Saturday, July 12, 2014

Because I can, that's why

I can't tell you how long I've been looking for a video of this song, one of my favorites by Samantha Fox. A posting on the Facebook page of Annie for "I Wanna Have Some Fun," led to me sharing this static YouTube video of the album version of "Hurt Me! Hurt Me! (But the Pants Stay On)," a minor hit for "the Fox" in the early 1990s. I remarked that I'd never been able to find an official video for this song, having only searched YouTube, et voilĂ ! A fellow Annie fan shared this video with me.

It pays to get out of YouTube every now and again. Otherwise I would have never found this video by Annie herself.


Annie - I Know Ur Girlfriend Hates Me [New] by elpolemico

Which probably remains one of my favorite pure pop tunes of the last decade.

You can snicker all you want, but I think Samantha Fox is a rather underrated pop performer from the 1980s and early 1990s. I mean, she sings a heckuva lot better than Paula Abdul ever did, had generally better production (at least in this case) than Kylie Minogue did at the time, had more sex appeal than early Whitney Houston, may she rest in peace, and certainly more presence than Britney Spears. Ever.

So what's the deal?

Hmmm, well, in a lot of her songs, she coos and baby-girl orgasms a little too much--but so does Britney in practically every record, and Samantha Fox simply does it better, with more feeling and lusty gusto.

It probably didn't help that she was everywhere, at least in the UK, at the time, and was better known for her busty portraits as a "page 3" glamour model in the British tabloids. Or that, according to Wikipedia (my source for all wisdom), she made some dodgy career decisions (shilling for a Leicestershire-based car company at the height of her popularity) or performed badly in some settings (such as the 1989 Brit Awards). Or that she has had a confusing, often contradictory personal life--from pin-up girl to born-again Christian to more-or-less out lesbian.

I think it's fair to say she was not seen as credible by many and grasping by others. But she did make some wonderful, pure-pleasure, pop records for a while, highly entertaining (at least to me), and later in life has seemed to try to give by through charitable works.

Samantha, I just hope you're happy and well. All these years later, you still make me wanna have some fun.

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