Song Lyric Sunday was created by Helen Vahdati from This Thing Called Life One Word at a Time and author Jim Adams from A Unique Title For Me is our current guest host. For complete rules or to join in the fun, click here.

The theme for Song Lyric Sunday this week is “Train Songs.”

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Though they retired as a group after forty-three years in 2010, brothers Charlie, Ronnie, and Robert Wilson own a spot in music history as the Gap Band.

They ruled the 80s dance charts with songs like Yearning for Your Love, Burn Rubber on Me (Why You Wanna Hurt Me), Early in the Morning , You Dropped a Bomb on Me, and Outstanding, but it’s their #3 R&B hit from 1983, Party Train that appears in this week’s SLS.

FUN FACT:

• The Gap Band was named after streets (Greenwood, Archer, and Pine) in the historic Greenwood neighborhood in the brothers’ hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma. The group shortened its name to The Gap Band in 1973.
• Party Train is from the group’s seventh album, Gap Band V: Jammin’.
• On August 26, 2005, The Gap Band was honored as a BMI Icon at the 57th annual BMI Urban Awards. The honor is given to a creator who has been “a unique and indelible influence on generations of music makers”. Outstanding alone remains one of the most sampled songs in history and has, astonishingly, been used by over 150 artists.
• Robert Wilson died of a heart attack at his home in Palmdale, California on August 15, 2010, at the age of 53.

The song’s music video starts with the three Wilson brothers driving onto a crowded boardwalk. It then cuts to random people dancing in a boxing ring. During this segment, it periodically cuts back to other people on the boardwalk and beach dancing, including Charlie wading in the ocean water in a speedo. The video ends with an unidentified person filling in a giant yellow ballot (which says “fill in the gap” at the bottom) and selecting “Gap Party” over “Democratic Party” and “Republican Party”. Charlie is then tackled and falls into the water.

Enjoy!

See my Song Lyric Sunday selection for Nesie’s Place!

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Disclaimer: I have no copyrights to the song and/or video and/or hyperlinks to songs and/or videos and/or gifs above. No copyright infringement intended.

Song Lyric Sunday was created by Helen Vahdati from This Thing Called Life One Word at a Time and author Jim Adams from A Unique Title For Me is our current guest host. For complete rules or to join in the fun, click here.

The theme for Song Lyric Sunday this week is “Clothing/Hat/Pants/Scarf/Shirt/Shoes/Tie.”

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Still going with the theme in the group’s name instead of the song because who doesn’t love Men Without Hats?

The Canadian group had already enjoyed success in Canada with The Safety Dance when it was released in the U.S.  in March of 1982. It became an even bigger hit in the U.S. spending four weeks at its peak position of number 3 in September and October 1983, and staying on the Billboard Hot 100 for 24 weeks.  It also reached number 1 on Cash Box, as well as number 1 on the Billboard Dance Chart.

FUN FACT:

• One of the theme words, hats, is actually used in the song in the second verse – “And we can dress real neat, from our hats to our feet…”
• The song was written by lead singer Ivan Doroschuk after he had been kicked out of a club for Pogo dancing. (A  dance in which the dancers jump up and down, while either remaining on the spot or moving around; the dance takes its name from its resemblance to the use of a pogo stick, especially in a common version of the dance, where an individual keeps their torso stiff, their arms rigid, and their legs close together. People sometimes got injured when pogoing, but, more often than not, pogoers who fall to the ground are helped up instead of getting trampled.

The music video is notable for its English folk revival imagery, featuring Morris dancers, Mummers, Punch and Judy and a maypole. It was filmed in the village of West Kington, in Wiltshire, England. Ivan Doroschuk is the only member of the band actually to perform in the video. Doroschuk, and others in the video, can be seen repeatedly forming an “S” sign by jerking both arms into a stiff pose, one arm in an upward curve and the other in a downward curve, apparently referring to the first letter in “safety”. The Morris dancers seen in the video were the Chippenham Town Morris Men, performing a dance called Monkton Park. The dwarf actor is Mike Edmonds, whose T-shirt in the video shows the Rhythm of Youth album cover. The identity of the young blonde woman by the name of Jenny seen dancing in the video remained unknown until 2013, when she was identified as Louise Court, a journalist who served as editor-in-chief at Cosmopolitan and became a director at Hearst Magazines UK in 2015.

Enjoy!

See my Song Lyric Sunday selection for Nesie’s Place!

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Disclaimer: I have no copyrights to the song and/or video and/or hyperlinks to songs and/or videos and/or gifs above. No copyright infringement intended.

Song Lyric Sunday was created by Helen Vahdati from This Thing Called Life One Word at a Time and author Jim Adams from A Unique Title For Me is our current guest host. For complete rules or to join in the fun, click here.

The theme for Song Lyric Sunday this week is “Floor/House/Roof/Walls.”

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Party time! 😀

Back in my clubs days…last century…this was a song that would pack the dance floor. It wasn’t time to look cute or cool when Midnight Star’s No Parking on the Dance Floor was played.  It was time to dance!

The title track from the group’s fourth and most successful album of the same name in 1983,  the song reached number 43 on the R&B chart, number 44 on the dance chart, and number 81 on the Billboard Hot 100.

FUN FACT:

• The song has been sampled by several artists since its 1983 release, including Sugar Ray’s song from 2003, Mr. Bartender (It’s So Easy). The basic melody was sampled by the Bar-Kays in their 1984 hit Freakshow on the Dance Floor.

It’s a fun video, very 80s with lots of Jheri curls, shoulder pads, and leather!

Enjoy!

See my Song Lyric Sunday selection for Nesie’s Place!

~~~

Disclaimer: I have no copyrights to the song and/or video and/or hyperlinks to songs and/or videos and/or gifs above. No copyright infringement intended.

Song Lyric Sunday was created by Helen Vahdati from This Thing Called Life One Word at a Time and author Jim Adams from A Unique Title For Me is our current guest host. For complete rules or to join in the fun, click here.

The theme for Song Lyric Sunday this week is “Bird/Fly/Sky/Wing.”

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His first single in seven years, neo-soul artist, Maxwell described the 2009 Pretty Wings to MTV as “a bittersweet love song about meeting the right girl at the wrong time.” Maxwell also told Billboard Magazine: “I met this girl who I still respect very much, and although it didn’t work out, I got lots of inspiration from it. This track speaks of my time with her. ”

Pretty Wings won the Grammy Award for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance and was nominated at the 52nd Grammy Awards for Song of the Year and Best R&B Song in 2010.

FUN FACTS:

• Pretty Wings reached the top forty on the Billboard Hot 100. It also topped the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, making it Maxwell’s first song in ten years to have done so (the last having been Fortunate in 1999). It remained at number one on that chart for fourteen consecutive weeks, which remains tied for the third-longest run at the top in the chart’s history.
• The lyrics of the song express “pretty wings” as a metaphor; “If I can’t have you, let love set you free to fly your pretty wings around.”
• Along with fellow musicians D’Angelo and Erykah Badu, Maxwell has been credited with helping to shape the “neo soul” movement that rose to prominence during the late 1990s.

To date, the music video has been viewed on YouTube over 50 million times. The video takes place in a dim household and some scenes show five separate women in their beds sleeping. Maxwell served as an Incubus who is in bed with the women in their own scenes. In the final minutes of the video the women all levitate above their beds after reaching a state of euphoria by the Incubus. The final shot is Maxwell leaving one of the bedrooms of one of the five women. The music video was ranked #9 on BET’s Notarized: Top 100 Videos of 2009 countdown.

Enjoy!

See my Song Lyric Sunday selection for Nesie’s Place!

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Disclaimer: I have no copyrights to the song and/or video and/or hyperlinks to songs and/or videos and/or gifs above. No copyright infringement intended.