{"id":1558,"date":"2008-07-15T03:21:56","date_gmt":"2008-07-15T07:21:56","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2009-10-06T15:14:04","modified_gmt":"2009-10-06T15:14:04","slug":"which-band-reduced-rock-n-roll","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/which-band-reduced-rock-n-roll\/","title":{"rendered":"Which Band Reduced Rock &#8216;n Roll to Its Cliched Essence, Bad Company or Foreigner?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Z5_qhnWByA4?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><br \/>\nDid <strong>Foreigner<\/strong> ever express a single couplet of sincere emotion, creativity, or insight? I can&#8217;t think of one instance of anything but the most predictable, cliched &#8220;Rock-like&#8221; lyrics. <\/p>\n<p>I had the misfortune of hearing <strong>&#8220;Juke Box Hero&#8221;<\/strong> over the weekend, while we were hanging at our pool club. I&#8217;d forgotten how much I&#8217;d hated this song, and following a discussion with my 11-year-old son about why I hated <strong>Pat Benetar<\/strong>&#8216;s &#8220;Hit Me With Your Best Shot&#8221;, which he knew through <em>Guitar Hero<\/em> and thought &#8220;wasn&#8217;t that bad,&#8221; all that I hated about the Foreigner song struck home. In the second half of the &#8217;70s, when bands like Foreigner and Benetar hit the scene, there was a rash of Rock lyrics about the so-called Rock life: &#8220;road&#8221; songs, songs about the price of Rock superstardom, songs about &#8220;gettin&#8217; crazy,&#8221; and other songs about general &#8220;wild&#8221; living. Even previously established bands that really had achieved rock stardom, like <strong>The Eagles<\/strong> and <strong>Jackson Browne<\/strong>, got into the act. That stuff rang hollow. It bummed me out. It betrayed what rock &#8216;n roll was supposed to be about.<br \/>\n<!--nextpage--><br \/><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/jtuvXrTz8DY?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><br \/>\nSo I tried to convey some of this stuff to my son. I acknowledged that, although &#8220;Hit Me With Your Best Shot&#8221; was catchy enough, the lyrics were so stupid that I couldn&#8217;t get past them. He looked at me, a little confused. I said, &#8220;Maybe when you&#8217;re older you&#8217;ll expect more from the lyrics and you&#8217;ll know what I mean.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>All the while &#8220;Juke Box Hero&#8221; played in the background, and my boy started laughing at how bad that song was. &#8220;I know this song,&#8221; he laughed as the chorus kicked in, &#8220;this one&#8217;s on <em>Guitar Hero<\/em> too!&#8221; Then he told me that one of his friends loved this song, and he started making fun of his friend&#8217;s taste in music, pointing out other flaws in his budding tastes.<\/p>\n<p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/qQagCZPRk2c?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><br \/>\nYou know, there are times when I note the apples of my life having fallen close to the tree and I recoil, feeling guilty at what hell I&#8217;ve spawn. This was not such a time. I felt a great sense of pride. Then the local Classic Rock station played <strong>Bad Company<\/strong>&#8216;s &#8220;Shooting Star&#8221;, and I began wondering whether Bad Company, who had hits before Foreigner, ever produced a single couplet that was anything but an accumulation of Rock-like cliches. <em>Were they the beginning of the end? Did they first shine a light on how Rock could be completely devoid of meaning and relevance?<\/em> I couldn&#8217;t think of any at that time, although I had to give <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/index.php\/2008\/03\/10\/rth_exclusive_paul_rodgers_seger_inducti\">Paul Rodgers<\/a> props for &#8220;All Right Now&#8221;, his highly meaningful hit song with <strong>Free<\/strong>.<br \/>\n<!--nextpage--><br \/><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/z9OGfBGOCpk?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><br \/>\nI&#8217;m still thinking about whether it was Bad Company or Foreigner who completely reduced rock &#8216;n roll to its cliched essence, adding not a single couplet of insight or emotion. Whether singing insincere odes to imagined hardships of imagined stardom (eg, &#8220;Shooting Star&#8221;); self-absorbed odes to the little people who make a great rock star&#8217;s vital work as troubador possible (eg, Browne&#8217;s &#8220;The Load Out&#8221;); or maybe worse of all, Foreigner&#8217;s stock in trade &#8211; the immediacy of personal relations as medical conditions (eg, &#8220;Urgent&#8221;, &#8220;Head Games&#8221;, &#8220;Cold as Ice&#8221;), these songs were not <em>of<\/em> any of us. The possibility of a vital &#8220;rock congregation&#8221; would be forever threatened. It was Rock as <strong>Televangelism<\/strong>. <\/p>\n<p>Does Bad Company&#8217;s &#8220;Feel Like Making Love&#8221; contain a modicum of soul or personal investment? I sense that it might. Maybe &#8220;Can&#8217;t Get Enough&#8221; too, which seems to have about as much sincere swagger as a mediocre <strong>Lynyrd Skynyrd<\/strong> song, don&#8217;t you think? Perhaps Bad Company initially set out to develop a vital congregation. But Foreigner&#8230; Is there a second half of a couplet that you can&#8217;t see coming from a mile away? Do their lyrics mean anything to anybody, or are they the Rock equivalent of an &#8217;80s direct-to-video movie release, something in that aesthetic netherworld between feature film and softore porn, not possessing the qualities of either form? Their late-period smash hit, &#8220;I Want to Know What Love Is&#8221;, complete with a robed gospel choir for hire, is their apotheosis.<\/p>\n<p>For this discussion to play out, we must agree on some broad definition of meaning and relevance in rock &#8216;n roll lyrics. We will even accept the meaning and relevance of the liner notes by the Style Council&#8217;s mysterious <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/index.php\/2008\/07\/01\/rock-crimes-paul-weller-s-cappucino-kid\">The Cappucino Kid<\/a><\/strong>, OK? With agreement on these points, <em>can you cite a single couplet by Foreigner that is not yet another nail in the coffin of rock &#8216;n roll?<\/em> Or did someone else drive in the final nails &#8211; and nothing else &#8211; first?<\/p>\n<nav class=\"page-links\"><strong>Pages:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/which-band-reduced-rock-n-roll\/\" class=\"post-page-numbers\"><span class=\"page-num\">1<\/span><\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/which-band-reduced-rock-n-roll\/2\/\" class=\"post-page-numbers\"><span class=\"page-num\">2<\/span><\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/which-band-reduced-rock-n-roll\/3\/\" class=\"post-page-numbers\"><span class=\"page-num\">3<\/span><\/a><\/nav>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Did Foreigner ever express a single couplet of sincere emotion, creativity, or insight? I can&#8217;t think of one instance of anything but the most predictable, cliched &#8220;Rock-like&#8221; lyrics. I had the misfortune of hearing &#8220;Juke Box Hero&#8221; over the weekend, while we were hanging at our pool club. I&#8217;d forgotten how much I&#8217;d hated this <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/which-band-reduced-rock-n-roll\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[204],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1558"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1558"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1558\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}