The Darkness - "I Believe In A Thing Called Love"

Listening to music is an obsessive thing. You might get really stuck on an album or an artist, but in my experience the most prevalent objects of obsession are songs. Isn’t your life littered with songs you just couldn’t get enough of, that you played incessantly and got stuck in your head for large portions of the day?

Like most obsessions it isn’t necessarily healthy, but it sure feels good.

No matter how advanced our methods of experiencing new music become, that obsession will always be one of the primal thrills of music consumption. Honestly, it doesn’t happen to me much anymore. Maybe I don’t listen to the radio enough, or I’m too jaded to open my heart and mind to new sounds.

The Darkness have changed that!

I Believe In A Thing Called Love is a big old slice of cheese from the U.K. Dressed up in Def Leppard- style guitar bombast and Queen-style vocal bombast, it brings back a time when metal and pop were still together and pop had a little more say in the relationship. I’m obsessed with this song. It gets stuck in my head, I listen to it three or four times in a row in one sitting, and it makes me want to play air guitar. I can’t take those things for granted.

I believe The Darkness will inspire quite a bit of dislike. Some won’t like the lead singer’s voice. Others will be deterred by the sparkly, too revealing bell-bottom singlet he favors. Still others will worry that it’s just a joke that’s going to eventually get old, that the lack of subtlety in the lyrics and the over-the-top theatrics just aren’t built for longevity. I must admit that this latter concern nags at me, and is the reason I still haven’t purchased the album (thanks to iTunes I could download this song and still respect myself in the morning).

But none of that really matters when you’re obsessed. You might be hanging out somewhere and see a hot girl and get obsessed with her, and you don’t have to know anything about her personality or family or friends. You can imagine all of that, the important part is the feeling she inspires, however brief.

Album: Permission To Land (2003)
Fave Moment: The breakdown at the end where the guitars drop out briefly, only to roar back to life.

Comments

Stuck, or Obsession Cessastion

You may have noticed that things have slowed down around here. I had the summer off from teaching, and I spent it with my 7 month-old son. I gave myself permission to make this blog less of a priority. Well, "less of a priority" is putting it lightly. Initially, I considered an abrupt retirement. But then I reconsidered. Maybe the proximity to Brett Favre is causing this. If you're a long time reader, this is probably not all that surprising to you. Since 2007, it has become an annual ritual for me to soul-search about my waning interest in music. First I blamed an inability to express myself and a lack of quality music . Then in 2008 I cited new technology and the death of the album . Last year I wrote about how my changing life priorities hindered my ability to seek out new music. I've done a lot of thinking about it this summer and in truth I believe this was all just dancing around the issue, a slow realization of something I didn't want to admit to myse...

REO Speedwagon: R.E.O. Speedwagon (1971)

REO Speedwagon got its start in the late 1960s on the campus of the University of Illinois in Champaign/Urbana. The band grew out of a friendship between a students Neal Doughty (piano/keyboard) and Alan Gratzer (drums). Joining up with a couple of other musicians, they took the name R.E.O. Speedwagon. It wasn't long before they started getting gigs at parties and bars, doing covers of the hits of the day. The band cycled through several players in its first three years, with Gratzer and Doughty as the only constants. One-by-one they added the members that would form the first "official" lineup: singer Terry Luttrell in early 1968, bassist Gregg Philbin later that summer, and guitarist Gary Richrath at the end of 1970. Richrath was a native of Peoria, 90 miles northwest of Champaign, and had essentially stalked the band until they let him join. It was a good move, as he not only an accomplished guitarist, but also a songwriter. With Richrath the band ascended to the n...

Billy Joel: 1980 - 1977

When I decided to write about every single Billy Joel studio album I knew had a bit of a leg up in that I'd written reviews of a handful of his records already. What I didn't realize until just now was that those reviews were of albums that had been released consecutively between 1977 and 1980. As I reread those reviews - the most recent of which is 14 years old! - I found that I still stand by them. My writing style has mellowed a bit, and I no longer give grades to albums, but otherwise my opinions then are my opinions now. So here you go... Billy Joel: Glass Houses (1980) Billy Joel: 52nd Street (1978) Billy Joel: The Stranger (1977)

3 Minutes, 49 Seconds

Search This Blog