Monday, February 8, 2010

An imminent attack upon my heart I fear


67. Lene Lovich - "New Toy" (Stiff, 1981)
66. Lene Lovich - "Lucky Number" (Stiff, 1978)

Now that I've fully humiliated myself with my previous post, maybe I've ruined my chances of anyone reading this ever appreciating the wonderful Ms. Lene Lovich (I should have written this one first). As I said, when my best friend's mother gave me Stateless on vinyl, it rocked my world, and I listened to it pretty exclusively for a few months. These days, it makes a regular rotation every month or two, and hasn't lost a bit of its magic. Why she didn't completely blow up in the 80s will forever remain a mystery to me. All the components were there, but there might have been something about her performance arty way of doing things that turned people off. She wore brightly colored braids she fashioned into bows atop her head, performing her songs as if she was playing the lead in a fucked up gothic version of Grease, and occasionally involving half naked men and buckets of blood. So she did all of this, and made great pop music, and failed.

Yet some greater force allows Lady Gaga to remain alive, and successful. God is dead.

Tell me this song shouldn't have been a major anthem of 1980s materialism, Madonna be damned.


And finally, her biggest hit (to date mind you, she still makes music and I'm still waiting for her to blow up), "Lucky Number." Lovich once joked the song would have had more international success if there wasn't a chorus of men chanting "number two" at the end, but it makes her silliness even more endearing.

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