Main Menu

Tip jar

If you like CaB and wish to support it, you can use PayPal or KoFi. Thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy the site - Neil.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Support CaB

Recent

Welcome to Cook'd and Bomb'd. Please login or sign up.

March 28, 2024, 09:55:31 AM

Login with username, password and session length

Barry Manilow

Started by Ballad of Ballard Berkley, February 04, 2020, 11:36:02 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Ballad of Ballard Berkley

I like Barry Manilow. Not only as a person - he's a funny, self-deprecating fellow - but also as the architect of some of the greatest pop-schlock ever made.

Overblown camp was Bazza's calling card during his imperial phase. He never met a piano ballad he couldn't ramp up far beyond respectable realms of self-pitying pop excess. He stuck to a rigid formula, by my God that formula worked for a while. He always cast himself as a heartbroken lover standing on the precipice while gazing heroically towards a brave new dawn. The arrangements were bombastic, the sentiments self-dramatising, the overall effect akin to a late-night cocktail lounge singer on the verge of psychosis.

During every Manilow song in that vein, you can picture a lone barman washing glasses and offering sympathetic words of encouragement: "I hate to see you this way, Mr Manilow." By the end of each song, when Baz works himself up into an overwhelming lather of emotion, the startled barman is probably coughing politely while rattling his keys. "Err, goodnight Mr Manilow. Take care, yeah?"

I Made It Through The Rain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z48oTB6ie10

I love stuff like that, it makes me feel happy and alive. Unabashed schmaltz.

And whenever Baz wasn't wallowing in calculated misery, he was banging out irresistibly upbeat chintz such as Copacabana and Bermuda Triangle. Naffness elevated to a whole other level, so much so that its naffness becomes a knowing joke in itself. Manilow started out as an advertising jingle writer, he knew fine well what he was doing. A kind of genius.

Copacabana: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRs4AUAEkHE

This thread will probably sink like a piano in the North Atlantic, but thank you for reading this far. I mean that most sincerely, friends.

SteK

I liked the one - Weekend In New England, or similar, very suspended fourths, of course, at the time, we called him Barry Massivenose....

Annie Labuntur

Definitely a talented songwriter who would have been more respected if he hadn't sold so much in the lucrative MOR market, from which there's no escape apart from self-deprecating irony. George Michael ripped him off after all, and had to pay him.

Was it you BoBB who said 'Weekend in New England' always makes him blub?

EDIT: SteK, your comment about the song crossed with mine, but I don't think it was you who said it originally.

SteK

And - to hijack a little - I was watching The Guard with Brendan Gleeson (not next to me, he was in the film) and the end credits came on and it was John Denver - Leaving on a Jet Plane, an artiste I'd dissed for many a year, but it caught me by surprise, and it's beautiful, the man was a great songwriter and singer. Shit pilot though.

SteK

Quote from: Annie Labuntur on February 04, 2020, 11:56:17 PM
Definitely a talented songwriter who would have been more respected if he hadn't sold so much in the lucrative MOR market, from which there's no escape apart from self-deprecating irony. George Michael ripped him off after all, and had to pay him.

Was it you BoBB who said 'Weekend in New England' always makes him blub?

EDIT: SteK, your comment about the song crossed with mine, but I don't think it was you who said it originally.

Wasn't me ur right. It's the Oboe, the tone of them sets me off, and no pink oboe jokes please....

Annie Labuntur

Quote from: SteK on February 05, 2020, 12:03:06 AM
And - to hijack a little - I was watching The Guard with Brendan Gleeson (not next to me, he was in the film) and the end credits came on and it was John Denver - Leaving on a Jet Plane, an artiste I'd dissed for many a year, but it caught me by surprise, and it's beautiful, the man was a great songwriter and singer. Shit pilot though.

Have you seen how Denver's music is used in the film Free Fire?!

I agree that Leaving on a Jet Plane is a great song. I don't much care for Annie's Song - although it's a pretty melody - but I've always liked the opening line, You fill up my senses like a night in a forest.


Ballad of Ballard Berkley

Quote from: SteK on February 04, 2020, 11:55:52 PMwe called him Barry Massivenose....

Different times.

Quote from: Annie Labuntur on February 04, 2020, 11:56:17 PM
Definitely a talented songwriter who would have been more respected if he hadn't sold so much in the lucrative MOR market, from which there's no escape apart from self-deprecating irony. George Michael ripped him off after all, and had to pay him.

I didn't know that. What was George's rip-off?

I agree that his downfall was painting himself into a MOR corner; there was nowhere else to go apart from amped-up irony. No twilight Rick Rubin-produced, Rolling Stone-endorsed album for our Baz. Tragic living proof that music and fashion aren't always the passion. But I do think his best songs stand up.

The strangest thing about him, of course, is that despite being an accomplished musician, he didn't write most of his biggest hits. Well, he co-wrote some of them, but most of the songs we associate with him were written by other people. Not that it really matters, Baz sold the hell out of 'em.

Quote from: Annie Labuntur on February 04, 2020, 11:56:17 PM
Was it you BoBB who said 'Weekend in New England' always makes him blub?

It wasn't me, no, but that song does really move me. Or maybe I did post something to that effect years ago? I've scribbled so much drivel on this site over the years, I forget.


Annie Labuntur

#7
Quote from: Ballad of Ballard Berkley on February 05, 2020, 12:25:31 AM
I didn't know that. What was George's rip-off?

Seems I might have got my facts twisted there as according to wikipedia the song in question wasn't written by Manilow. I thought there was an out-of-court settlement involving Can't Smile Without You and Last Christmas. More research needed.

Edit: Should have read the wiki to the end. George Michael did settle a plagiarism suit, but Manilow didn't write the song.

Unfun fact: Manilow released a disco song called I'm Your Man around the same time as Wham's song of the same name. It is worse. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_p3mEtZYRcY

Ballad of Ballard Berkley

Quote from: Annie Labuntur on February 05, 2020, 12:44:33 AM
Unfun fact: Manilow released a disco song called I'm Your Man around the same time as Wham's song of the same name. It is worse. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_p3mEtZYRcY

Bloody hell. He sounds like C-3PO shuffling across the dancefloor at Studio 54.

Annie Labuntur

Quote from: Ballad of Ballard Berkley on February 05, 2020, 01:17:03 AM
Bloody hell. He sounds like C-3PO shuffling across the dancefloor at Studio 54.

Is it too fanciful to posit that at this time George and Barry were two closeted men communicating with each other through their songs? NO! I put it to you that that was precisely what was going on under our very noses!

I need to go to bed.

SteveDave

I always though the lyrics to Mandy went

"I remember all my life
Raining down as cold as ice
Shadows of a man
A fist through a window
Crying in the night
The night goes into..."

This works better...


pigamus

Barry Manilow II is a great album. He has a profound, painful lack of taste but not everything he ever did was shit.