Boy Meets Girl - Waiting For a Star to Fall

Long time readers will know that we like to feature lots of different types of music on ERV, including well-crafted pop songs.  While "Waiting For a Star to Fall" would be more at home on VH1 than MTV, it is an excellent example of 1980s lite rock and has a cool backstory to boot.

Boy Meets Girl was the songwriting team of George Merrill and Shannon Rubicam.  The married (at the time) couple met at a wedding, and became a personal and professional couple.  While they released an album in 1985, they were best-known as the songwriters behind the Whitney Houston hits "How Will I Know" and "I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)."

"Waiting For a Star to Fall" was inspired by an actual shooting star that Rubicam had seen at a Whitney Houston concert.  The song was originally offered to Houston, but her team passed, as they were moving in a more R&B direction.  The song was then offered to Belinda Carlisle, who made a demo recording, but decided not to release the song.

As a result, when Boy Meets Girl released their second album, 1988's Reel Life, they were able to include the song.   "Waiting ..." would go on to become the duos' signature song and biggest hit, reaching #5 on the charts, while the Reel Life album peaked at #50.

Sadly, the couple then went through a rough patch -- their third album, 1990s New Dream was not released by their label, and they divorced in the early 2000s.  However, their professional collaboration continues to this day, we believe.

Cool trivia fact:  The blonde girl in the video is the couple's daughter

Cool trivia fact #2:  Boy Meets Girl is not a one hit wonder, as "Oh Girl," from their self-titled 1985 debut, hit #39 on the charts.

As an added bonus, here is Belinda Carlisle's demo recording of the same song:

BulletBoys - Smooth Up In Ya

BulletBoys are your basic late 1980s pop metal band, and we'll admit that we have a soft spot for them, even if they did come off as a mimeographed Van Halen.  The band formed in LA (of course) in 1987, and were led by Marq Torien, who had previously been a member of Ratt and King Kobra.

The band's self-titled debt and early videos tried to duplicate the Van Halen formula, right down to Torien doing his best David Lee Roth impression.  It didn't hurt that their first three albums were produced by Ted Templeman, who also produced Van Halen's first 6 albums.

Drafting off the huge popularity of pop metal and Van Halen, BulletBoys found their audience, and the debut record hit #34 on the album charts, while "Smooth Up In Ya" (#71) and a cover of the O'Jays "For the Love of Money" (#78) both broke the top 100.  The band's second LP charted, but changing tastes and weaker material consigned them to working band status, were they continue to this day.

Coll trivia fact:  BulletBoys did a surprisingly solid version of Tom Wait's "Hang On St. Christopher," on their 1991 album, Freakshow.

Vanity 6 - Nasty Girl

Long time reader and commenter Sam requested Vanity 6, and we figured: why not?  I mean who doesn't like your basic story about sex and drugs and rock & roll, with ties to Prince and The Time.

The Vanity 6 story begins in the early 1980s with Prince.  By this point Prince is a star on the rise (note that ERV has previously featured "Dirty Mind" and "Controversy," which are great examples of his early work).  He is also a prolific songwriter, and starts working on side projects to manufacture additional creative outlets.

The first project is The Time, featuring vocalist Morris Day.  While The Time was an actual band, Prince (using the pseudonym Jamie Starr) wrote the songs and recorded all of the parts (except for the vocals).  This gave Prince a different band, but one where he had total creative control.

Around the same time, Prince decides to create a female band (called The Hookers) to perform hyper-sexual songs while wearing lingerie.  (Early 1980s Prince was way into sex and about as subtle as artillery about it.)  The original band (with three of Prince's lady friends) progressed to the point of making demos when Prince met Vanity (given name: Denise Matthews) a Canadian model and B movie actress.  Prince was smitten, he and Denise became an item and Denise eventually was renamed Vanity.  Prince then made Vanity the lead singer of his female trio and named them Vanity 6 (after the number of breasts in the band ... seriously).  The backup singers from The Hookers (Brenda Bennett and Susan Moonsie) remained in the band.

Vanity 6 goes into the studio (with his Purpleness, of course) and emerges with their 1982 self-titled debut album.  The LP hits #45 on the charts, while "Nasty Girl" becomes a dance hit but does not break the top 100.  Vanity 6 (with The Time backing them up) tour with Prince and the Revolution during their 1983 1999 tour, but Vanity eventually breaks up with Prince and develops a major drug problem.  She then leaves Prince and the group to go out on her own.

Prince re-creates the band as Apollonia 6 for Purple Rain, using the same backup singers, and new music that was originally intended for Vanity 6.  Eventually, Prince and Apollonia break up, and it seems that Prince's interest in designing a girl group also fades over time.  Vanity ends up as an addict, nearly dies, and becomes a religious Christian.  She has gone back to her given name and left the industry.

So there you go -- the Crib Notes version of Vanity 6.  The video is a bit NSFW, and we went with the extended version because it is rarer, but it also has some additional NSFW dialog at the end.

Phil Collins - I Missed Again

Phil Collins has to be one of unlikeliest rock stars ever.  As many readers will know, Collins started as the drummer in Genesis, then became the lead singer when Peter Gabriel left (and the band couldn't find anyone better to sing).  Over time, Genesis transformed from a progressive rock band to a pop band and became enormously successful.

While the band's commercial success continued to grow, Phil Collin's personal life was deteriorating; he actually took a leave of absence from Genesis to work on his marriage.  Unfortunately, things did not work out and his (first) wife filled for divorce in 1979.  Collins then did what many artists would do under similar circumstances: he poured himself into his work.  The result was a bunch of new songs, some of which appeared on Genesis' 1980 album Duke (most notably,  "Misunderstanding").  Eventually, his record label got word of the material, and offered Collins a solo contract.

Work on the Face Value album began in 1979 and took two years.  While the material was primarily based on  the failure of his marriage, Collins softened the approach over time, and the result was a tremendously successful album.  The Face Value LP hit #7 on the charts, and went on to sell 5 million units in the U.S.  Interestingly, both "In the Air Tonight" and "I Missed Again" peaked at #19 on the U.S. charts.

Collins would go on to have more top 40 hits in the U.S. than any other artist during the 1980s.  He also is one of only three artists to have sold more than 100 million units both as a solo artist and as a member of a band.  The other two?  Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson.  On the personal front, things have not been quite as smooth; Collins was divorced from his third wife in 2008.  Sadly, Phil Collins announced his retirement from music in 2011.

A special shout out to ERV reader Sean, who requested this one a while back.

Below is original video, with Collins playing all of the instruments, air style.

As a special extra, we also have an audio of the demo track of the song, with the original lyrics.  Note that the original title of the song was "I Miss You, Babe."  It is also worth pointing out how much more downbeat the original demo was.

'Til Tuesday - Coming Up Close

While 'Til Tuesday started out as a new wave band, they quickly evolved into folk-rock artists, shaped by the strong songwriting of bassist/lead singer Aimee Mann.  As many readers will know, the band is best known for their 1985 hit "Voices Carry," and is often (incorrectly) though of as a one hit wonder.  In fact, they had two top 40 hits (1986's "What About Love" being the second) and three additional top 100 songs, including "Coming Up Close."

'Til Tuesday formed in Boston in 1982, and started to really gain traction when they won the WBCN Rock & Roll Rumble in 1983. [WBCN was the major rock station in Boston, and the Rock & Roll Rumble was essentially a battle of the bands.]  This led to a recording contract with Epic and the band's debut album, 1985's Voices Carry, became a top 20 album, while the eponymous single broke the top 10.

From there, the band's success steadily waned, primarily due to their musical shift to a more folk-driven sound.  Interestingly, critics were generally supportive of the new direction, something that has followed Aimee Mann throughout her career.  The band's second LP, 1986's Welcome Home peaked at #49 and their 1988 album, Everything's Different Now topped out at #124.  The band broke up soon afterwards, although Aimee Mann has remained active as an independent musician, releasing critically acclaimed albums that sell well, but do not break the top 30.

"Coming Up Close" is a gently sad song that foreshadows the future direction of Mann and 'Til Tuesday.  The video is a simple performance piece that allows the listener to focus on the music, something that we suspect was intentional.  And with all due respect to "Voices Carry," we believe that "Coming Up Close" is the strongest song that 'Til Tuesday recorded.

Cool trivia fact:  As long time readers and music aficionados will know, Aimee Mann is married to Michael Penn ("No Myth"), who was featured on ERV in November 2012.  The "No Myth" post also discusses the dreaded Best New Artist curse (not to be confused with the Dread Pirate Roberts).

Cool trivia fact #2:  At the 1983 WBCN Rock & Roll Rumble, Digney Fignus (featured on ERV in August, 2011 and well worth checking out) was a semi-finalist.

Eddy Grant - Romancing the Stone

"Romancing the Stone" wasn't Eddy Grant's biggest U.S. hit, but we love to feature rare videos at ERV, and there is a method to our madness.  Anyhow, that's out story and we're sticking to it.  Grant, who was born in Guyana (perhaps the only artist on ERV from that country) has had a long and interesting career performing music that combined traditional Caribbean music (calypso, reggae and soca, in particular) with R&B, funk and rock.  The result eventually became called ringbang and is closely associated with Grant.

Of course, in addition to his diverse music, Eddy Grant also floated in and out of the charts, particularly in Britain (his family moved to London when he was a child).  He had 7 top 40 hits in the U.K. as a solo artist, plus 6 more as the main songwriter of The Equals, who were successful in the U.K. in the late 1960s and early 1970s.  Grant is also known for his political lyrics, especially on the topic of apartheid.

American audiences will mostly know Grant for his 1982 hit "Electric Avenue," which went to #2 on the charts.  "Romancing the Stone" (written for the movie of the same title) was also a top 40 hit in the U.S., as it reached #26 in 1984.  Unfortunately, there seems to have been a dispute with the movie's producers, as the song was not included in the movie (except for the guitar solo) and did not appear on the soundtrack.

As an interesting aside, we would recommend Romancing the Stone (the movie).  It is a funny action adventure movie that does not take itself too seriously, and is well cast (Kathleen Turner in her prime, for instance).  The backstory to the movie is quite sad, as screenwriter Diane Thomas worked as a waitress for years while developing the script.  Her big break came when she pitched the story to a customer (Michael Douglas), which led to major success.  Sadly, she was killed in a car accident the following year, and never wrote another screenplay.

Eddy Grant made two videos for the song, as a result of the dispute with the producers.  The first video features clips from the movie (and supernatural guitars, as Grant's guitar can apparently transform from a machete and change the weather if a suitcase is thrown at him):

The second video is just Eddy and a corpse (I think).  Not sure where this idea came from, but probably not the best.

Wall of Voodoo - Mexican Radio

We have no idea who at MTV liked this quirky number, but somehow "Mexican Radio" went into heavy rotation for a time on the video music channel.  Helped by the exposure, the song reached #58 on the charts (the band's only top 100 hit), while the Call of the West album peaked at #45 (the band's only top 100 album).

Wall of Voodoo was a new wave band from LA., and originally formed in the late 1970s as a soundtrack company.  The band's new wave approach, laid back vocals (almost talk-singing) and unusual music has led some to compare them to Devo, which is not totally unfair.  I.R.S. Records (now who remembers them?) signed the band in 1980, and Wall of Voodoo's first EP had a cover of Johnny Cash's  "Ring of Fire" that generated some buzz.  While the band had some Western influences, their music is a bit tough to categorize; overall they were darker and more complex than one would expect from this song.

At any rate, "Mexican Radio" was the lead single from the band's second LP, Call of the Wild.  The concept for the song came from the Mexican radio stations that the band used to listen to on AM radio in their car.  In fact, the Spanish segments of the song were recorded from these stations.  Similarly, the video was shot on the cheap, in Tijuana (in retrospect, we think that this helped the video).  Overall, the video does a great job of capturing the eccentric song -- and we have to point out the "face in beans" scene (around 3:33) that was an iconic early MTV image.

Unfortunately, frontman Stan Ridgway left Wall of Voodoo in 1983, right after their appearance at the US Festival.  The band continued for a couple of years before calling it quits.  While Ridgeway did not have much success as a solo artist, he carved out a successful career scoring films.

Hilly Michaels - Calling All Girls

Unless you are a big time music aficionado, the name Hilly Michaels probably doesn't mean much to you.  This is a shame, because Hilly had a really interesting, slightly crazy career that includes 2 good hyper-bubblegum albums and a ton of jobs as a session drummer.

Hilly (given name: Michael Hillman) started drumming in the late 1960s with Michael Bolton and went on to work with Sparks, Dan Hartman ("Instant Replay"), Ellen Foley and Ian Hunter ("All of the Good Ones Are Taken"), among others.  In 1980 he released his first solo album, Calling All Girls.  Produced by Roy Thomas Baker (famous for his work with The Cars and Queen), Calling All Girls is critically acclaimed for its uptempo new wave popiness.  The album is filled with well-crafted pop songs and features appearances by Liza Minnelli (really), Elton John, Greg Hawkes (Cars) and G.E. Smith (SNL).

The "Calling All Girls" video was an early classic on MTV and it is not hard to see why.  In addition to the catchy pop song, the vibrant animation really distinguishes this video from other of the era.  In fact, "Calling All Girls" was the 93rd song ever played on MTV (the first day), and it remained an early favorite of the channel for some time.

In spite of the strong material, the album did not connect with listeners and Hilly's second album, 1981's Lumia did not fare any better.  Hilly remained active for years as a session drummer, before leaving the industry to live in the Caribbean and then Florida for a number of years.  He still performs one a somewhat unpredictable basis to the present day.

Cool trivia fact: Hilly's manager was Jake Hooker.  That name doesn't ring a bell?  Well, Hooker was the guitarist of the Arrows, famous for writing and recording the original version of "I Love Rock 'n' Roll," later made famous by Joan Jett & the Blackhearts.  [The link will magically transport you to the March 2012 ERV blog post featuring the original and the cover.]

Cool trivia fact #2:  Michaels was asked to join KISS twice -- in 1980 and in 1990.  He declined both times.

Keith Richards - Take It So Hard

Man, it is hard to figure out how to start a blog post about Keith Richards.  Aside from the fact the he is seemingly indestructible (from a drug standpoint, at least), we are talking about one of the greatest rock songwriters ever.  [We're particularly partial to the guitar lines in "Happy," "Brown Sugar," "Satisfaction," and "Gimme Shelter," just for starters.]

However, the mid-1980s were a difficult time for the Rolling Stones.  Mick Jagger wanted to move towards a more updated, poppy sound, and when Richards resisted, Jagger effectively went out on his own.  [Regular ERV readers will recognize that truckloads of lead singers go out on their own, almost always to the detriment of themselves and their band.]  By 1986, the situation came to a head, and Jagger refused to tour or support the Stones Dirty Work LP, instead focusing on his solo record.  At that time it was unclear if the Rolling Stones would continue as a band.

This led to Richards deciding to do his own solo record (his first); the result was the 1988 album, Talk Is Cheap.  While the songs do not measure up to the late 1960s / early 1970s masterpieces (what does?), the record produced some of the best Richards material in years.  He co-wrote the album with Steve Jordan, and set up a band (the Xpensive Winos) to record and tour.

"Take It So Hard" was the lead single and does a great job of recapturing some of the Richards magic (man, does he have a feel for great riffs ...)  The video is a shot of the band performing after a nuclear holocaust has presumably destroyed everything except Keith and the band.  (Given Richards apparent invulnerability  this seems like a shockingly plausible scenario, actually ...)

Of course, the Stones were able to get it together and have continued to periodically record and tour as of this writing.  Richards released one additional solo album, 1992's Main Offender, before re-focusing his efforts on the Stones.

The Stones dark and cool video for "Undercover of the Night" was posted on ERV in June, 2015.

Public Image Ltd - Rise

It's nearly impossible to talk about John Lydon without mentioning the Sex Pistols.  While the Sex Pistols were only together for a few years (and one studio album), they helped define the punk movement.  As the frontman for the band, Lydon (then going by Johnny Rotten) became of the most visible punk rockers in the world during the movement's heyday, making him an important and influential artist.

To his credit, Lydon did not attempt to form the Sex Pistols part two after the band fell apart.  Instead, he created a new band, Public Image Ltd (PiL) who have recorded using various interesting and eclectic styles.  Some critics have taken to calling this "post-punk," but that feels like a lazy way to characterize the music.  It seems to us that what Lydon did was take a punk attitude and try to translate it to other genres of music.  We don't think that it was always successful, but it was always interesting.

"Rise" was a 1986 single off the PiL LP called Album.  Stylistically, it is almost a punk folk song, if there is such a thing.  The lyrics were influenced by the apartheid system in South Africa (not unlike the "Sun City"  previously featured on ERV).  Hence the references to skin and torture.  The song ended up becoming one of PiL's biggest hits, and reached #11 in the UK.  It didn't chart in the U.S.