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within earSHOT
"It had a chorus and parts? but it took a while to wrestle the whole song together." During a VH1 special, former teen dream singer Rick Springfield was reliving the birth of the song "Jessie's Girl." Music television had reached a brand new low. When the former Aussie singer/General Hospital regular, now a salt-and-pepper-haired old guy, starts discussing the intricacies of a line like, "You know I feel so dirty when they start talking cute/ I wanna tell her that I love her but the point is probably moot" - you know you've hit rock bottom. But guilty pleasures like Springfield have become the next wave of pop culture retread - from a Guilty Pleasures radio show on Philly's WXPN to an issue of Entertainment Weekly dedicated to "Guilty Pleasures" (featuring Baywatch babe Yasmine Bleeth on the cover) to VH1's latest cavalcade of musical carnage. MTV's Beavis and Butthead may have been the first to revel in the worst, but VH1 has devoted much of its lineup to the baddies but goodies: besides Guilty Pleasures (hosted by Melrose Place cheeseballs), 8-Track Flashback revives everyone from Bobby Sherman to the Village People, and the ABBA documentary is almost a weekly event. We're becoming a nation who doesn't just like "bad" music; we flaunt it. (The balding Bee Gees unplugged? Now there's Staying Alive.) EarSHOT wanted to take it one step further. Forget about the music you hate to love, what about the music you love to hate? This would be no Guilty Pleasures issue (unless, of course, you're talking about "Guilty," the duet between Barbra Streisand and Barry Gibb). We didn't want to celebrate the songs you play when you're alone and no one's listening. We wanted to examine the songs you'd NEVER listen to. The Very Worst. On the cover you'll find cartoonist Ward Sutton's interpretation of the "worst"; in our "Worst List" ever, national and local critics give us lists of the bands that make 'em squirm; in "In Studio" Neil Gladstone talks to engineers who've had to record the very worst; and we even examine some of the worst rock hair throughout the ages. My worst list? It all took place during one horrible ski trip to Big Boulder in the very early '80s. I don't hate to ski, but frankly, I'd almost always rather be sitting in the lodge sipping hot chocolate (or better yet, a hot buttered rum with a hot buttered ski instructor, but never mind). Anyway, for me, bad music is synonymous with riding up the lift at Big Boulder in the early '80s, freezing my ass off, losing my pole, terrified of trying to ski without it, and listening to the music which pumped out of the little speakers: Christopher Cross' "Sailing"; that Piña Colada song by Rupert Holmes; Toto's "99"; Dan Hill's "Sometimes When We Touch" (a song that induces shingles) and Kenny Loggins' "This Is It." Just thinking about that music brings back the feeling once again. I feel very cold, very scared. Here's hoping this issue gives you a few shivers, too.
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