I Love that Song! #16: “Your Smiling Face” by James Taylor

April 4, 2018May 17, 2021 ~ Alan Haber's Pure Pop Radio ~ Leave a comment

By Alan Haber – Pure Pop Radio

It’s just five or maybe six notes ascending and pounded out to merge into traffic at the start, a way of getting to what amounts to a chorus of a sort, except it’s more a verse, really, and there really isn’t a chorus to speak of in this uptempo pop song that is all about love.

james taylor your smiling face 45 label No, there really isn’t a chorus to be heard in James Taylor’s uptempo charmer “Your Smiling Face”–just verses and bridges, building blocks sliding in and out of each other as an entrancing melody glides almost effortlessly above them. It’s quite a bold choice, eschewing choruses instead of a more conventional pop music songwriting approach, but it’s a solid choice because those five or six notes signal the start of the show and put the audience in their seats.

The opening song on James Taylor’s JT album, his eighth release, almost 41 years old, is a classic piece of melodic pop songwriting and performance, however you look at and classify the art. It’s under three minutes long and doesn’t waste a note, it’s supremely catchy and it’s played to perfection by ace musicians familiar to anyone who read liner notes or Rolling Stone, for that matter, back in the day–guitarist Danny “Kootch” Kortchmar, drummer Russ Kunkel, and bassist Leland Sklar, of whom more in a moment.

“Whenever I see your smiling face/I have to smile myself/Because I love you/Yes I do/And when you give me that pretty little pout/It turns me inside out/There’s something about you baby/I don’t know,” Taylor sings to start the song proper, and it’s a mouthful, I know, but all of those words are necessary to start the show.

“No one can tell me that I’m doing wrong today/Whenever I see you smile at me,” he sings at the song’s end. It’s that universal feeling that is the ultimate panacea; it’s what you think and say when just the right person stops you in your tracks on a day that seems purposeless and soulless because of this or that happening and makes you smile, telling you that everything will be alright.

It’s all about that smiling face. Who doesn’t love to meet one of those? So Taylor sings about the smiling face effect within the framework of a catchy, upbeat pop song that has not a single whiff of a chorus. Such a feat of legerdemain!

What puts this song over the top and makes it the perfect album opener are the individual elements that combine to bring the song to life. Taylor’s sweet and measured vocal, not to mention but hey, let me do it anyway, his on-the-mark falsetto (“No one can tell me that Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii’m doing wrong today”) is the top draw here, but even still, one can’t discount Russ Kunkel’s dutiful drumming, short on flash but long on what the song needs–a steady beat, although there is a swishy roll in there just because.

Holding court with his fluid, inventive bass lines is Leland Sklar, who breaks out of what the song probably expects of him starting at about a minute and 28 seconds in; he punctuates his bass notes with short, sharp stabs, coming in right before Kunkel’s snare hits. And then Sklar is off to the races; his bass appears louder in the mix and, at the two minute and 10 second mark he channels Paul McCartney, sliding up and down his fretboard for just two blessed acrobatic, melodic seconds, but those two blessed seconds nearly make the whole song.

james taylor jt album cover As the song fades out, confident in having fulfilled its mission as JT’s album opener and table setter, you are feeling as though the song has ended prematurely, or you at least want to hear it again, as I have since first hearing it upon its release.

And I have heard it again and again while I was writing this piece. I have loved looking under the hood at the various elements that make the song tick. It’s fun to poke around to see how a verse is not a chorus even though it kind of is, and so on.

It’s nice also, sometimes, to meet up with a smiling face and, you know, smile back.

alanhaberspurepopradiographiclarge1-wp header

Pure Pop Radio’s signature shows, Alan Haber’s Pop Tunes Deejay Show, playing the latest and greatest melodic pop songs from today and across the decades, and Pure Pop Radio: In Conversation, the premiere Internet melodic pop talk show, air weekly on Pop that Goes Crunch Radio.

Listen to the Pop Tunes Deejay Show on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 8 pm ET (two different shows every week); In Conversation airs every Wednesday night at 9 pm ET. Don’t miss a minute!

Tune in to Pop that Goes Crunch Radio by clicking on the following snazzy-looking button:

I Love that Song! #15: “Rockin’ My Life Away” by Jerry Lee Lewis

August 10, 2017May 17, 2021 ~ Alan Haber's Pure Pop Radio ~ Leave a comment

By Alan Haber – Pure Pop Radio

jerry lee lewis 1979 album cover It’s one of those records that just sounds right. It’s 1979, and Jerry Lee Lewis, with Bones Howe in the producer’s chair, is working his sweaty way through a Mack Vickery romp, banging mercilessly on the keys, a-thump-thump-thumpin’ until his fingers are sore, singing some perfunctory lyrics and assumedly ad-libbing some choice look-at-me-why-dontcha cracks in a kind of wink-of-an- eye way, all for the benefit of platter spinners and air 88s players everywhere.

When I was working country radio back in 1979, “Rockin’ My Life Away” was a favorite record to spin, even when it wasn’t coming up in the daily rotation. I would cue up the Killer’s self-titled Elektra album and, usually out of a station jingle that ended cold, baby, let ‘er rip. I would pretend to be Jerry Lee, beating my fingertips sore, banging my fingers on top of the console, making believe it was me doing those insane piano runs. One of the ad salesmen at the station was a big fan of that record; he would stand outside of the studio and watch me through the glass, a big smile planted on his kisser. And I felt obliged to perform in my own Killer-lite way.

“Rockin’ My Life Away” is a fun number, even if it’s just a sketch of a tune–a basic framework, if you will, of a rock and roll workout, which is all Jerry Lee needs to bend and twist it to suit his purpose, which is to let loose with wild fills that mark his territory. So, he gets to doing the deed, at 1:03 when he sings “Watch me now” and goes off on his way; at 2:10, after warning the band (“Look out now…”); and at 3:00 (“I’ve gotta have one more time! Yeah!”). Look out black keys and the white ones too, he seems to be saying. Here I come!

Along the way, as he makes not-nice with his piano, he makes a play for longevity (“My name is Jerry Lee Lewis and I’m durned sure here to stay”), states the obvious (“She knows how to roll, the Killer knows how to rock”), and, once again, tells you what you should already know (“The Killer’s top class”). Jerry Lee had earned his stripes long before 1979, of course, and earned his shot at celebrating his stature here.

“Rockin’ My Life Away” is an exciting performance that rocks and rolls like a runaway train daring the tracks to keep him on the straight and narrow. It’s over in a breathless three minutes and 27 seconds and it’s chock full of Killer-esque pomp and swagger. It’s also one of those songs the Internet lyric sites have a whole lotta trouble with, but never you mind. Jerry Lee’s just bein’ Jerry Lee, if that helps.

And here’s Jerry Lee being Jerry Lee:

alanhaberspurepopradiographiclarge1-wp header

Pure Pop Radio’s signature shows, Alan Haber’s Pop Tunes Deejay Show, playing the latest and greatest melodic pop songs from today and across the decades, and Pure Pop Radio: In Conversation, the premiere Internet melodic pop talk show, air weekly on Pop that Goes Crunch Radio.

Listen to the Pop Tunes Deejay Show on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 8 pm ET (two different shows every week); In Conversation airs every Wednesday night at 9 pm ET. Don’t miss a minute!

Tune in to Pop that Goes Crunch Radio by clicking on the following snazzy-looking button:

I Love that Song! #14: “Mrs. Vandebilt” by Paul McCartney and Wings

April 30, 2017May 17, 2021 ~ Alan Haber's Pure Pop Radio ~ Leave a comment

alan By Alan Haber – Pure Pop Radio
(Originally posted 12.01.16)

So you’re in the jungle, you’re living in a tent, you have zero financial obligations, you have all the time in the world, and you just plain don’t care. Is this a call for celebration?

paul mccartney and wings mrs. vandebilt Right off the bat, I’m probably being too literal, trying to make sense of the lyrics of Band on the Run’s “Mrs. Vandebilt,” one of the great showcases for Paul McCartney’s runaway bass inflections, because that first verse is a slightly-changed, tumbling tip of the hat to British comedian Charlie Chester. Which is really here nor there in the grand scheme of things.

Which is not to say that there is any scheme being practiced within this delicious tour de Macca, other than the crafting of yet another insanely catchy slice of pop and roll by one of the masters of the insanely catchy slice of pop and roll form. “Take things as they come to you!”, McCartney seems to be saying in these lyrics, which might be the case if you’re looking to make a case, but I submit to you that the lyrics could well be carefully positioned red herrings unless you don’t believe in such things and, really, well, that’s kind of getting off the case at hand.

“Mrs. Vandebilt” is a four-on-the-floor, beat-buoyed road trip driven by one of, if not the, world’s most inventive bass players. And don’t argue with me, now! We must not have dissension among the ranks!

“Mrs. Vandebilt” is all about the ever-present, runaway bass line and, of course, the up-and-down, go-high-then-low-then-high-again melody line. The first 72 seconds, and really most of this track, bear this out, painted as they are with just a few aural brushstrokes–rhythmic, acoustic guitar chord stabs, bass, percussion, vocal, and what sounds like some understated keyboard layering close to the first chorus. Then, Howie Casey’s liquid saxophone draws deserved attention for seven punctuated seconds.

A beautifully-rendered electric guitar solo (which recurs later, as does Casey’s sax) is another of the many reasons that this skillfully crafted track, like so many of McCartney’s ingenious constructs, never, ever fails to please; another one is what really is the meat of this four-and-a-half-minute moment: the rip-roaring, get-out-of-the-way, leave-my-kitten-alone close, a let’s-let-loose-at-all-costs, band-on-the-run refrain that plays sweet havoc with what has come before. Above, and for that matter below, the repeated “Ho, hey ho!” cries, McCartney’s runaway bass, sliding up and down the fretboard with determinedly enthusiastic plucks, steals the show, exiting stage right with a quick, descending run of notes before the track fades, clearing the decks for the tour de Lennon that is “Let Me Roll It.”

There is a picture of McCartney in the booklet of the 2010 archive collection reissue of Band on the Run, in which the headphone-appointed artist is decked out in his electric blue shirt, sleeves rolled up, his left arm crossed against his chest, his right arm pointing upward and his right hand resting against his lips, pursed into a knowing smile that says, “Man, just wait ’till you hear what I’ve got up my (rolled up) sleeves.” If a picture truly speaks volumes, this one is akin to the length and breadth of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

If I close my eyes, I can see myself sitting on the edge of my bed in my college dorm room, listening to the Band on the Run album over and over as a long-haired friend sits on my no-speed bicycle, pedaling in place with abandon. “You know, this is a really great album,” my friend says as the memory tape rolls in my brain. And when “Mrs. Vandebilt” comes on, the pedaling stops in its tracks. My attention, as well as my friend’s, is suddenly focused on that insistent bass line, and as the track hits midway, my friend and I are plucking the strings of our Hofner air bass guitars even as the track fades, and without even thinking, I walk slowly to my turntable in somewhat of a daze and put the needle back to the beginning and the air Hofner plucking begins again.

Which is why I love this song.

alanhaberspurepopradiographiclarge1

I Love that Song #13: “America,” by Simon and Garfunkel

May 25, 2015May 17, 2021 ~ Alan Haber's Pure Pop Radio ~ Leave a comment

by Alan Haber

One of Paul Simon’s best songs, lyrically astute and honorably charged, “America” is the third track on Simon and Garfunkel’s album Bookends, fading up out of the long goodbye of “Save the Life of My Child.” “Oh my Grace, I’ve got no hiding place,” comes the lyrical cry over a bed of ghostly, harried vocal lines and more sturdy pop instrumentation. It comes to pass that perhaps, just perhaps, the child is saved, but there is this that suggests an otherwise flawed end: “In an atmosphere of freaky holiday/When the spotlight hit the boy/And the crowd began to cheer/He flew away.”

From that might-be cryptic vision, Simon’s pen turned from chronicling a search for a panacea for men and women paralyzed with fear to a chronicle of men and women searching for answers that would quantify their yearning. Where, exactly, is their America?

After descending vocal lines sung on top of a bed of guitar strums and accented notes comes the observational, opening salvo of “America”: “Let us be lovers/We’ll marry our fortunes together,” Simon sings delicately. “I’ve got some real estate here in my bag.” With that somewhat, likely tenuous firmament in place, the man and his female companion (name of Kathy, also the name of an actual figure in Simon’s early musical life) prepare to begin their journey, purchasing a pack of smokes and some Mrs. Wagner’s pies. After hitchhiking a fair enough distance, the man tells Kathy that he’s “…come to look for America.” An explorer, a truth seeker, on a mission.

Boarding a Greyhound bus in Pittsburgh, the couple play almost childlike games to pass the time. Kathy remarks that “…the man in the gabardine suit was a spy.” The man traveling with her counters with an equally playful and mindfully obtuse observation: “Be careful. His bow tie is really a camera.” Which, if true, might hold some of the answers the couple is looking for. Has this spy gathered proof of the existence of America? How fast can these images be developed?

There is gazing out of the window and some magazine reading, after which Kathy’s companion reaches an epiphany of sorts. “Kathy, I’m lost,” he tells her, as she sleeps. “I’m empty and aching and I don’t know why.” After looking out over open fields as the bus passes around and through towns large and small, the journey seems to culminate, even as the bus continues on, in the man’s realization that he and everyone on the bus and everyone in the cars passing by them are all, as it turns out, looking for America, for their dreams to come alive.

“Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike, they’ve all come to look for America,” the companion sings. Cars from near and far and most certainly in between; campers and pickup trucks and cars that double as boats, and station wagons and automobiles with faulty transmissions and leaky oil pans, all pointed toward the lands of milk and honey and prosperity and, above all, safety, all are looking for their America. A place to call home, where it feels like home from the second the lawn sprinklers turn on in the morning till the moment they turn off at night. Everyone on the road, whether real or imagined in the course of everyday life, is looking for America. For their America.

Covered by all manner of artists through the years, “America” was most recently and, perhaps, best interpreted in an emotionally charged performance by First Aid Kit, a sister duo from Sweden. They performed the song with creative, lovely, acoustic guitar picking, piano and an equally emotional, live string section in a showstopping version on one of the last broadcasts of The Late Show with David Letterman (see below).

Discussion of “America” seems appropriate on this day, Memorial Day, a day during which our thoughts turn to those who served in the armed forces and lost their lives protecting our freedoms. Listening to “America,” as performed by Simon and Garfunkel or First Aid Kit or any of the artists who have covered it with sound artistic expression and passion, is still a powerful experience, and so it shall be for as long as we all continue to look for our Americas.

Click here to download our app for listening on the go with Android and iOS devices!

Click on the image to listen to Alan Haber's Pure Pop Radio through players like iTunes — Click on the image to listen to Alan Haber’s Pure Pop Radio through players like iTunes

I Love that Song! #12: “She’s My Baby,” by the Traveling Wilburys

April 1, 2015May 17, 2021 ~ Alan Haber's Pure Pop Radio ~ Leave a comment

Taken from the album Traveling Wilburys, Vol. 3, “She’s My Baby” finds the mysterious supergroup with their feet ensconced firmly in audacious rock and roll territory and their tongues planted firmly in cheek. There is enough energy in this song to power every light bulb that blares along the Las Vegas Strip. There is also plenty of pomp and spirit and sheer exuberance and derring-do, and more than that you probably could not and should not stand to witness.

The song opens with exactly how you might guess a speed locomotive feels after it ramps up to top speed and flies like the wind atop tracks and land mass: electric guitars fearlessly play the song’s central riff one, two, three, four times before the song is off and running. “She’s got her pudding in the oven and it’s gonna be good,” the Wilburys sing with a whole lot of nervy verve. “She better not leave me and go out to Hollywood/She’s got the best pudding in the neighborhood/She’s my baby.”

This baby’s got muscles and, you know, the ability to drive heavy machinery: “She can drive a truck, she can drive a train,” the Wilburys chant. “She can even drive an aeroplane.” And, even when she’s muscling her way from here to over there, “She’s so good to look at in the rain.” Ultimately, “She’s my baby.”

The guitars play fervently, the drums are close to causing some kind of a blackout, and the intensity in the room–any room–is almost too much to bear. Plus, she’s, well, possibly finding it difficult to maneuver through life’s challenges. Even though “She’s got a body for business, got a head for sin” and “She knocks me over like a bowling pin/She came home last night and said ‘Honey, honey, honey, it’s hard to get ahead’.” Calling Dr. Phil…

This baby doesn’t give up. She can do it all and do it well and probably knock out a world-class boxer in less than 10 blessed seconds and still come out of it with the ability to, um, rock. Look out, world: “She can build a boat, she can make it float…She can play my guitar note for note.”

“She’s myyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy baby,” the Wilburys sing in this hoot of a song, this tongue-in-cheek rocker that plays its cards falling out of its vest and almost, but not quite, gives up the ghost, so to speak, during a rock star guitar solo at its midpoint that collapses into a gurgling curdle of intentionally sloppy musical goop. Oh, how joyous it is! Just watch the video below. When have you seen more smiling and laughing and band logos and true musical heroes having so much fun?

“She’s myyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy baby,” indeed.

– Alan Haber

Click here to download our app for listening on the go with Android and iOS devices!

I Love that Song! #11: “Where the Bands Are,” by Bruce Springsteen

March 18, 2015May 17, 2021 ~ Alan Haber's Pure Pop Radio ~ Leave a comment

If power pop fans ever needed a reason to believe in Bruce Springsteen, if only for three minutes and 46 seconds, “Where the Bands Are” is that reason–a balls-to-the-wall power pop number stacked high with electric guitars; punctuating, popping bass; four-and-a-half-to-the-floor drumming, and a catchy chorus with an indelible hook. The split second it kicks off with a single, call-to-arms snare shot and the full band comes right in, you are drawn into another world.

And you already know that world. It’s a world where music consumes you, where you can let it all hang out and show your girl how great it all can be–where you just live for the moment, and the moment is alive.

“Yeah, tonight I wanna break my chains/Somebody break my heart/Somebody shake my brains,” the boy sings. “Downtown there’s something that I wanna hear/There’s a sound, little girl, keeps ringing in my ear,” and that is the sound of the beat, the guitars turned up so loud that the paint is peeling off the walls, the sweat pouring into imagined buckets all around you. It’s the sound of the beat, of the fire inside of you when you’re taking it all in even before you get there. It’s the sound of impassioned singing into microphones–the sound of a power pop rodeo where the crowd is being roped in to feel the heat rising from the stage.

It is the quintessential mind over matter trick that heightened sensitivity plays on you when you’re knee-deep in the thick of it. It is the best you can do–the only thing you can do–when two worlds come together as one. “Tonight I wanna feel the beat of the crowd/And when I tell you that I love you/I wanna have to shout it out loud/Shout it out loud” is the cry in the night. Your arm is holding your partner tight as the singer is bringing the both of you into his world.

You know the score. You know why you’re in that club or that bar. You know why you’re dressed to the nines and impressing your partner as the music plays and the electricity is pulsing through you. You know why you’re there. “I wanna be where the bands are,” you shout. “I wanna be where the bands are…” And here comes the power pop version of a Greek chorus: “Where the bands are…” and you answer: “I wanna be where the bands are.”

Springsteen is remembering what moved him in the first place when, in his early days, he wanted to be right there in the center of the action with his girl by his side while those beautiful notes were flying freely throughout the space, drawing him in and getting him to sing along with the chorus that he will never, ever be able to get out of his head. “I wanna be where the bands are,” he sings out loud, shouting, reaching for the stage and wishing he were on it.

Recorded in 1979, “Where the Bands Are,” a song that, like many Springsteen numbers, had floated around in collector’s circles for years before seeing legitimate release on the Boss’s Tracks collection in 1998, is an anthem quite unlike the other anthems he had recorded. It is an anthem drawn purposefully for the boys and girls of the live music nation, the people who gather together to celebrate the feelings that move them.

“Where the Bands Are” is a song that moves in straight-ahead, upbeat fashion. It reveres the hook all the way through. It invites the constant head bob whether or not you can hold to the beat. The drums take charge. The saxophone punctuates. The guitars rock and roll with the best of them. It’s impossible to forget the melody, even if you’ve only heard it once. It gets in there and becomes part of your DNA. Really, you’d be powerless to stop it.

“I wanna be where the bands are,” Bruce proclaims just before the song comes to an end. It’s a tremendous song and a tremendous power pop record and it speaks to the heart of the matter–that the music that speaks to you can move you like nothing else and give you a reason, a reason to believe in the power of the song, in the power of power pop. – Alan Haber

Click here to download our app for listening on the go with Android and iOS devices!

I Love that Song! #10: “Grouch of the Day,” by Squeeze

February 17, 2015May 17, 2021 ~ Alan Haber's Pure Pop Radio ~ Leave a comment

squeeze-ridiculous — “Grouch of the Day,” from Squeeze’s Ridiculous (IRS, 1995)

If life does indeed imitate art, and Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook’s “Grouch of the Day” represents truth, then all in the world who stress themselves over needless worry should start a club, elect a president, and sing this song to open all of their meetings.

Listening to “Grouch of the Day,” as catchy a pop song as exists in the Squeeze catalog, and appreciating and adopting its wisdom seems the least one should do when the numbing of one’s nerves over what-ifs and what-could-have-beens has taken root and gotten in the way of a positive outlook. “What if the boss raises hell over that report?” “How can I relax when the fate of the world rests on my shoulders?” He probably won’t, and yes, you can and no, it doesn’t.

Needless worry continues to be the least potent notion one can adopt during the carrying out of a life. What does it get you, other than prickly horseshoes and flat soda pop? I wonder if Difford and Tilbrook contemplated this notion, or even considered it at all, while they were writing this song. Perhaps it was just serendipity, or at the very least a fated matching of lyrics and melody during the act of crafting another catchy pop song.

It’s all about the state of one’s nerves and whether they’re butting heads or getting some sun in at poolside, so to speak. The narrator here is overcome by even the idea of a bad day ahead. But there’s this, regarding the woman lying beside him: “As I roll on my side there’s a smile on her face that says much more than words ever will,” he sings, and therein lies the secret of life. Words are empty promises; actions speak louder than words, and this woman speaks with motion: “She’ll have something to say,” he notes.

And she does, when all is said and done, but her words are silent: “Her beauty erodes the desperate loads of pressure that fills up my day/With one smile all the stress melts away.” There can’t possibly be a thing that is more powerful than the declaration that everything is going to be okay regardless of what you think, and here is the proof: a smile. There is nothing more powerful than a smile.

Although, come to think of it, even the idea that a smile can wipe away tears is just as moving and reliable: “When I’ve drifted away and I’m moping around in a sulk, she’ll have something to say and I usually obey/Then I get my resentments in bulk,” the narrator sings, and adds, as he figures it all out, “That’s the price that you pay for being grouch of the day.”

Blended voices harmonize “Uh oh,” perhaps mockingly but maybe not, and the chorus sings “Better watch out,” as if that were possible for the shaky amongst us! Well, it should be, at least in the face of possible uh-ohs and I-told-you-that-was-going-to-happens.

“I feel butterflies wing as she starts to sling music on/As she rolls on her back with her smile full of charm that says much more than words ever will,” the narrator delights; he really does know that smile will put things right and prepare him for the could-well-be kind of scary day ahead.

Otherwise, you’re the grouch of the day and, well, uh oh. – Alan Haber

Click here to download our app for listening on the go with Android and iOS devices!

I Love that Song! #9 (Special Valentine’s Day 2015 Edition): “Leanne,” by the Davenports

February 10, 2015May 17, 2021 ~ Alan Haber's Pure Pop Radio ~ Leave a comment

Regarding the Davenports’ tremendous new power pop number, “Leanne,” now playing in rotation on Pure Pop Radio, the following is mostly speculation. Well, it’s mostly speculation on my part, weighed down by many questions. A wigged-out, sneaky electric guitar riff, followed by a quickly-rendered, handclap-adorned bridge, leads into the first verse of this catchy, sneaky, almost anti-love song, and we’re off to the races.

For one thing: Is the dirty drip that’s referenced up top in the song a leaky faucet filling a sink with shmutzy water, deposits on a drip pan, or something else entirely? “In the spring we lunged for the dirty, dirty drip,” one half of the relationship spouts. “I kicked out your heel to make you, make you trip.” Question answered, then: The “dirty, dirty drip” is just the thing, the thing that this guy uses as an excuse to make his lady friend see the floor tiles up close and personal.

It’s a playful yet quite possibly tenuous relationship, one that survives the allegorical wrestling move detailed in the lyrics’ second verse: “After the final slat of sun/The violet volley cartwheel run/You held me on a mat of Monday mowings.” When the sun sets on Sunday night, and the last, partial rays peek through the vertical blind slats, closed but not totally, and the sky fades into a violet hue, it all comes out–the this and that and yes, that again, that she’s held in ever so tightly since the last time she mowed you down, and it all comes out on Monday morning in the shreds of emotion as if they were the product of a lawn mower’s chopped grass shards.

“I called you Buttercup,” the boyfriend lays out as a kind of gesture, “I called you Buttercup, Leanne/But now, now I just call you, call you Leanne.” Because the cute-as-a-button nickname that relates back to the time when isn’t realistic anymore as the couple sheds their outer skin and reveals their collective, inner sleeve. “…now I just call you, call you Leanne.”

And then there’s the standoff: “Then we swarmed around each others’ stares like bugs/And we sat securely in our mugs.” Sizing up the considerable situation, the two lovebirds find themselves in excelsis, boiling as the temperature rises higher and higher still, each relegating their ids to their respective corners, pushing and pulling and pushing and pulling again, still, not willing to budge.

“Then,” the guy sings, “we ate to excess after that/And we stole the others’ turn at bat,” because, well, one can only disagree on the same punctuated point so much. “And we said we should grow old and fat together…” Because, well, that’s their love: fiery one minute, I-love-you-lots-and-lots-with-strings-astride-but-make-no-mistake-about-it, we’re meant to be.

“I called you Buttercup,” the guy sings. “I called you Buttercup.” But now, in the springtime of our lives, I call you who you are: my love, my life, my Leanne. All the while, crunchy guitars, a steady 4/4 beat, and a determined bass guitar lead the way through the romance of two people obviously meant for each other.

“Sing along whether you’re a lover, brokenhearted, or some place in between,” say the Davenports. Sounds about right.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

by Alan Haber

Swoon with “Leanne,” playing as part of your Valentine’s Day soundtrack. Pick it up here.

Click here to download our app for listening on the go with Android and iOS devices!

I Love that Song! #8: “Don’t Be Mad at Me,” by the Davenports

January 20, 2015May 17, 2021 ~ Alan Haber's Pure Pop Radio ~ 3 Comments

The subtly pounding, lithe piano run which appoints itself at the start of the Davenports’ achingly beautiful new song, “Don’t Be Mad at Me,” now playing in rotation on Pure Pop Radio, is joined by a gregarious, almost romanticized string section pleased to acquaint itself with a very “Martha, My Dear” ambiance in tow, an ambiance that later trades off with a lovely pop melody and, at the end, an even harder-edged, slightly manic, giddy even, melodic electric guitar attack straight out of the Carpenters “Goodbye to Love” school, but for now leads into the first words of the opening verse, which themselves lead to a cautionary plea: “Betty, don’t be mad at me, Betty,” delivered by the always soothing and satisfying voice of Scott Klass as he seeks to make it all better with more than a few dollops of sincerity. “Don’t cry girl, I’ve got your keys,” he sings, because the time has come to take pause and leave the driving to someone else.

“It’s not conspiracy, revenge or trying to hurt your feelings, Betty,” Klass asserts, lovingly. It’s just the way it is, is what it all means, and you barely wrestle with the idea that at a certain point in everyone’s life–yours, for example–time will come to change the course and allow a loved one or a friendly neighbor or someone else with the power of love in his or her pocket to help, just help, just help steer the course. “But it’s clear now that you’re mixing up your Christophers and Larrys…”

And so it goes as Klass, who wrote the song, sings a litany of wise words that make it all clear as we tumble along the way in our lives. This gorgeous creation, just such a grand achievement and a raise of the bar in the ongoing songwriting life, blinks brightly with all the hallmarks of a Davenports song: the way the words match the rhythm of the melody around quick breaths; the seemingly disparate instrumental elements that come together perfectly to create a winsome, winning musical base; and the idea that a whole life, and all its twists and turns, can be communicated quite clearly in only four minutes and 13 seconds with lively invention and the truth of the songwriter’s craft.

Yes, this is a pop song with strings and a catchy melody and percussion and swooping background vocal harmonies reminiscent of the closing sections of Andy Partridge’s “1,000 Umbrellas,” and it just begs, literally begs that you sing along with it (and you can, because the video, which you can watch below, includes some of the lyrics right there on the screen) and, even if there wasn’t any begging going on, you’d want to sing along anyway, because it’s that kind of a delightful number and that’s what great pop music does: it includes you as if you’re a member of the family, and, of course, you are.

The Davenports have never been anything less than top-flight purveyors of fanciful, melodic pop songs. Here, as stated above, they have upped their game and delivered a momentous achievement. There is nothing like this song in the whole wide world–a world, as depicted in this song’s video, that is alive and well within the confines of a View-Master lying in a box left silently on a sidewalk. A young girl, curious as to the box’s contents, takes hold of the View-Master and there is Betty’s, or someone’s, life, conveyed to the girl in one snapshot after another; little wisps out of time that tell a story.

“Generally,” it is said on the band’s website, this song is “about salad days to sad days, youth to old age, power to weakness, forefront to backdrop. ‘Betty’ is an old great aunt who was once almost like a matriarch of the family–strong, with style, a leader, who drove a huge old Caddy. The narrator is a younger relative who has to take away the keys to the Caddy because Betty has grown old and demented.”

“Betty, don’t be mad at me…” Undoubtedly, this song could be about someone in your life, which makes the message universal. Betty, well, could well be you, some day.

Buy the Davenports’ “Don’t Be Mad at Me” on iTunes

Click here to download our app for listening on the go with Android and iOS devices!

I Love That Song! #7: “Why Don’t We Do It In the Road?” by The Beatles

January 13, 2015May 17, 2021 ~ Alan Haber's Pure Pop Radio ~ 1 Comment

Buried near the end of side two of the Beatles’ 1968 self-titled masterwork (more commonly known as the White Album), and coming right before the sweetly sung romantic ballad “I Will,” “Why Don’t We Do It In the Road?” finds Paul McCartney posing a musical question still not properly and conclusively answered so many years later.

“Why don’t we do what in the road?” Why don’t we have a bit of a frolic, play catch, dig for buried treasure or reach for the stars on a hot summer’s day? And what are the chances of being caught? “No one will be watching us,” McCartney assures. So there’s that guarantee of walking, or perhaps limping silently, away scot-free.

McCartney has explained the song’s meaning before, or answered the question with a loaded retort. Quoth Wikipedia: “McCartney wrote the song after seeing two monkeys copulating in the street while on retreat in Rishikesh, India, with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. He (marveled) in the simplicity of this natural scenario when compared to the emotional turmoil of human relationships.” So that theory goes. It’s the “fish and finger pie” thing all over again–a smutty little joke…a wink wink, nudge nudge between singer and listener and, you know, say no more.

Or is it? If McCartney were asked today about this song, he’d probably say he doesn’t remember what in God’s name it was about. “That was so 46 years ago,” he would probably opine. Or he might suggest that Ringo has the skinny. But Ringo would probably laugh and, with the wave of his hand, dismiss the question outright. “Don’t we have better things to talk about?” he might ask. Ha ha, and all that.

And so, I ask: What’s more fun than playing the “What is Paul talking about?” parlour game? Nothing, really. So, as we’re doing that, let’s up the ante a bit more and note that “Why Don’t We Do It In the Road?” is only four seconds shorter than “I Will.” Believe it or not, it takes McCartney about the same amount of time to express his undying love for his woman as it does to comment on copulating monkeys. Or preparing a will. Or having a contest to see who can suck a lollipop down to the stick in less time.

The song, musically speaking, is simply, yet powerfully, stated: basic percussion, piano, bass, guitar and McCartney’s in-and-out Little Richard vocal stuck together for less time than it takes to fry an egg. “Why don’t we d-do it in the road? Why don’t we do it in the road? Uh, why don’t we do it in the ro-oad, mmm, why don’t we do it in the road? No one will be watching us, whyyy don’t we do it in the road?”

And one minute and forty-one seconds later, the song ends suddenly, abruptly–defiantly even, with a last “Why don’t we do it in the road?” The simultaneous slam on the piano, a fat pat on the snare drum, and a rigorous crash of the cymbal are all it takes to clear the aural decks and move on.

I must admit that I was one of those people who spent hours on end dissecting the obviously intended backwards messages in “Revolution 9,” stalling the motors on two, count ’em, two Symphonic all-in-one, fold-’em-up stereo turntables. I spent hours trying to figure the meaning of it all: Was Paul dead? Had my fab Paulie left this mortal coil? “You try to play that record backwards again,” my father warned, “and you won’t see another turntable in your room until you’re 25!” So I settled on letting other devoted Beatles fans figure out what the state of the Paul union was and concentrated instead on what it was that Paul, or his stand-in, was doing in the proverbial road.

It’s funny, really, how these odd, eccentric abnormalities associated with Beatles records stay with us in our creeping-up-slowly old age. In truth, it was all so silly, but it sure kept us busy and fixated. The prize at the end of all of the detective work was that all was well. Paul was alive and well and pouring a bucket of water on Life magazine’s photographer at his Scottish farm. I got another Symphonic turntable.

Perhaps the answer to the musical question, “Why don’t we do it in the road?”, is, simply, “I Will.” There. That takes care of another mystery in this life. You’re welcome.

Click here to download our app for listening on the go with Android and iOS devices!