According to the Diva, the music of my generation is totally obsessed with having sex after meeting at the disco when it comes to love songs. Whenever I commandeer the car radio and she is forced to listen to the oldies station rather than the angst-filled white boy blabber on the alternative station, the music is accompanied with her running commentary on the popularity of the words "boogie", "funky" and "get down" as well as the lack of any lyrics of emotional substance. In summary, "Mom, your music SUCKS!"
Of course, I consider her viewpoint when it comes to songs of love a little iffy since the two guys on Glee that she adores are Darin Criss who came out the closet a long time ago and the Irish guy Damien whose accent is so heavy you cannot understand a single word he says, unless he sings about being green. Now, I may be a cougar who admires Mike Chang when he moves like Jagger but at least he is straight and does not speak with a heavy ancient Chinese accent.
With the passing of Whitney Houston this week (none of the kids knew who she was - just thought she was "that druggie lady married to the druggie guy on the reality show who said 'kiss my ass' and 'hell to the no'"), those of us of a certain age were reminded that we did actually have some beautiful love songs scattered amongst our collection of LP singles on vinyl. Everyone had and still has a favorite Whitney song and chances are it is one pertaining to love. "Saving All My Love For You" made you want to go out and become somebody's side salad so you could cry along and sing "No other woman is going to love you more.....", You know you tried unsucessfully to hit that killer note that came after the heavy drum beat, "And I-yee-I-yee-I will always love you", each time the video played on MTV. I bet you even momentarily considered putting up with Bobby Brown so you could awkwardly dance around a swimming pool barely hanging on to poor Bobbi Kristina singing, "We Got Something In Common".
Love songs back then were such a cash cow that even the rockers got into it. Back when Bret Michaels had hair and did not have to hide a chrome dome under a skull bandana, we so wanted to ease his broken black heart when he sang "Every Rose Has It's Thorne". Our hearts raced when Steve Perry belted out "Faithfully" even though he was way more feminine in appearance than we were (although I will never forgive Neil Schon for hooking up with that DC Crasher Mrs. Salahi - totally yuck and un-rock-godlike). The harmonies of Extreme in "More Than Words" and the minimalist black and white video (yes, I know the exact spot when the lighter will be lifted by the drummer) still send chills up my spine whenever I hear those first acoustic guitar chords. But for me, it all came down to Peter Criss stepping out from behind the rotating pyro spitting drum kit to sit on the edge of the stage to sing "Beth". The surrealism of the song - violins and cellos accompanying Paul Stanley and Ace Frehley's unplugged guitars, lyrics of longing for one's long-suffering wife, the pain of life on the road with Gene Simmons - made you forget that in a few minutes, you'd be shouting out loud and throwing your underwear on the stage (or so I've heard).
For those seeking to walk on the softer side, we had Air Supply - two very ethereal guys from Australia with bad perms who sang the most sappy saccarine love songs ever but you just couldn't help but sing along to them. The problem is that their voices were heavenly but the looked like your Dad did when he and your Mom decided that they wanted to go to La Mancha on the nights you weren't there. All of those Asian dads with bad perms, looking like low income yakuza in silky shirts and polyester pants with BVD lines. Frightening. However, even with those terrifying memories, just say "Air Supply" to someone nearing fifty and they will have a Pavlovian response, eyes glazed over, drooling and singing, "You know you can't fool me, I've been loving you to long-ong-ong-ong...."
It is undisputed however that the ruler of long song land was Philip Bailey of Earth, Wind and Fire. Every social, no matter what grade you were in or what school you attended, ended with the song "Reasons". If the guys were ugly, you told your advisor to play the short version from the blue album with the Pyramid and Sphinx on it. If the guys were cute, you would play the long version from the EWF live album with every person in the room reciting word for word every single Philip Bailey adlib in the song, "He plays so beautiful, don't you agree?" Occasionally, you would pray for the song to be over if the guy you were dancing with decided that he would sweep you off your feet (and work his way under your Otaheite dress) by singing the song to you right into your ear. Nobody but nobody should ever attempt to hit the high notes in Reasons, in particular an Asian guy smelling of clearasil, wearing 2 sizes too small Angels Flight pants, sweating profusely through his Members Only jacket and possessing a Peter Brady cracking squeaking puberty impacted voice box. When this happened (which was unfortunately quite often), you would try to drag yourself and the uji guy trying to attach himself to your lower region over to the record player so you could bump it with your okole and bring your misery to an end. It never worked because there was inevitably one of your friends, the one with the big chichis who always danced with last dance with the one tall cute guy with the expensive silky shirt who wore deoderant, gave you stink eye as she saw you try to save yourself.
Even with these sorts of traumatic memories, whenever I hear Philip Bailey's voice on the radio, my heart flutters and I revive my dream that someday, he will be standing outside my broken screen door belting out "Now, I'm craving your body, is this real? Temperatures rising, I don't want to feel..." Unfortunately, I know this dream will never come true as I'm sure my kids will quickly slam the door in his face, thinking it is some Nigerian con artist trying to rip us off or one of the dogs will bite him in a sensitive area - raising his falsetto to even a higher ground but pretty much dropping my hubba hubba level to zero.
For my kids, their love songs are all about relationships that start in the strip club, glorify dysfunctional relationships, or pertain to licking someone like a lollipop. Quite a difference from the days when we had to go to the Library to check out a French/English dictionary because we were to embarrassed to ask any adult what Patti Labelle was singing in Lady Marmalade (we knew it was something dirty that had to do with a prostitute or in my case, a Protestant). Now, when we sing "skeet skeet skeet skeet" along with Lil Jon in Get Low, our kids laugh hysterically because they know what that word means and know that we don't know what it means. We wanted to be "All About Love", our kids want a "Bad Romance". We slow danced to "I'll Always Love You", our kids do the Dougie while proclaiming, "You can call me Flintstone, I can make your Bed Rock".
So, for the next few hours anyway until the kids come home, I will spend my Valentines Day watching very old videos on VH1 Classic in the company of those I truly love - the three dogs and the EWF Facebook page.
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