The Life-Changing Magic of Doing Your Friends’ Music Challenges
Because I too long for in-group acceptance, I figured I’d participate in the “20 Songs That Spark Joy” challenge that’s going around. Because I’m indecisive, I’m giving you 25. A supermajority of these are my goateds; others just make me happy. “Joy” is fleeting anyway, and if you define it as some transcendental return-to-uncut-yay like the Lacanian “jouissance” you gotta reckon with it all being downhill from there. Happy works too.
Act now (click on the playlist link) and receive two hours and nine minutes of life-changing magick!
There’s the Reggie Lucas / James Mtume one-two punch of “Never Knew Love Like This Before” and “Borderline,” near-identical lightning caught in a bottle twice. Well okay, one is hornier.
Guns’ “Estranged” is me promising to let myself get as dorky with my picks as I needed to; that band strayed far from God’s light in innumerable ways but I genuinely do take great solace in the ambitions of their Gaga-in-Vegas era, all small-town confusion and Seals & Crofts poptimist heartache and five days a week of therapy. Speaking of Vegas, I’d always hoped Brandon Flowers would mutate into this.
“I’m in Love With a German Film Star,” released January 1981, might well be a rote exercise of Europhile detachment in that mysterious dimension where the ’80s slinked around before MTV. But it discovers the early Cure and via osmotic pressure it establishes footing in the divine, thanks to an awkward but steady motorik beat with an emphatic TWO-AND and an immense sprawl folded into its mere four minutes. I still don’t know whether she’s saying “it’s a glamorous world” or “it’s a glamourless world,” and I don’t want to know.
I found “Dark Shadows and Empty Hallways” way back in the file-sharing salad days of the early-to-mid 2000s, most likely on a cheaply produced comp someone had shared of Northern soul flotsam. Apparently Tammy St. John was signed to the Pye label at age 14, and “Dark Shadows” was her third single, released a year later in 1965. The Chad Mitchell Trio would try their hand with it the following year, and their folk-crooner version has its charms too. But St. John’s is giving HIGH melodrama. It’s Cilla Black impatiently wondering “what’s it all about, Alfie?” and the Chantels’ Arlene Smith if “Maybe” were recorded in an empty secondary-school corridor with the lights off and the winter chill moving in.
And also in the early-to-mid 2000s, I put the 12” extended version of Alisha’s freestyle banger “All Night Passion” on a mix CD for a faraway friend, hoping he’d appreciate its driving 808s, its euphoric vaulted-ceiling harmonies, its pitchy and amateurish lead vox that nevertheless stood their ground and demanded focus-pull from 1984’s reigning Queen Boytoy. The recipient listened to the mix CD and sent me an email with the following subject line: “The Ecstasy of St. Alisha.”
September 2023: 25 Songs That Spark Joy
Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band – Cherchez La Femme / Se Si Bon
Patrice Rushen – Haven’t You Heard
Stevie Wonder – Love Light in Flight
Luther Vandross – Never Too Much
Stephanie Mills – Never Knew Love Like This Before
Madonna – Borderline
The Three Degrees – Year of Decision (Tom Moulton Mix)
Nik Kershaw – Wouldn’t It Be Good
Al Stewart – Year of the Cat
Guns N’ Roses – Estranged
Tammy St. John – Dark Shadows and Empty Hallways
Dionne Warwick – (Theme From) Valley of the Dolls
The Passions – I’m in Love With a German Film Star
Magazine – The Light Pours Out of Me
The Fall – Your Heart Out
Carly Rae Jepsen – Run Away With Me
Sheila E. – The Belle of St. Mark
Lumidee – Never Leave You (Uh Oooh, Uh Oooh)
Nelly Furtado – Say It Right
Alisha – All Night Passion (Extended Dance Mix)
Scritti Politti – Wood Beez (Pray Like Aretha Franklin)
The Art Of Noise – Close (To the Edit)
Sister Sledge – Lost in Music (1984 Bernard Edwards & Nile Rodgers Remix)
Joe Jackson – Steppin’ Out
Donna Summer – State of Independence
