The Number Fortys: The Romantics - "One In A Million"

In The Number Fortys, we review every song that was sitting at #40 on the Billboard chats, starting in the first week of January 1984, right around the time this writer became cognizant/obsessive about music. The seeds for the idea came from Tom Breihan's Number Ones column over at Stereogum. However, we here at k-postpunk believe that the bottom is more interesting than the top (and obscurity is more interesting than either).

This piece of vaguely new-wavish retro-fluff comes courtesy of The Romantics. Hailing from Detroit, Michigan, the band may have dressed in leather, but their sound, at least on this one, was 100% tweed.

The Romantics are probably best known for their beer commercial jock-jam "What I Like About You," a garage-y, power-pop number from 1980 that didn't crack the Top 40; it's a 7. They had hit #3 the year before this with "Talking In Your Sleep," (I hear...the secrets that you keep...duh duh, duh duh...when you're talking in your sleep" it's a 3, I guess). By some accounts, the Romantics were a kick-ass power pop band that were a breath of fresh air in the late-70s early-80s. To me, they sound like a more boring, corporate Knack or Marshall Crenshaw--neither of which were all that non-boring and non-corporate to start with. And this song, the last time The Romantics would reach the Top 40 (it reached #37 before fading into oblivion) is so ephemeral that there's barely anything to say about it.

It's nothing about craft. We can appreciate that, unlike a lot of rock bands of their era, the Romantics don't come across like a bunch of drooling, misogynist cokebags, i.e. they appear to see women as genuine, actual human beings. Still, can't help wishing the women in this video grabbed those instruments and made their own music. It would have been way more interesting.

I guess it is worth noting the proto-Kim Deal bass playing going on in the verses. One can imagine the Pixies doing a cover of this (early in their career, when they still gave a shit) that brought out the longing and desperation in the lyrics that the singer of The Romantics, (looking it up....) Wally Palmar, couldn't be bothered to invest in his singing because he was trying to have a hit single, and he thought it was still 1964 or some shit.

Score: 3/10

THE NUMBER ONE

Van Halen?....Guys...?

No seriously. This isn't funny. Didn't America want to keep listening to Jump forever?

Apparently, not.

Look. I'm not going to lie to you. I was 11 years old this week in Top 40 history, and I loved the fuck out of some Footloose soundtrack. I saw the move in the East Side theater in Brockton, Massachusetss, and I rode my bike while listening to the soundtrack on my walkman, pedaling my ass off while listening to "Holding Out For a Hero." But in the cold light of adulthood, I can hear this song as overproduced musical theater garbage being propped up by a music video that makes the song appear way more exciting than it actually is. Even the movie (and if you've seen the video, you've basically seen the movie) is just an updated Rebel Without a Cause (only this time the rebel HAS a cause, and that cause is...PROM). Prom is bullshit; it gets a 1.Footloose is bullshit; it gets a 2.  Kenny Loggins is also bullshit (except for House at Pooh Corner because I'm a dad and fuck you I'm not crying right now you're the one that's crying). Kudos to that ugly little weasel for having the good sense not to appear in his video. He's doing three dates in Las Vegas next month if you want to go and heckle him. Otherwise you'll have to wait until June when he plays the Global Event Center at Winstar World Casino and Resort in Thackerville, Oklahoma. What is success really?