Music: Album Reviews, Chart-Topping Songs, and More | Showbiz Cheat Sheet

Peter Frampton Forgot He Played on 1 Ringo Starr Hit

Matthew Trzcinski — Mon, 13 Jan 2025 04:13:10 +0000

Ringo Starr‘s songs often feature guest stars. For example, one of his best singles features a guitar solo from Peter Frampton. Here’s what Frampton had to say about it decades after the fact.

Peter Frampton was 1 of many stars to work on Ringo Starr songs

During the peak years of his solo career, Ringo needed a little help from his friends. For example, he wrote “Photograph” with George Harrison. “Snookeroo” was an Elton John/Bernie Taupin ditty. “You’re Sixteen” was penned by the Sherman Brothers, the same duo who wrote songs for Disney movies like Mary Poppins, The Jungle Book, and Bedknobs and Broomsticks. It was a hit for Johnny Burnett long before Ringo got a hold of it.

His rock-worshipping tune “A Dose of Rock ‘n’ Roll” was no different. It features guitar work from Frampton. During a 2013 interview with Guitar World, Frampton was asked if he played the solo on the track. “I can’t remember [laughs],” he said. “It was the ’70s, and I know I was sober for the session, but I’m not sure about right after.”

Frampton revealed that doing something could jog his memory. “I’d have to listen to it again and see,” he said. “People keep coming up to me, saying, ‘Is this you on this?’ And I have to go listen to it to find out. I did more sessions than I remember doing. There were a lot of things in the ’70s that I played on that people keep reminding me about.”

Frampton then listened to the solo. “Yeah, the first part is me,” he responded. “I forgot all about that! That’s me. And then, I forget who it is that comes in there, but that sounds like I’m playing my Gibson and then a Telecaster or a Strat comes in.”

Why the song is a necessary part of the former Beatle’s catlog

“A Dose of Rock ‘n’ Roll” isn’t as good as “Photograph” or “Back Off Boogaloo” (possibly because George had nothing to do with it), but it’s still one of Ringo’s best songs. The track is all about the way that a dose of rock ‘n’ roll can help you overcome your troubles.

Every great rock star needs a song about how awesome his genre is and Ringo was no exception. The track has a great vibe and it came from the right artist. As famous and successful as he got, Ringo still saw some hard times — and rock music helped him out of those dark times.

How Ringo Starr’s ‘A Dose of Rock ‘n’ Roll’ performed

“A Dose of Rock ‘n’ Roll” was a modest hit at best. It reached No. 26 on the Billboard Hot 100, staying on the chart for nine weeks. It appeared on the record Ringo’s Rotogravure. That album reached No. 28 and charted for nine weeks.

Audiences in the United Kingdom were even less receptive to “A Dose of Rock ‘n’ Roll.” The Official Charts Company reports the song didn’t even chart there. Neither did Ringo’s Rotogravure. Maybe Ringo made the wrong decision to give the public a dose of rock ‘n’ roll at a time when they couldn’t get enough of easy-listening music.

“A Dose of Rock ‘n’ Roll” wasn’t successful, but it’s cool to hear two rock legends collaborate.

John Lennon Believed a Beatles Reunion Was ‘Quite Possible’

Emma McKee — Sun, 12 Jan 2025 19:42:00 +0000

John Lennon said he lost interest in The Beatles when he met Yoko Ono. He remained in the band until 1969 when he told Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr that he wanted to move on. The band’s split was acrimonious, with the former Beatles insulting each other in interviews and songs. By the early 1970s, though, Lennon told a friend that he believed in the possibility of a reunion.

John Lennon was optimistic about a Beatles reunion by the early 1970s

In 1973, Lennon sat down with his friend, Elliot Mintz, for an interview. Mintz noted in his book, We All Shine On: John, Yoko, and Me, that he asked the question that was on everyone’s mind at the time.

“After carefully pulling out of the McDonald’s lot, I cautiously navigated to a surprisingly desolate stretch of beach near the Malibu pier, where the camera crew taped John and me talking about everything from his new album to his memories of Beatlemania to the ultimate question on everybody’s mind — and the one John had been asked at least a thousand times before: the possibility of a Beatles reunion.”

The Beatles | Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

While Lennon had made his irritation with The Beatles no secret, he said he was still open to a reunion.

“‘It’s quite possible, yes,’ he said as we sat on the sand. ‘I don’t know why the hell we’d do it, but it’s possible.’”

He added that it wouldn’t even be a chore for her. If they were to reunite, he’d feel happy about it.

“I go on instinct,” he said. “If the idea hits me tomorrow, I might call them and say, ‘Come on, let’s do something.’ So, I couldn’t really tell you. If it happens, it’ll happen.”

Lennon insisted that by that point, he had let go of the anger and aggravation he felt in the 1960s.

“No, no, all my memories are now all fond and the wounds have all healed,” he said. “If we do it, we do it. If we record, we record.”

John Lennon was the first to leave The Beatles

While many have long blamed Paul McCartney for breaking up the band, he insisted that the blame lies with Lennon.

“I didn’t instigate the split,” McCartney told The Guardian. “That was our Johnny.”

Lennon was with Ono and wanted to move on in his personal and professional life.

“The point of it really was that John was making a new life with Yoko,” McCartney said. “John had always wanted to sort of break loose from society because, you know, he was brought up by his Aunt Mimi, who was quite repressive, so he was always looking to break loose.”

The remaining members knew there was no path forward for them, but their manager insisted that they keep the split a secret.

“So for a few months we had to pretend,” McCartney explained. “It was weird because we all knew it was the end of the Beatles but we couldn’t just walk away.”

He didn’t speak about the band as though he wanted a reunion

According to Lennon’s girlfriend at the time, May Pang, he still spoke disparagingly about his former band. She claimed that he found the band’s music dull and unimportant.

The Beatles | Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

“[His solo albums] would make a meaningful statement and not be wallpaper music — the term John and Yoko used to describe the music of The Beatles,” Pang wrote in her book Loving John. “He was also determined that it be more successful than McCartney’s solo albums.”

Bob Dylan Unknowingly Provided the Soundtrack to 1 of the Most Humiliating Nights of Yoko Ono’s Life

Emma McKee — Sat, 11 Jan 2025 18:11:00 +0000

Bob Dylan and John Lennon spent time together over the years, but he reportedly wasn’t a fan of his wife, Yoko Ono. Early in Lennon and Ono’s relationship, Dylan told George Harrison that she had “bad vibes.” Years after this, Lennon publicly humiliated his wife, and someone put on a lengthy Dylan song to try to cover it up.

A Bob Dylan record played as John Lennon humiliated Yoko Ono

In 1972, Lennon and Ono attended an election watch party at Jerry Rubin’s New York City apartment. When it became apparent that Richard Nixon would win, many of the guests, including Lennon, began to drink their sorrows away. Lennon became so intoxicated that he slipped away to have sex with another party goer — while Ono was still in the apartment.

“[T]he upshot was that John had indeed hit it off with some girl at the party and had slipped into a bedroom with her, where they proceeded to have such loud, raucous sex that everyone sitting around the TV in Jerry Rubin’s living room — including Yoko — could clearly hear them going at it,” the couple’s friend, Elliot Mintz, wrote in his book We All Shine On: John, Yoko, and Me.

The pair were so loud that another guest tried in vain to cover up the sound with one of Dylan’s songs.

“At one point during the noisy indiscretion, a well-meaning party guest put a record on the turntable — Bob Dylan’s eleven-minute ballad ‘Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands’ — and played it at high volume, trying to drown out the rhythmic pounding,” Mintz wrote. “But not even Dylan’s inimitable singing could distract from the racket John and his hookup were making in the bedroom on the other side of what must have been a paper-thin wall.”

To make matters worse, everyone was trapped in the apartment. Lennon was in the room where they placed their coats.

“Throughout it all, Yoko sat on the sofa, in stunned, mortified silence, as other guests began awkwardly getting up to leave — until they realized that their coats were in the bedroom where John was having sex.”

The couple temporarily separated not long after the incident

The following day, Mintz talked to a devastated Ono on the phone.

“He was placing [his wife] in the most embarrassing position that you could ever place a woman in — having a romp in the hay in another room with thin walls while your wife was attending a small party and could hear everything,” Mintz told People. “Yoko is a very stoic woman, but it would have severe consequences.”

She wasn’t sure she could move forward with their marriage as though nothing had happened.

“I can forgive him, but I don’t know if I can ever forget what happened,” she told Mintz. “I don’t know if it will ever be the same.”

Not long after the incident, Ono told Lennon she needed space. For the next 18 months, they lived separately.

Bob Dylan reportedly told George Harrison not to trust Yoko Ono

To add insult to injury for Ono, Dylan once spoke poorly about her to the other Beatles. He warned Harrison not to trust her when she started dating Lennon.

“I’m for Yoko,” Lennon told Rolling Stone. “Why should she take that kind of s*** from those people? They were writing about her looking miserable in the Let It Be film, but you sit through 60 sessions with the most bigheaded, uptight people on earth and see what its f***in’ like and be insulted – just because you love someone – and George, s***, insulted her right to her face in the Apple office at the beginning, just being ‘straight-forward,’ you know that game of ‘I’m going to be upfront,’ because this is what we’ve heard and Dylan and a few people said she’d got a lousy name in New York, and you give off bad vibes.”

Yoko Ono and John Lennon | Bettmann/Contributor via Getty

Lennon said he wished he’d retaliated against Harrison.

“That’s what George said to her!” Lennon said. “And we both sat through it. I didn’t hit him, I don’t know why.”

John Lennon Liked 1 Awful Paul McCartney Song

Matthew Trzcinski — Sat, 11 Jan 2025 17:33:54 +0000

John Lennon didn’t always like Paul McCartney’s songs, but he praised one of Paul’s solo hits from the early 1980s. Sadly, the track John liked sounds like it was performed by Kermit the Frog. Listeners loved the song anyway.

John Lennon didn’t care about Paul McCartney’s solo songs

During a 1980 interview from the book All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, John discussed Paul’s post-Beatles work. “Somebody asked me what I thought of Paul’s last album [McCartney II] and I made some remark like I thought he was depressed and sad,” he said. “But then I realized I hadn’t listened to the whole damn thing. I heard one track — the hit, ‘Coming Up,’ which I thought was a good piece of work. Then I heard something else that sounded like he was depressed.

“But I don’t follow their work,” he added. “I don’t follow Wings, you know. I don’t give a s*** what Wings are doing, or what George’s new album is doing or what Ringo is doing. I’m not interested, no more than I am in what Elton John or Bob Dylan is doing. It’s not callousness. It’s just that I’m too busy living my own life to be following what other people are doing, whether they’re Beatles or guys I went to college with or people I had intense relationships with before I met The Beatles.”

John Lennon could have been talking about 1 of 2 different versions of the song

John was pretty picky, once admitting that he only liked two full albums in the entire history of recorded music (Elvis Presley by Elvis Presley and a Carl Perkins album he didn’t mention by name). Given that the “Imagine” singer had such discriminating tastes, it’s surprising that he was a fan of “Coming Up.” There are two notable versions of that song, and both are atrocious.

The rendition of the song that appears in the song’s music video and opens McCartney II is a ridiculous song where Paul’s voice is altered so that he sounds like a cartoon alien. On top of that, the beat is obnoxiously peppy and over-the-top. This tune sounds like it belongs on Sesame Street, not the pop charts.

Meanwhile, the hit version of “Coming Up” was a live rendition. Paul didn’t recreate the horrid vocal effects from the original “Coming Up” live. However, his voice sounds strained and the lyrics aren’t any better the second time around. Regardless of which recording of “Coming Up” that John heard, he was way off the mark when he called it “a good piece of work.” Paul put out many good pieces of work during his solo career, but “Coming Up” was not one of them.

Paul McCartney’s ‘Coming Up’ was huge

The live version of “Coming Up” reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for three weeks. It lasted on the chart for 21 weeks in total, making it one of the biggest hits in Paul’s solo career. The song appeared on the album McCartney II. That record reached No. 3 on the Billboard 200 and lasted on the chart for 38 weeks.

“Coming Up” is a poor song, but it pleased John — and the music-buying public.

Kanye West’s Father Said the Rapper’s Music Went Against How He Was Raised

Emma McKee — Sat, 11 Jan 2025 16:08:00 +0000

Kanye West’s mother and father supported his music career. Still, his father wasn’t a fan of every part of his music. West’s father, Ray, once said he couldn’t approve of the language his son used in his music. He said West went against the way his parents raised him with some of his songs.

Kanye West’s father once said he didn’t approve of one aspect of his music

West grew up in a middle-class suburb of Chicago. His mother, Donda, once worked as the chair of the English department at Chicago State University, and Ray was a Black Panther turned photojournalist. Ray did not approve of the language his son used in his music.

“I’ve stated to him very clearly that he needs to move beyond the negative language and the ‘[n-word]’ statements,” Ray told Rolling Stone in 2006. “It’s all right to say ‘b****’ and ‘motherf***er’ on the corner, but when you start operating on a different level you can’t talk like that.”

Kanye West | Rich Fury/VF20/Getty Images for Vanity Fair

He didn’t think he raised West to use language like he did.

“Fine, you’re trying to get some street acceptance,” he said. “Now that you got that, get back to your roots. You know that’s not where you came from. You know that’s not how you were raised.”

Kanye West turned to his father during his divorce from Kim Kardashian

While West and Kim Kardashian went through a divorce, he turned to Ray for support. According to him, his father would not help him.

“My dad told me three weeks ago, it’s the first time he ever said that,” he said on Hollywood Unlocked. “[He told me] that my mom told him, ‘I’m moving to Chicago and if you try to come find me, you’ll never see him [Ye] again’…Why did he say that? Because I was begging him to call Kim and he was refusing to do it.”

He explained that his father did not have the wealth or power to influence any part of the divorce proceedings.

“He said, ‘I don’t want to talk.’ And I said, ‘Dad, I need your help. I can’t see my kids, I can’t do this,’” West recalled. “My dad didn’t have the voice or the money to stand up [for me].”

He dealt with bullies as a child

West grew up to become one of the biggest celebrities in the world, but he didn’t get much respect as a child. Ray recalled a time when other children attempted to steal his son’s bike.

“They pulled a knife out on him and slashed his tires,” he said. “He was about eight or nine.”

West’s childhood bullies gained further ammunition when he returned from a year in China with his mother. She worked as a visiting professor at Nanjing University.

Kanye West | Dimitrios Kambouris/WireImage

“When he came back from China, he was teased frequently,” his father said. “He was called China Boy. Kids can be very cruel.”

Still, West maintained robust self-confidence.

“The braggadociousness comes from his mother’s father, Buddy,” Ray said. “Buddy is a true Muhammad Ali fan. He will tell you in a minute that he’s the best thing to ever come along.”

George Harrison’s Best Solo Song Didn’t Hit No. 1

Matthew Trzcinski — Fri, 10 Jan 2025 21:57:39 +0000

George Harrison had a handful of hit songs after The Beatles broke up, but his best one didn’t hit No. 1. Interestingly, the tune in question was supposed to sound a bit like The Beatles’ “Penny Lane.” George’s best song might have hit No. 1 if he hadn’t made a particular decision.

George Harrison had 3 chart-toppers but they pale in comparison to this song

George had three No. 1 singles on the Billboard Hot 100: “My Sweet Lord”/”Isn’t It a Pity,” “Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth),” and “Got My Mind Set on You.” Those are all good songs, but they aren’t George’s best. The pinnacle of his career was “What Is Life.”

The tune combines George’s rock ‘n’ roll tendencies with his spiritual outlook and producer Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound technique. The lyrics are clever, as they could be interpreted as being about loving a partner or loving God. It’s hard to listen to it without feeling some uplift, whether you are spiritual or not.

How the song was supposed to mimic The Beatles’ ‘Penny Lane’

During a 2001 interview with Billboard, George discussed the origin of “What Is Love.” “When we were going through all the tapes, I just found this version that was like a rough mix [at Trident Studios in London on August 9, 1970] on which I tried having this piccolo trumpet player like the guy who played on ‘Penny Lane,'” he said. “It wasn’t actually the same bloke but I wanted that sound. So I had an oboe and a piccolo trumpet and I had this part for them all written out but they couldn’t play it the same; they couldn’t do this this kind of ‘hush’ phrase, and they played it very staccato like a classical player. So I must have just recorded them on it, then rough mixed it, and then ditched that.

“And as I was saying earlier, most of it was live,” he added. “I hadn’t done the vocal overdub because I’m playing the fuzz guitar part that goes all through the song. So all I could do on the [initial] take was to give the band the cue line.”

How George Harrison’s ‘My Sweet Lord’ got in the way of ‘What Is Life’

“What Is Life” reached No. 10 on the Billboard Hot 100. It was a hit single. It just wasn’t as big as it could or should have been. The tune lasted on the Billboard Hot 100 for nine weeks. “What Is Love” appeared on the album All Things Must Pass. That album is generally considered the defining record of George’s solo career. The record topped the Billboard 200 for seven weeks, lasting on the chart for 41 weeks.

Why wasn’t “What Is Life” a No. 1 hit? Well, it was released after “My Sweet Lord” reached No. 1. Perhaps audiences were so exposed to “My Sweet Lord” that they weren’t ready to let another George track reach the top spot. If George had put out “What Is Life” as the lead single from All Things Must Pass instead of “My Sweet Lord,” “What Is Life” might be his most famous solo song.

“What Is Life” is a perfect song — and it deserves more love from the public.

Paul McCartney Only Did 1 Good No. 1 Song Without The Beatles

Matthew Trzcinski — Fri, 10 Jan 2025 20:46:50 +0000

Paul McCartney knew how to write hit songs without The Beatles — he just struggled to write good hit songs without The Beatles! Only one of his solo No. 1 singles is genuinely worthwhile. Let’s take a look at what makes one track stand out in Paul’s discography.

Most of Paul McCartney’s big songs were boring or terrible

After The Beatles broke up, Paul had nine No. 1 singles on the Billboard Hot 100. They were “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey,” “My Love,” “Band on the Run,” “Listen to What the Man Said,” “Silly Love Songs,” “With a Little Luck,” “Coming Up,” “Ebony and Ivory,” and “Say Say Say.” Some of those songs are passable radio filler, like “My Love” and “Listen to What the Man Said.” Others are bad, such as “Coming Up” and “Ebony and Ivory.”

The only truly great song on the list is “Band on the Run.” Paul released other awesome songs without The Beatles, including “Maybe I’m Amazed,” “Live and Let Die,” and “Jet.” However, those tracks didn’t reach No. 1. During the 1970s and 1980s, audiences in the United States were too obsessed with gutless, easy-listening music to give many of Paul’s good tracks a chance to top the charts.

Why the song hits a sweet spot in Paul McCartney’s discography

Part of why “Band on the Run” works is that it hit a sweet spot between being traditional and experimental. It has some good old-fashioned hooks while drawing some elements from progressive rock. This made it unique in Paul’s catalog of No. 1 singles.

Tracks like “My Love” and “Ebony and Ivory” don’t have many surprises. Meanwhile, “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey” and “Coming Up” are so bonkers that it’s hard to know how to react to them. “Band on the Run” is the sort of song that regular pop listeners and serious music fans can both enjoy.

What the former Beatle was thinking when he wrote ‘Band on the Run’

In a 2024 interview with PaulMcCartney.com, Paul was asked if he knew “Band on the Run” would become the title track of an album when he wrote it. “I don’t think so, no,” he replied. “Those kinds of things — album titles and artwork — normally come later on in the process. I just wrote a bunch of songs, which luckily I remembered, because the demos got stolen! ‘Band on the Run’ was always going to be the big, epic track on the album, but I didn’t necessarily know it was going to be the title. But it eventually comes to the surface, and I thought, ‘Well, that’s an obvious title. That’s the one.'”

Paul discussed his use of the Moog synthesizer on the album Band on the Run. “I first used it all on ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’ and it was very big, like computers in the old days were,” he said. “Then they brought out a thing called a mini-Moog, which was much more manageable. And that is the instrument that we used in Wings, and that Linda [McCartney] enjoyed playing. It’s just got such a great sound, and because it was new at the time nobody had really used it, so we loved trying it out.”

“Band on the Run” was a milestone for Paul because of its commercial success and its quality.

John Lennon Claimed His Memories of The Beatles Were ‘All Fond’ by the Early 1970s

Emma McKee — Fri, 10 Jan 2025 16:38:00 +0000

When The Beatles broke up, John Lennon publicly aired his grievances with the band and his former bandmates. He made it clear that he was ready to move on and did not share the warm opinion of the band that so many did. Within a few years, though, Lennon said he had let go of these bad feelings. He claimed that his memories of The Beatles were fond, despite what he may have said in the past.

John Lennon said he had softened toward The Beatles not long after their split

In the early 1970s, each of the former Beatles constantly fielded questions about whether or not the band would reunite. Lennon, who broke up the band, said a reunion was a possibility. His friend, Elliot Mintz wrote about it in his book We All Shine On: John Yoko and Me.

“‘It’s quite possible, yes,’ [John] said as we sat on the sand. ‘I don’t know why the hell we’d do it, but it’s possible.’”

Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr of The Beatles | Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

He’d spoken publicly about his problems with the band, but he claimed he’d moved past them. By 1973, he said he didn’t harbor any bad feelings about the band.

“No, no, all my memories are now all fond and the wounds have all healed,” he said. “If we do it, we do it. If we record, we record.”

John Lennon spoke harshly about The Beatles immediately after they broke up

Just two years before this, though, Lennon’s memories of the band weren’t quite as warm and fuzzy.

“F***in’ big bastards, that’s what the Beatles were,” he told Rolling Stone. “You have to be a bastard to make it, that’s a fact, and the Beatles are the biggest bastards on earth.”

He said he was happy to be able to move on to a creative partnership with Yoko Ono.

“I would have expanded the Beatles and broken them and gotten their pants off and stopped them being God, but it didn’t work, and Yoko was naive, she came in and she would expect to perform with them, with any group, like you would with any group, she was jamming, but there would be a sort of coldness about it,” he said. “That’s when I decided: I could no longer artistically get anything out of the Beatles and here was someone that could turn me on to a million things.”

George Harrison had no interest in a reunion

Even if Lennon agreed to go ahead with a reunion, his bandmates may not have. George Harrison was particularly opposed to the idea.

“They’ve got lots and lots of songs they can play forever. But what do they want? Blood?” he asked Rolling Stone in 1979. “They want us all to die like Elvis Presley? Elvis got stuck in a rut where the only thing he could do was to keep on doing the same old thing, and in the end his health suffered and that was it.”

George Harrison | Chapman/Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

He didn’t think anyone clamoring for a reunion had the band’s best interests in mind.

“We were just four relatively sane people in the middle of madness,” he said. “People used us as an excuse to trip out, and we were the victims of that. That’s why they want the Beatles to go on, so they can all get silly again. But they don’t have consideration for our well-being when they say, ‘Let’s have the Fab Four again.’”

What Paul McCartney Thought of Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’

Matthew Trzcinski — Thu, 09 Jan 2025 16:33:36 +0000

Paul McCartney appeared on a divisive track from Michael Jackson’s Thriller. In retrospect, Paul revealed his feelings on Thriller and some of Jackson’s other music. He also discussed one of the connections between the Fab Four and the King of Pop.

Paul McCartney was a huge fan of a genius behind Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’

During the early days of Jackson’s career, he worked with a variety of producers. He made the decision to collaborate with Quincy Jones for his 1979 disco album Off the Wall, which changed the entire trajectory of popular music. Jackson and Jones then teamed up for the two biggest records of the King of Pop’s career: Thriller and Bad. Paul played a memorable role in the rise of Thriller when he dueted with Jackson for the record’s first single: “The Girl Is Mine.”

In a 2024 post on PaulMcCartney.com, the former Beatle mourned Jones’ death. Paul seemed to have a favorable view of Off the Wall, Thriller, and Bad. “Quincy, or ‘Quince’ or ‘Q’ as he was known, always had a twinkle in his eye and had a very positive, loving spirit which affected everyone who knew him,” he said. “His work with Michael Jackson is, of course, legendary, and he had so many other strings to his musical bow.”

Paul McCartney said Michael Jackson’s producer was friends with The Beatles’

Paul said Jones was more connected to The Beatles than one might think. “He was supremely talented, and I felt privileged to have known him for many years,” the “Silly Love Songs” star said. “He was friends with George Martin, The Beatles’ producer, and, between the two of them, produced some very fine music.”

Paul noted the breadth of Jones’ life. “His long career stretches back to the early days when he was a trumpet player, then a band leader, then a producer of many great records,” he said. “But it is as a friend I would like to remember him. We always had fun in his presence, and his legend will continue through the years, but it is those private moments we were lucky enough to have with the great man that I will always remember fondly.”

How ‘Thriller’ and ‘The Girl Is Mine’ performed

Thriller went on to become the biggest blockbuster album in the history of music. The record topped the Billboard 200 for 37 weeks, lasting on the chart for a whopping 659 weeks in total. “The Girl Is Mine” was also a hit. It reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, lasting on the chart for 18 weeks.

While “The Girls Is Mine” was a hit, it has developed a poor reputation. Many fans of Paul and the King of Pop feel that the track is dull or too jocular for its own good. Others think that a duet between two musical icons should have been far more impressive (although Paul’s 1980s output was far from impressive). On top of that, “The Girl Is Mine” doesn’t hold a candle to the pair’s dance duet “Say Say Say,” which isn’t a great song, but at least it has a decent beat.

Regardless of your thoughts on “The Girl Is Mine,” Thriller as a whole is a classic — and Paul agrees.

What Happened When The Monkees Reunited in the 1980s

Matthew Trzcinski — Thu, 09 Jan 2025 13:28:39 +0000

The Monkees had a hit song in the 1980s — and they were far from the only classic rock act from their generation to do so. The track in question could have been a catastrophe. Here’s how the world reacted when the Prefab Four tried to be pop stars again.

The Monkees changed their genre when they released a new song in the 1980s

The 1980s were an excellent decade for legacy acts. 1960s nostalgia was strong, so a long list of stars from the 1960s managed to notch at least one hit during the 1980s. These artists include Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison, Marvin Gaye, The Beach Boys, Roy Orbison, The Rolling Stones, and Diana Ross. The Monkees tried to have a hit in 1986 with the song “That Was Then, This Is Now.”

Unlike some of the aforementioned acts, The Monkees embraced one of the defining genres of the time: new wave. That could have been a disaster. It could have sounded like the old guard jumping on a bandwagon they didn’t understand. However, that wasn’t the case.

Why the song sounds current without betraying the band’s sound

What made some of The Monkees’ 1960s hits stick out was their bubblegum style and sense of joy. It’s challenging to listen to “I’m a Believer” or “Daydream Believer” without forming a smile on your face.
Synth-pop could be just as uplifting. “That Was Then, This Is Now” embodies the poppy side of new wave music in the best way possible.

The lyrics of “That Was Then, This Is Now” also do a good job of transporting The Monkees into a new era. The title alone subtextually acknowledges that the Prefab Four had been gone for a long time before returning. The tune could have or should have been the opening salvo of a new run of hits for the group, but alas, they were just back for one shining moment.

Why Davy Jones sat out The Monkees’ comeback hit

During a 2016 interview with Rolling Stone, The Monkees’ Micky Dolenz discussed the origin of “That Was Then, This Is Now.” “In 1986, MTV started showing the old show and we reunited for a tour,” he said. “It just exploded. It was the biggest selling tour of that year for anybody. Arista [Records] had the catalog at the time. [Record executive] Clive Davis got a hold of me through his A&R guy, Roy Lott. They said, ‘Listen, this is huge. This 20-year reunion is turning into a huge thing. We’re gonna reissue a classic CD of the big hits and we thought it would be cool if you recorded some new material.'”

“That Was Then, This Is Now” was recorded quickly. “We were already in rehearsals for the tour,” Dolenz recalled. “They wanted us to try go get this thing out in like two weeks. I was like, ‘Wow! That’s great. Make me a deal. Call my agent or waterer, but I’d love to do it.’ Peter [Tork} agreed, but David [Jones] did not. He chose not to participate in that particular set of recordings. But two days later, I’m in the studio doing vocals. A week or two later, it came out and went Top 20.”

The Monkees updated their sound for the 1980s — and it worked out much better than you might think.