Do you like cheesy music. Like REALLY cheesy music

1. "Do you remember when we used to sing "shalalalalalalalalalalala lalala lala oh yeh?" is the laziest lyric ever.

2. How many girls in this world have got brown-eyes huh? Probably squillions! He may as well have called the song "Girl With Feet" or something equally roundabout.

3. Brown-eye?! My days!

4. The song sucks and the riff is annoying.

every now and then when i'm alone at home i'd put all of those on and sing along.

WTF WTF WTF WTF WTF WTF WTF

that was the most OFF the money comment ever!

this song needs locking in a vault along with sodding American pie and all the other songs DL mentions which are just shitty chances for wacky zany types to show just how wonderfully bubbly they can be, the utter utter tw@ts

Thus I win!

it's just not what songs are like nowadays

of course there'll be people dancing for joy when carwash/jump around/etc. comes on, they're famililar with it, they're having a good time, they want to dance.

it's like when some indie kids hears The Smiths or pixies something at an indie disco they go nuts. wouldn't you think wtf?

YMCA is good coz it has actions.

Brown Eyed Girl is horrible.

American Pie is overlong and ppl *will* sing along with it, won't they? But the lyrics are interesting and well thought out. No Porkpie I had no idea it had actions!

What do ppl think of Hi Ho Silver Lining?

I never liked Abba, though.

Oh dear Chris. That doesn't sound like the best fun ever. Surely a surreptitious kick in the nuts 'oops sorry' would have been the way to go.

None of these records approach the sheer awfulness of Kung Fu Fighting though. One of the good things about the recent revival in genuinely good chart pop is that its helping to sweep away stuff like this from the nation's provincial clubs and student discos.

1. It's a great harmony that's as sweet as kissing a pretty literature student after a couple of glasses of wine.
2. Saying "You're my brown-eye girl" is like saying "Girl With Feet, You're Mine". but it doesn't sound quite as good though? i mean we're talking poetry here.
3. so being able to make an innuendo out of two words in the song makes it shit?!?!?!??!?!!?! wtf?!??!?!?!?!?!?1
4. The song rocks and the way the bass riff is ripped off of Dock of the Bay is like how Zombie Nation's riff was ripped off from Beethovan's 5th Symphony i.e. they're totally different.

There is, however, no excuse for ever wanting to hear American Pie in any incarnation again.

Is it overplay? I think it may well be. On my MP3CD is Ballroom Blitz = just as campy, fun-loving and nonsence-filled as the above, just hasn't been played to death. Oui?

(xpost)

Hi Ho Silver Lining I like just for the solo - I love it when guitarists play so far within themslves that you think they've forgotten hoe to play for a bit.

i have no idea whether everyone hated these hits when it came out. but the point is that they have been made, some of them are good and it's a crime to dance to songs before your time??????

jesus! i apologise now for ever having danced at any indie clubs and that how does it feel to be loved place. gosh. i'm lucky i guess i was alive at least when the smiths were around, which makes it ok to dance to them still.. i never listened to them when i was seven years old though.

do people really dance to crappy cheesy songs to pretend that they're INTERESTING?!?!?!?!?!

1. More like a drunken snog with a literature student after she collapsed on the floor and was "a little bit sick".
2. We're not talking poetry if the chorus goes "shananananananananannana oh yeh".
3. All I think about when I hear this song is bojmir backwards.
4. What is better: Zombie Nation or Beethoven's Fifth (which has been ripped to death anyway)

so i understand his hatred for the song.

but hating people merely dancing to it? talk about spoiling a party!

I'm saying: hating the people who like the song spills over, into hating the song.

Maybe the good people of ILX can clear this up... when exactly did these actions appear? I don't remember them from the time, and having watched the video for YMCA only a couple of weeks ago while flicking through satellite music channels, they don't appear in the promotional material either...

So who invented them? Did the Village People do them on TotP (or US equivalent)? The first time I saw anybody doing them, that I can remember, was in Wayne's World.

At any rate, considering what the ppl dog latin talks about dance to ironically, I'd think having them put on music they actually think is good could only lead to disaster.

2. When she's wiped the bits of carrot from her mouth, ask your literature student about poetry. Ask her if "SHAALALLAALALYAlaylalyAlaylaylaylyaAuylayualyAHALAAHAHAAUUAHAGAGAHHAGAH" is poetry? Then reply, "because love, whatever it is you vomited up all over the carpet just now - is infinitely more poetic than Van Morrison's pub-brawl bleating.

3. Shiny Erect Penises? Whatever dude! Strange-o.

4. Yes we are losing out on this one. I win ;-)

Matt OTM. I like Brown Eyed Girl though, it's quite sweet. I think if you're going to clubs where they play exactly the same combination of songs every week, then you are just going to rubbish clubs, regardless of what KIND of song they are.

3. Shiny Erect Penises? Whatever dude! Strange-o. Exactly!

4. Yes weyou are losing out on this one. I win ;-)

4. Yes weyou are losing out on this one.

You suck balls. I win ;-)

Maybe these songs did start as perfectly innocent pop songs. I guess I used to quite like "Stuck In The Middle With You" but now it gives me the rage.

And if a night is advertised as "Cheesy" and people go to it, then yes it is frigging irony of the lowest order. A lot of students I knew admitted to listening to cheese exclusively.

if a billion english students think otherwise i must be right.

And no Mark, he didn't, if he had he'd have lost the arms

this thread is dumb. i'm going off to post to I don't mind everything.

I'd say that was kitsch, not cheese.

i think the people who go all WHOOOOO to 'i touch myself' every week probally fall in the 'owns 12cds people' so its best to leave them alone anyways cause they have no soul.

The majority of the old songs on this thread which are overplayed played so much have cultural "baggage" attached to them which has contributed to their continued popularity. It could also contribute to the hatred felt towards them and the ppl who like them as well. I think we can take the "familiarity breeds contempt" factor as the major one - at least, I don't see many of you rushing to disagree with me - but we would be simplistic to think that it is the only one.

YMCA for example...it's not just a cheery song with actions, it's a song by a very unusual group. Gay diso isn't unusual in itself, but Village People dress up as the cowboy, construction worker &c. Not everyone does that! And there's the whole controversy over the YMCA not wanting to be associated with gay disco and the image of itself whoch was being described in the song (they may actually have sued the band, I can't remember the precise details).

And American Pie too...is it about Buddy Holly? What DOES IT ALL MEAN? Didn't Don McClean say "It means I never have to work again"? Or is that an urban myth?

The fact is, you either "buy in" to all this or you don't and even if ppl don't consciously buy in to it ("we're just enjoying / singing along to a song we love", they may say, nonplussed, when someone tells them all the above) still all of the cultural stuff associated with the song is part and parcel of why it became so popular in the first place.

There's also the whole issue of how seriously the artist took themselves. I've no doubt Van Morrison takes himself v. seriously. Jeff Beck may be incandescent with rage (at least until he checks his bank balance) to find that ppl know him for Hi Ho Silver Lining when he's a serious virtuoso guitarist, goddamit, who forfeited fun in his teenage years to perfect the perfect riff in his bedroom.

I think this is U&K to what is and isn't cheese. I don't think Black Lace and Bombalurina are cheese precisely because those ppl *always knew* what they did was throwaway fluff whereas to be cheese something needs to be something taken seriously by the artist at the time which inspires love and loathing of the kind described upthread for years to come.

I don't think a pissed wedding or student party would be too bothered about any cultural signifiers. They just want to have a good time and dance/do routines to songs they know. What they don't want is what killed the club scene: interchangeable, miserable-faced, bald "DJs" who never smile, never acknowledge their audience and bore them to death with their impeccably hip selection of German trance white labels. If DJs don't like having to play "Dancing Queen" or "I Will Survive" for the gazillionth time then they shouldn't do mainstream gigs.

Jeff Beck didn't write "Hi Ho Silver Lining" and therefore hasn't made that much money out of it, performance royalties being much smaller than publishing ones. In any case he played it on Jools Holland's 2003 New Year thing on BBC2 with Solomon Burke, Robert Plant, Tom Jones and Chas & Dave and didn't exactly looked pissed off at doing so.

I don't regard any of this music as "cheese." I regard it as good and enjoyable pop. I wouldn't want to listen to it two dozen times a day but I realise its function in keeping society together.

Although in wider reference to your last paragraph re. Black Lace and Bombalurina - where does that leave the KLF?

Gosh Marcello, for once, I agree with you wholeheartedly.

Is anyone prepared to stick up for this sweaty, hoary old abomination?

it reminds me of an astronaut. I think the song was more highly regarded pre-Commitments, yes?

xpost

It's a crap song anyway - dull and plodding, makes sex sound as sexy as Swanage on a Palm Sunday.

Imagine: "School leaves kids in Doreset, headmaster not to blame."

but am i sick of hearing only 25 'classic' pop songs every time i go dancing in a cheesy club? yes, i am. like liz says, other ABBA (besides dancing queen, i mean) is so much more fun because you haven't been forced to listen to it sixty trillion times.

i never noticed how much billie jean is played, until jim pointed it out to me a few months ago. i haven't been dancing like EVER where it hasn't been played. i'm just tired of it. play different lovely crap pop, please!

p.s. i like american pie. especially the madonna version.

actually, wednesday night was probably the first time in recent memory that they didn't play billie jean. hooray!

the best ABBA out in the club is "Fernando" I think

It's hip to be square, Colette dude.

I don't mind the cheesy music in cheesy music clubs as much as the people. aggressive conservative wankers, at least in the awful "local" ones here anyway. also I partly don't like not liking them because in the past it meant having to go home early on nights out, feeling very conscious of being different. that sounds very teenage, and for the record no I couldn't have just gone and enjoyed it cos my friends were there.

"i feel love"=ruined forever.

i think this happened at Our Disco, Plastic People

Anyway, long story short, it became obvious very quickly that the people I was with only wanted to hear like the same dozen songs that they dance to every New Year's Eve and Memorial Day weekend: Prince, "Seven"; James, "Laid"; "Freedom '90," George Michael, and other shit I'll kill someone if I ever have to hear again.

I eventually let my friend Brian take over (actually, he sort of forced me out of the booth, but that's another story) so that he could satisfy the crowd. It was really depressing. I complained about it, and people accused me of wanting to use the opportunity solely to introduce people to new music -- which wasn't true, exactly. I mean, every DJ likes to impress people with what he's playing, but I also just wanted people to dance. I thought I'd picked good tunes for people to move their bodies (and let it be known that I'm no hardcore dance fan: the stuff I wanted to play was HARDLY obscure); but people just weren't in the mood.

for me that song is forever tainted from the time my family went to sea world in san diego. it was incredibly, unbelievably scorching hot outside, and i was in a bad mood.
we went to the dolphin show. while the dolphins did their schtick there was this obnoxious emcee/host guy with a cowboy hat and an acoustic guitar playing a medley of badly mangled oldies (including 'brown-eyed girl'). that moment was when my 'bad mood' turned to outright morbid depression.

It's a crap song anyway - dull and plodding, makes sex sound as sexy as Swanage on a Palm Sunday.

But it's not about sex!! If anything it's about being refused sex, which *is* very dull and crap, so it's at least thematically coherent if nothing else.

One thing though - often the noisy people complaining are a vocal minority. Bear in mind that there are often other people who are as sick as you are with hearing 'Blister in the Sun' or whatever.

I don't mind friends who say "Ronan put on .........." something they know I have or whatever, but people going "have you got anything I know?" or "don't just play stuff nobody knows" etc drives me up the wall.

I mean one of my best friends who's just home this week after 2 years away, he's not necessarily INTO music and knows very little or whatever, but at least the guy is open to hearing something new. Within 5 minutes of me playing Smallville he asked what it was and if he could have a copy.

I guess people who don't want to discover something new really bug me, as much as I'm sure everyone myself included is guilty of the same from time to time.

Also why in the world is "Fernando" the best ABBA CLUB song? That makes no sense. I would like to go to one good 80s night (read: not at a horrible stupid LES bar that is being all ironic or something) that plays Gang of Four, and not "I Love A Man In A Uniform" though this weekend we did harrass the DJ at Ding Dong into playing that for some weird reason. I think because me and Ian just wanted to yell "So I got into camoflauuuuuuuuuuge" but anyway, there are way too many clubs that just play the same songs over and over and over again.

One time we went to Culture Club and they played Summer of 69 three times before I gave up and went to the hi-NRG floor.

I think, in hindsight, that yes I do like chessy music. I'm always tempted to buy Aqua and Ace of Base CD's.

that is to both Lauren and Jel's posts.

you do mean melody, right? Van doesn't do much with it, but more agile performers - John Andersen, Jimmy Buffett - reveal its sprightliness.

2. Saying "You're my brown-eye girl" is like saying "Girl With Feet, You're Mine".

ok, but in Ireland?

3. Think about the connotations of "brown-eye" for a moment Ken C - I know you can do it.

zzz

4. The song blows and the bass riff is ripped off of Dock of the Bay.

i'm not sure you need even a basic understanding of music theory to know that the bass riffs have nothing to do with one another, except in the broadest sense in which they are both the same as 100s of other pop songs.

yes, it's way overrated and annoyingly too familiar to many people, but it's by no means a bad song.

why did he start singing like he was shouting across a pub?

Seriously OTMFnM.

*this is the only part of the song I like
*I love this part of the song
*I used to think he was saying BIG BLACK BIG BLACK and I was like "wtf are you a time traveling indie rocker?"

songs that should be played more often in clubs:

Talk Dirty To Me by Poison
Kiss Me Deadly by Lita Ford
I Cry For You by Bobby Orlando
Passion by the Flirts
Major Tom (Original German Version) by Peter Schilling
all of the KLF songs that have that stupid cheeseball string orchestra section that is in like 7 of their songs
Cosmic Cowboy by Barry McGuire
No Easy Way Out by Survivor
Living in America by James Brown
Dancing in the Dark!!!!!!!
Ruby Don't Take Your Love To Town by Kenny Rogers
Hello Hello It's Good To Be Back by Gary Glitter
Too Much Blood (Extended Mix) by the Rolling Stones
Adolescent Sex by Japan
Separate Ways by Journey
The Twist by Klaus Nomi
White Lines by Duran Duran
Anyplace Anywhere Anytime by Nena and Kim Wilde
Murder on the Dancefloor by Sophie Ellis Bextor
anything from I Sing The Body Electro
every 4th or 5th song is either by Guitar Wolf or Mensen
In Dreams by Roy Orbison
Your Woman by White Town
Connected by Stereo MCs
Der Mussolini by DAF (note: this only applies to clubs that are not awful trucker-hat'n post-punk irony bars)
Please Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood (Full Version) by Santa Esmerelda
Come Up And See Me (Make Me Smile) by Steve Harvey or something like that and the Cockney Rebels
Clash songs that are NOT ROck the Casbah (80s nite only)
Up On Cripple Creek by the Band
Centerfield by John Fogerty
Young Hearts Run Free by Candi Station
I Think I'm In Love With You by Jessica Simpson
Mack the Knife by Bobby Darin
Legend of a Cowgirl by Imani Coppola
Butterfly (Pikachu Mix) by Smile DK

I could keep going but that would involve opening up iTunes and I am teh lazy. You can't tell me that it wouldn't be awesome to get really wasted to that music.

So, what I'm trying to say is, that song is not cheesy it is EVIL BLACK MAGICK.

Nooooooooo....you would hear us this in England enough to not have put this on the list

xpost

when the guitar goes 'dow, da-da-da dang dang' it gets me every time.

OTM.

and hearts of stone.

DUH cuz they speak of the POMPITOUS OF LOVE!

So who invented them? Did the Village People do them on TotP (or US equivalent)? The first time I saw anybody doing them, that I can remember, was in Wayne's World.

I scrolled down and scanned the rest of the thread to determine if this question had been properly answered before actually answering it. From what I've heard (and this story was also related by one of the members of the Village People), the audience on "American Bandstand" (which WAS a bit of an American ToTP) made up the Y-M-C-A arm routine, which because of AB's popularity caused the routine to take off throughout the country.

And no, before you ask, I don't particularly care for the song OR the routine, though if I'm bored thoroughly enough at some reception dance or another and just want to do SOMETHING, I can be compelled to look as though I'm actually enjoying it.

1.  "American Pie" always sounded to me like the worst kind of Godfearing Moral Majority nonsense - all that stuff in the second half about "fire is the devil's only friend" etc. etc. Is Don McLean a Republican? Wouldn't surprise me.

Ha ha ha ha ha. I guess this illustrates very clearly how much of a divide there must be between the US and the UK. The way *I* see "American Pie" is that it's clearly a very strum-a-strum-strum hippie anthem a group of individuals might sing around a campfire set up in the middle of some commune somewhere. As for Don McLean -- if he were a dedicated Republican, he wouldn't have made the anti-war comments he made toward the beginning of 2003.

2.  I think I'll go to my grave liking the song "Brown-Eyed Girl". I guess that's because that was a song I quite liked when I was younger and I never really stop liking a song.

3.  When I think of The Committments, I think of their version of "Try a Little Tenderness", which I thought was actually really good. I didn't think much of their "Mustang Sally", though that was partly because I've NEVER really thought much about "Mustang Sally" -- have always thought of it as a bit cringeworthy. But "Try a Little Tenderness" -- wow.

4.  I have to say I never want to hear Billie Jean again.

Amen, Ronan. I personally could DEFINITELY live with never having to hear another Michael Jackson song ever again in my life. Dear Lord. (My mom LOVES MJ's stuff, though. Grrrr.)

5.  Livin On A Prayer is good cheese, too powerful to be bad, too overblown to take seriously, i love it all the same

Argh, stevem, I hate to say this, but I think you've made a good point. Though I would LIKE to think the only cheesy '80s hard rock I'd like enough to actually own ALBUMS of or from is the kind performed by Def Leppard, whom I actually like.

6.  This is where I say that "Do the Tighten Up (Pts. 1 & 2)" is godlike. Archie Bell for President and the Drells for shadow cabinet. But it's cheesy!

Amen and aww, that was one of the songs my dad loved!

i don't go to discos or any fun places so now i really want to hear billie jean. twist and shout isn't bad.

Anytime you want to worship at the altar of Lita Ford, call me, yo.

-- Alba

This happened to me. I said I would DJ at my friends birthday party and him and all his producer/ muso mates had been playing breakbeat and dark garage all night. I played a Madonna single and Gary Numan, and people danced. I was happy, but I did apologise for "weddinging" his birthday party.

But Maryann is also wise, though if we were to have music to structure our lives I'd prefer Van Morrison not to be involved.

The trick is to actually like the stuff you play, and also to like seeing people dancing. The more difficult trick is to play the thing that people know, but didn't know they needed to hear.

I have been (provisionally) asked to DJ at a wedding and a 40th birthday party recently - which made me very proud.

well if popularity = cheese than yeah I guess I like some.

holy shit, that's weird. i had a dream last night that i was in a log cabin bar with a bunch of college kids going nuts because missippi state had won the whatever bowl, and sloop john b came over the pa.

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a4_065.html

Revelations as to the Pompitous!

Also, I feel so much pity/sympathy for those of you for whom Mustang Sally means The Commitments -- that has to be a horrible way to live. Hopefully you can be open to the possibility that the original version and the Wilson Pickett version are amazing...but if not, then I capitulate.