New Music Tuesday: Sunny Power Pop Hooks
Sucker for a pop hook? Stay tuned.
Here are some of the hookiest immortal tunes from the warmest days of yore. They’re still sunny and lusty and heartbroken as the summer of now – even if you’re too young to have memories tied to them… like riding your bike to the neighborhood pool with your grade school friends, hoping your crush from the neighborhood would be there, too, relaxing in a chaise lounge, listening to a transistor radio placed just out of splash range.
Lifeguard: “No running..!”
Chaka Khan “Feel For You” (Stevie Wonder on the harp)
[Smell of coconut suntan lotion.]
Marshall Crenshaw “You’re My Favorite Waste of Time”
Lifeguard [annoyed]: “Only one person on the diving board at a time, please!”
Donnie Iris “Ah Leah”
[SFX: portable TV with “General Hospital” on]
Tommy Tutone “Jenny”
“Cannonball!!!”
Jay Ferguson “Thunder Island”
[sucking in gut, girls looking this way]
Paul McCartney & Wings “Coming Up”
[exhausted from laps, sitting on edge of pool, catching breath]
Blondie “The Tide Is High”
Lastly, this pop gem surely would have been a great summer radio hit if the Recess Monkeys had just had the right management (Yes, that’s John Candy, Eugene Levy and Rick Moranis playing their own instruments):
