The Number Fortys: Rick Springfield - "Bop 'Til You Drop"

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). Also, if you want to read the Number in the title as meaning "more numb," I think that's totally understandable at this point.

Since this is the first time, and likely the last time, this column has encountered Rick Springfield, we might as well mention that his 1982 #1 hit Jessie's Girl is a fantastic song. Since this column is devoted to quantitative analysis as well as qualitative, I'll give it a 10.

Sadly, nothing else in Rick's discography gets past a 3. He had eight songs reach the Top 20, and all of them except for Jessie's Girl are uniformly terrible. This one, his last Top 20 hit, is no exception.

In its implicit criticism of life under capitalism, the way we are forced to value our work over our personal relationships, maximizing our earning potential at the expense of sleep or sanity, the song feels eerily prescient. Just wait until the gig economy rolls around, Rick, and we all get to be our tyrannical boss. In this context, "bop 'til you drop" basically means "work without pleasure until you're dead." That's a powerful message. Or it would be if it wasn't accompanied by the blandest excesses of 80's technopop.

Also, it's unclear whether Rick is pro- or con- all this endless work. If it's a protest against the mechanization of human labor, that's great, BUT IT'S NOT THERE IN THE POEM (sorry, had a flashback to a writing workshop I had with Bill Knott). But honestly, Rick could have sung "the world won't be free until the last capitalist is hung using the intestines of the oligarchs for a noose" and this song would still suck. The music is that bad. It's so bad I'm not even going to insult your intelligence by explaining how bad it is. You have ears. You have some semblance of taste.

Instead, I'm going to tell you how this song is from the soundtrack for the movie Hard to Hold, a movie starring, yep, Rick Springfield. Here's the plot summary from Wikipedia.

James "Jamie" Roberts (played by singer, songwriter Rick Springfield), being a pop idol, is used to having his way with women. He meets child psychologist Diana Lawson (Janet Eilber) in a car accident, however, who not only doesn't swoon at his attentions, but has also never heard of him. He tries to win her affection, but it's complicated by the fact that his ex-lover, Nicky Nides (Patti Hansen), is still a member of his band.

Holy shit. That sounds amazingly bad. But don't make my word for it. Let's hear what Rick had to say about it.

I thought the script was so awful that I threw it across the room; I remember physically throwing it across the room and saying, "This is a piece of shit." Then they offered me a lot of money and I remember picking it up and saying, "I can make this work!" [Laughs.] Which I didn't, because it was still a crappy movie, but I did my best in it and I still make jokes about it actually ... That's probably the only time I'll say my ego got the better of me was when I did that film. I said, "I can make this work". 

He didn't. This song doesn't work either.

Score: 1/10

THE NUMBER ONE


We went deep on this last installment when it hit #1. Crazy thing about this song though, even though it sounds like it could have come straight from her autobiography (indeed, it's the title of her biopic), it wasn't written by, or even for, Tina Turner. It was written by a couple of English guys who tried to get Cliff Richard, and then Donna Summer, and then Bucks Fizz to sing it. By the way, if you've never seen/heard Bucks Fizz before, and you're in the mood for some what-the-fuck-was-up-with-england-in-the-early-80s-vibes, go check them out.

And as much as I love Donna Summer, it's unimaginable that a song like this, a song that sounds like it was ripped our of Tina Turner's life, could have been sung any of those artists. And for once in this sick twisted world where nothing ever goes right, this thing actually went right.

There's a great article about how they made the song over at Sound and Sound, the writing and recording and everything. If you've never been over there, go now. You can learn the story of how they added tons and tons of instruments, including live drums, string, etc., and then ended up taking them all out.

Anyway, this song is still a 10.