{"id":16194,"date":"2012-10-28T12:02:09","date_gmt":"2012-10-28T16:02:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/?p=16194"},"modified":"2012-10-28T17:36:37","modified_gmt":"2012-10-28T21:36:37","slug":"last-of-its-kind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/last-of-its-kind\/","title":{"rendered":"Last of its Kind?"},"content":{"rendered":"<iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/t1lQXF5nsBs?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe>\n<p>I came across this 1981 performance of &#8220;When She Was My Girl&#8221;\u00a0by\u00a0<strong>The Four Tops<\/strong>, on\u00a0<em>Fridays<\/em>, ABC&#8217;s failed answer to\u00a0<em><\/em><em>Saturday Night Live<\/em>. I&#8217;d forgotten this single was released so late, during the period when the romantic grooves made popular by The Sound of Philadelphia and early disco had long turned to Germanic robo-funk and early rap. Someone with a better knowledge of release dates may shoot my thoughts down rightfully, but this song seems like it was released a good 2 or 3 years past its musical style&#8217;s expiration date. I would have thought that <strong>McFadden and Whitehead<\/strong>&#8216;s 1979 hit &#8220;Ain&#8217;t No Stopping Us Now,&#8221; for instance, was the last of its kind. <strong>Smokey Robinson<\/strong>&#8216;s &#8220;Cruisin'&#8221; is another 1979 single that I remember fitting in with the last run of mid-&#8217;70s soul. By 1981, I recall veteran soul artists moving into smooth jazz, stuff like <strong>Grover Washington Jr.<\/strong> and <strong>Bill Withers<\/strong>&#8216; &#8220;Just the Two of Us.&#8221; I suspect many of you won&#8217;t see the difference between that song and this Four Tops number. Oh well.<\/p>\n<p>Can you think of other &#8220;last of its kind&#8221; hit songs, not retro-styled songs by a band like The Stray Cats or records by totally out-of-touch and unpopular local bar bands, but contemporary releases that came on the tail end of a certain movement and managed to make a splash on the charts? For instance, there must be a &#8220;last new wave song&#8221; or a &#8220;last hair metal song&#8221; or a &#8220;last psychedelic song.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I came across this 1981 performance of &#8220;When She Was My Girl&#8221;\u00a0by\u00a0The Four Tops, on\u00a0Fridays, ABC&#8217;s failed answer to\u00a0Saturday Night Live. I&#8217;d forgotten this single was released so late, during the period when the romantic grooves made popular by The Sound of Philadelphia and early disco had long turned to Germanic robo-funk and early rap. <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/last-of-its-kind\/' 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":[206],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16194"}],"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=16194"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16194\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}