In The Number Fortys, we review whatever song was sitting at #40 on the Billboard charts. We began in the first week of January 1984, right around the time this writer became cognizant/obsessive about music, and will continue until we get bored. 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). Also, if you want to read the Number in the title as meaning "more numb," I think that's totally understandable at this point.
This installment, we present to you a song so bad you may never want to listen to music again.
I would rather listen to Shine a Light, or Shine Like it Does, or Shine On You Crazy Diamond, or Shiny Shiny by Haysi Fantayzee, The Sun Is Surely Gonna Shine, or whatever that Blossom theme song was called. I'd even listen to Collective Soul's Shine, which is only half the title that Barry's song is.
Anything but Shine Shine, from Barry Gibb's 1984 album, Now Voyager, which I'm assuming was named after a 50's movie called Now, Voyager. Barry got rid of the comma, the first of many, many lapses of judgement. Hell, even Barry thinks the album sucked.
It's something I always wanted to do, but I never quite felt confident enough to do it. The man who really made me think seriously about it was Irving Azoff, who convinced me that there was possibly a market out there for me. As unhappy about it as we were at the time, we now appreciate why it didn't do well. We worked nine months on that album. That's crazy. I think you lose energy by doing that. The message has to be that we really can't take so long making albums.
That's one message, a kind message, a kinder message than this song deserves. Barry Gibb had done, by this point in his life, plenty of music-related things that could be considered, by some, to be good. This is not one of them.
Fun fact: I think there's some celebrity cameos going on in that video, but the only person I can definitively identify is Jameson Parker, one of the Simon brothers on hit 80's TV show Simon & Simon. It's theme song, taken as a TV theme song rather than an actual piece of music deserves a 7.
Anyway, see if you can find some more celebrities. Mr. Gibb's song is a 0.
THE NUMBER ONE
This is probably the biggest between a #40 and a #1 that we've had so far, quality-wise. We wrote a couple weeks back about what an absolute bucket of scum Prince was as a human, but this song is quite simply one of the most exciting pieces of music ever recorded. You have to admire the way it does everything. Spoken introduction, jet-engine guitar riff, a beat that kicks, sex, melody, a heart-stopping guitar solo, even a little bump & grind at the end. Short of the studio exploding, it's impossible to imagine Prince, or anyone, getting more excitement into a pop song. Some songs reach #1 because they're sweet, or because of their hype, or because everything else around it is so incredibly shitty. Prince reached #1 here, as he did with When Doves Cry, because he had created something so artistically and commercially perfect that I can't imagine how it could have not gone to #1.
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