#254/888
June 21 1985
Marilyn
Despite Straight Lines
Genre: SynthPop/R&B
4 out of 5
As we dive deeper into 1985 we get to this lost record. It’s a bit Culture Club, a little George Michael, a dash of just about every “New Wave” synth pop band of the 80s.
And therein lies the dilemma of this project:
I originally started it as a personal journey into the Rock music of my youth that, for a variety of reasons, was unavailable to me. I wanted to see if I had missed anything. I did. For sure. But mostly it was Post-Rock that eluded me and was quite brilliant.
I learned a lot on this journey.
I included a needful of pop artists because they were ubiquitous at the time (like Bonnie Tyler and Madonna and a few others) but I really wanted to hone in on what I perceived as “rock”. And I’ve written about how rock came from rock and roll and was appropriated from black music of the time and the blues and therefore all R&B is actually Rock but that’s a different argument.
1985 is showing more than any other year that the genres of rock were splitting. And emerging. The monolith that came from the ashes of The Beatles and Zeppelin and Arenas and Stadiums was being forced to deal with other styles.
Marilyn shows us that, while we called Culture Club & Spandau Ballet “New Wave” it really was just R&B/Blue Eyed Soul in drag. The drag part gave it the Rock and Roll edge. That was the scary part, the part that made parents concerned.
Because is this “rock”? No. And while Hall & Oates trafficked in the same BES idiom I would still include them. But I would also caveat the shit out their work. And i really can’t explain it.
But, what I can say is that, as we move into the latter part of the 80s, I will be shunning more and more of this “pop” the more it veers from the original mission statement.
IOW, this and Scritti Politti are helping me to define not only The Listening Post’s mission but also understand what was happening to music at the time.
All that said, this is a fine entry into a genre that I would never call Rock, SynthPop or New Wave.
It’s straight up White Boy R&B.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6h-4dmSbVBg&list=PLBJ7ztNazTVAUgiV0aDZACLgRtOgfEeoT
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