. If I was working with
him in a cubicle farm somewhere and we all went out for office karaoke night,
my reaction would be: “Gee, I didn’t
know that Don had pipes like that. His
singing is even better than his widely praised PowerPoint skills.” It is, however, a long leap from karaoke to
the Billboard charts. Successful recording artists usually have something
distinctive about their styles, but Johnson’s Heartbeat LP is the most generic mid-‘80s pop-rock record that I’ve
ever heard. If I find an obscure album
by someone named John Donson in a discount bin, and the cover is just a picture
of a guitar flying over a bunch of random geometric shapes, I would expect it
to sound exactly like Heartbeat. I am not saying this to throw shade at Don,
because I would much rather hear generic 1986 music than generic 2009
music. An album by the Wack Eyed Bees,
with a picture of an Auto-Tune console on the sleeve, is not worthy of buying
no matter how steep the discount.
The title track of Heartbeat fits right in with the rest of the album. Its lyrics are comprised of a vague complaint directed at an ex, followed by some cryptic rumblings about seeking a new mate who will be better in some way. All of this has something to do with a heartbeat, a word that is repeated with emphasis at least 30 times. The music is just as nondescript as the lyrics. It’s anchored by a scratchy guitar that would have sounded better if Dweezil Zappa had played on the track instead of just pretending to in the video. Johnson holds things together OK for the first couple of minutes, but then the song changes its key and pushes him to reach greater heights of vocal prowess. Karaoke Don isn’t up to the challenge. By the end I have a mental image of Sonny Crockett’s yacht sinking into the sea, with a few bubbles rising to the surface along with a premium cigarette and the jacket from a stylish suit.
Johnson might be able to out-sing Eddie Murphy at a karaoke bar, but Murphy’s “Party All the Time” was at least catchy. “Heartbeat”, by contrast, is a composition that relies on expressive musicianship rather than a strong hook. Its lead singer and its lead guitarist determine whether the song lives or dies. When their performances are merely average, the result sounds more like a filler album cut than a major hit. Fortunately, Americans in 1986 learned a lesson from Eddie Murphy and Don Johnson. The public drew a line in the sand: no more unqualified actors would be allowed to declare themselves pop singers and sneak into the top 10! At least not until 1987.
My rating: 3 / 10