Billy Griffin remembers what it was like at the peak of his music career, when he was an eligible bachelor dating Hollywood starlets. “I would get in my car… and I knew when the girl sat down, I could say ‘You wanna hear my record?’ and I would just turn on the radio. ‘Love Machine’ […]
Cheryl Graham
Crowded House’s ‘Don’t Dream It’s Over’ finds a home in the pop pantheon
Crowded House’s “Don’t Dream It’s Over” is one of the most enduring anthems of the 1980s. Unlike the bombastic power ballads typical of the era, its enigmatic lyrics and quiet dignity make the song timeless. KSID::F3Ua4040404a47
‘Bad Girls’ showcases Donna Summer at her very best
Toot-Toot! Heyyy, Beep-Beep! “Bad Girls,” Donna Summer’s biggest-selling single, may seem on its surface a frivolous disco concoction. The song’s Latin-flavored beat, brassy, exuberant riffs and joyous hooks made it a dancefloor staple and propelled it to the top of the charts, and its onomatopoeic singalong refrain has been getting stuck in people’s heads ever […]
How Thelma Houston’s ‘Don’t Leave Me This Way’ became a cultural touchstone
“Don’t Leave Me This Way” may well be the greatest disco song ever recorded. Thelma Houston’s signature hit topped the U.S. charts in 1977, landed in the Top Ten in more than a dozen other countries, and earned the first Grammy ever awarded to a solo female Motown Records artist. The track also has all […]
‘Tell Me Something Good’ reverses Rufus’ fortunes, and makes Chaka Khan a star
When Stevie Wonder gives you a song, you humbly accept it, thankful for the legendary musician’s interest in your band. Unless, that is, you’re 20-year-old Chaka Khan. “You got anything else?” the Rufus frontwoman asked Wonder after his first offering failed to impress. KSID::F143e24U2
‘All I Wanna Do’ follows a fairytale path to the top
“All I Wanna Do” is one of the most unlikely breakout songs ever released. A pop confection on an album full of earnest roots rockers, it was also an outlier among the grunge and hip-hop that dominated cultural discourse during the first half of the 1990s. Were it not for a series of quirks of […]
