I have had this song on brain for the last couple of days, "Serious" by Donna Allen. Specifically, I've had the line "Talk! Talk about serious!" earwigging me out--although I have to admit I kept remember hearing the line as "Talk! Talk about experience!" Like it was an ad for an investment firm. You have to admit having "Serious" or even "Experience" as a jingle for a brokerage operation would be far more appealing than those damn talking, vomiting babies they use over at E-Trade.
So I finally tracked the song down on YouTube and was rewarded with this "fashion forward" video of '80s excess. Whenever anyone nowadays tells me how much they loved or continue to love the '80s, I will henceforth shudder at the thought.
The music? Oh yeah, it was great, and this is a perfect little slice of mid-80s funk pop. It's got more going for it than just that one misremembered line. There's that beautiful, multi-tracked chorus beginning with "Baby I don't know what I should do . . . about you." That "Rock Rock Planet Rock"-styled, vocoderized background voice repeating, "Are you serious?" And that wonderfully sexy-voiced male rap beginning with "Breaking hearts is my claim to fame . . . ."
All worthy of acclaim, confetti, parades, fireworks, and spontaneous, interpretive dancing in the streets. (Very '80s video, I should add.) Most people who love '80s music probably think about the early '80s stuff--Haircut 100, Duran Duran, Bananarama, ABC--all very British, all very brilliant. But there was also a lot of fantastic, American funk and dance pop--Janet Jackson's "Escapade," Gwen Guthrie's "Ain't Nuthin' Goin' on but the Rent," and Donna Allen's "Serious," to name but three--that should be celebrated as well.
No screaming divas, no smutty lyrics, no scrawny blonde girls trying to be "fly," innocent, and trashy all at once. (In other words, Ke$ha wasn't even born yet--imagine!) Just good, happy, sexy, funky, fun pop. It was all so very, very lovely, despite the incredibly dodgy fashion sense.
That is, until Stock-Aitken-Waterman's "Sound of a Bright Young Britain" (excluding Mel & Kim, I hasten to add) and Paula Abdul's bleating blasted it all to hell, for Brits and Americans alike, leaving anything commercial and clever (not diametrically opposed concepts after all) for dead.
Or worse--for the '90s and Naughties. I'm not sure pop music and culture have ever recovered.
Still, one thing that was ruined in the 1980s long before the music was the fashion. These few videos exemplify some of the worst of it. Let's enumerate:
- Huge hair
- I mean HUGE HAIR
- Ridiculous, day-glo colors
- Body-sleek spandex and other stretch fabrics
- Or worse, leftover bolero pants and hats (really? really?!) from the '70s
- Thick-as-cake-batter make-up
- Perms on men
- That weird sort of quiff up-front, piglet tail in back hairstyle on me, the forerunner of the dreaded, derided mullet
- Overuse of the V-shape as a design motif
- And everything just way too shiny-shiny
Please, let's never go back to any of this, not even for Halloween.
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