Thursday, June 23, 2005

The Power Of Three



Ok, I hate the title but, as a musicologist, Hit Me Baby One More Time is something that I have to watch. If it weren't for the Who's Who of the music world that are performing on this show, I would have stopped watching it after the first episode. The reason for that is that after watching Loverboy sound better on their cover of "Hero" than their "Working For The Weekend" and A Flock Of Seagulls (newer version with just vocalist/keyboardist Mike Score remaining) sounded worse than I expected (I've seen them 4 times in the last 9 years.) But my watching again has been rewarded with great performances by The Knack, Howard Jones, Wang Chung and CeCe Peniston. I actually enjoy getting a call from my mother right before the winner is announced.

If you go through that list you will notice that none of them won though. The only major beef that I have with the show so far is with Irene Cara winning last week. I don't think she did a bad job on either song. The only issue that I did have was about her being a solo artist. She performed her hit "What A Feeling" first. She later returned to sing Anastacia's "I'm Outta Love" but not solo. She performed as a singing trio Hot Caramel. Each of the 3 singers took lead vocals during the song. I just don't really know how fair that is.Posted by Hello

6 comments:

Teri said...

I do not always get to watch the show, but I am finding that I really have enjoyed what I have seen so far.

RT said...

Oh! Oh! Did you by any chance tape the show? I wanted to see it, but I don't get much of a chance to watch TV... :o(

RT said...

Just re-read that again...

Howard Jones! I use to love him! Was Thomas Dolby on there? Or Oh! Men at Work?

Come on, what's the line-up??? Is it still on? What day, what channel???

LoraLoo said...

For some reason I'm finding this show kind of repulsive, and I can't quite put my finger on why (considering I own music from many of the acts). It was rough watching Loverboy perform, although I did like Arrested Development's performance two weeks or whatever ago. I caught Glass Tiger last night, I had to change the channel.

Martin said...

RT - it airs on Thursday nights at 9pm on NBC but also airs on Bravo. In fact, they will be re-airing all 5 episodes (including the one airing next week) on July 1st (check your local listings.) If you go to the NBC website they have a listing of all the performers so far and who is on next week.

Lora - I entirely understand what you mean. 1) No one likes the smarmy host. 2) No one wants to hear their favorite songs cut short. 3) No one wants to hear their favorite classics sometimes slaughtered by their originator. 4) The fans jumping around excited doesn't seem realistic. 5) A professional drummer that I know believes that everything but the vocals are taped (watch for the same drummer playing with most of the bands throughout the episodes.) And 6) They pretty much build the band up only to let them down badly if they lose.

I did come up with a great way to make the show better:

Bring on 3 artists per week. Let them play their entire songs, let people know who is on a week before so people can spread the news to fans, get a new host and phone in vote with the winner announced on the next Today show or something. This way you can have more episodes, better mix of artists and a realistic vote by a demographic of fans instead of a studio audience.

Next week: Animotion, Juice Newton, PM Dawn, Shannon and Missing Persons

LoraLoo said...

Martin, yeah I'd say you picked up on all the repulsive pieces. All true observations.

I may have to catch next week, I'm dying to see what Missing Persons looks like now...