my power pop addiction, no. 14 (86)

I weighed whether to post something a little less well known tonight - I'm quite fond of How Do You Talk to Girls? - but I love Jessie's Girl and its video too much to pass it over. I see very few contemporary music videos nowadays unless I’m eating in the food court at the Westside Pavillion, but one thing I notice is that they don’t really have much narrative structure anymore. It’s usually just jaggedly edited footage of the artist striking various (frequently moronic) poses. The video for Jessie’s Girl is all the more satisfying in light of this, with a nice balance between telling a story and showing Rick Springfield et al playing the song. The song itself just gets catchier with the passage of time. It was a million light years from what I wanted in my music back when it came out (though I have some foggy recollection of privately liking it), but these days it’s exactly the kind of thing I want to listen to all day long. I dig the crunchy guitars in the middle eight (I think it’s a middle eight, but I’m not a musician), and the way they get even crunchier and rise up a semitone or so in the small interval before the song returns to the chorus. You can’t help but get caught up in how handsome the guy was, but I think his Tiger Beat looks probably diverted attention from the song’s subtle muscularity. It’s got a bit of a hard edge, both musically and thematically. She’s lovin’ him with that body, I just know it… I know the feeling all too well, Rick, but I also know that your finding another is just a matter of course…