The other night, Husband-Man and I were watching VH1's One Hit Wonders of the 80s. The only thing better than the "countdown" shows on VH1 is the show Tough Love (which has quickly become one of my Sunday night guilty pleasures).
I think I watched numbers 100 through 1, really, and it was truly a divine way to spend a few mindless hours. I love 80s music in all of its bubble-gum happiness. It's a representation of how much that decade totally rocked. You simply cannot deny its sheer awesomeness - especially if you lived through it as a teenager yourself. We had neon, legwarmers, and huge hair. We had Ronald Reagan, which meant that people were living pretty damn well and actually able to enjoy the fruits of their labor. I think I may miss Reagan more than the music, but that just shows my age, so I digress.
Now, I've always been a music person. I keep up with what's going on in the music industry, I know who people are, etc. I'm obsessed with my satellite radio and can't be in a car that doesn't have it for more than five minutes. On top of all of that, I have a 15-year old in the house part-time that keeps me on my toes when it comes to music, whether I like it or not. (I swear to God, I've heard Lady Gaga sing Poker Face against my will about 48,296 times - that is a man in drag, right?).
You know what I've noticed? So many of the popular songs these days are blatant rip-offs of songs in my past. Fergalicious (by Fergie, of course) was a total rip-off of Supersonic by JJ Fad (those girls just faded into obscurity, by the way). Dead or Alive sang "Spin Me Round," only to be completely ripped off by a heavy metal group (OK, I sort of like that one a little on accident) and now butchered by Flo Rida.
There's "sampling" everywhere you turn, and my stepson and his friends have absolutely no idea that a lot of what they're listening to is just recycled music wrapped up in their millenial packaging.
With all of this to slightly irritate me, there's only ONE exception of the remake gone good. And, of course, that's No Doubt in their remix of "It's My Life," which just happens to be one of my favorite songs of all time - then and now.
Lucky for me, the old version was in the VH1 countdown, and lucky for you, I'm posting a merging of the two versions. Kind of weird, but kind of cool. Happy Good Friday. Time to tease my hair now.
