Grace Jones, "Slave to the Rhythm"

On another day, for another song, I might simply say by way of introduction: It's Grace Jones; what else do you need to know?

In this case, though, for this 2009 live performance of "Slave to the Rhythm," you need to know that:

• She's wearing a bustier and thong.


• Her heels are ferocious.

Oh, and ...

• She hula-hoops ... for the duration of the song.

That's amazing, Grace.

Melanie, "Look What They've Done to My Song, Ma"

It's Bastille Day, but that's not a useful holiday for a rock critic to write about - there's not much in pop music concerned with the affairs of the French. There was one #1 hit sung in French - but I dobut anyone here is itching to hear "Dominique." A handful of songs have dropped in a line or two of French language - the Beatles' "Michelle" and ELO's "Hold On Tight" being perhaps the most notable examples - but I'll highlight a different one today.

"Look What They've Done to My Song, Ma" was a Top 20 hit for the New Seekers in 1970, but the original, written and sung by the ever barely hinged Melanie, is a superior reading. Melanie was incapable of delivering a line without sincerity, even en francais - at least, until "Brand New Key" made her a superstar and ruined her career. But back to "Song, Ma": It's a vague but evocative lament that a writer's words have been misappropriated - which makes one wonder how Melanie felt about its treatments in the hands of Ray Charles and Barbra Streisand and Puf'n'Stuf urchin Jack Wild. I'd like to think she approved of what they did to her song.

The Easybeats, "Friday on My Mind"

If on Monday you have Friday on your mind, you need this. Never has a singer look so elated to be on stage - or maybe simply elated to be alive - as the Easybeats' lead singer Steven Wright does here on "Friday on My Mind." The jangling rocker (with a class-conscious line railing against the rich man!) was the Australian band's only hit, and is the only song I've ever heard from them. I don't want to correct that - I could only be disappointed, as this power-pop precursor is one of the more perfect songs of its ilk, hardly capable of being improved upon. It certainly got my Monday off to a nice start.

PS: Favorite unexpected line: "Even my old man looks ... good."

Friday Funtime: Pop Argot's "Sweet" Tooth

Still with "Wicked Game" in the back of my head, I considered a Friday setlist of the sexiest songs I have ever heard. But Robert Palmer's "You Overwhelm Me" was nowhere to be found, and without that, my list would have felt woefully incomplete. So instead, a celebration of confections: some of my favorite "sweet" songs. I hope you find them tasty too.

1. Anita Baker, "Sweet Love"
2. Sade, "The Sweetest Taboo"
3. Jackie Wilson, "I Get the Sweetest Feeling"
4. Rufus & Chaka Khan, "Sweet Thing"
5. Barbra Streisand, "Sweet Inspiration / Where You Lead"
6. Commodores, "Sweet Love"
7. Sweet Sensation, "Sad Sweet Dreamer"
8. Barry White, "Your Sweetness Is My Weakness"
9. Four Tops, Loving You Is Sweeter Than Ever"
10. Juice Newton, "The Sweetest Thing (I've Ever Known)"

Peter Criss, "You Matter to Me"

In the middle of 1978, Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons were on top of the world. Their band, Kiss, was the hottest touring commodity in the world; they'd lodged seven Top 40 hits in less than three years; and they were poised to break it big in other media as the worlds of TV and comic books came a-calling. They even had the marketing gimmickry and inspiration for each of the four band members to release a solo album that fall - though surely Paul and Gene expected theirs to perform best, as they were unquestionably the leaders and creative vision of the group as well as the songwriters and primary singers.

So it must have been galling to Stanley and Simmons when Ace Frehley scored the sole Top 40 hit of the lot (with the infectious "New York Groove") and Peter Criss unexpectedly turned in the best pop song. "You Matter to Me" wasn't a hit, but it holds up nicely as a period piece alongside the similar "Stumblin' In" by Suzi Quatro and Chris Norman. (My apologies, though, for that YouTube clip - it was the only one I could find of the song. Who knew there were adult men who are fans of both Peter Criss and My Little Pony?) Paul and Gene would have to content themselves with moderate sales success and eventual solo follow-ups, not to mention increasingly tight control over the group (it's not for nothing that KISS was taken by many to be an initialism for "KISS Is Stanley & Simmons").

Anyway, listen to "You Matter to Me" and tell me it isn't one of the more underrated songs of the late '70s. For sub-Chapman-&-Chinn, it works for me.

Thomas Dolby, "I Love You Goodbye"

This morning I dreamed about my friend Brandon for the first time in recent memory. Maybe even the first time since his passing away 3 1/2 years ago. It was one of those dreams where a number of surrealistic situations come and go (a few and far between thing for me - I don't dream much anymore); the germane detail was that Brandon and I had skipped a river boat cruise and gone instead to a boardwalk Vietnamese restaurant. We were seated, ordered some appetizers; I fretted over what to have to drink ... and then started crying. Sobbing. "I know I'm dreaming," I said softly to him, "because you're talking and I can hear you." At that point his voice faded to mute, his visage blurred to my eyes, and I woke up.

I'm hoping that by typing this out I'll transcend the empty, hollow feeling that results from a dream like that. It's not hard to interpret: one of my many regrets about his passing is that it came so suddenly, at 3,000 miles' distance, that I had no opportunity to say goodbye to him.

Back in February 2006, when a wake was held for him in San Francisco, two songs reverberated as part of my grieving process. There was a self-pitying and self-destructive impulse to be found in Death Cab for Cutie's "Soul Meets Body" ("if the silence takes you, then I hope it takes me too," even if that's not what they meant by that). And then there was Thomas Dolby's "I Love You Goodbye," a 1992 nonhit that I've heard on the radio from time to time over the years. Its storyline of a Britisher joyriding in the deep Cajun Southeast has nothing at all to do with Brandon or me, but its refrain became my plea to myself for strength:

"There is a spirit here that won't be broken ... Some words are sad to say, some leave me tongue-tied / The hardest words I know: I love you, goodbye."

Chris Isaak, "Wicked Game"

A gentleman doesn't kiss and tell.

Having said that ... If one were a gay man, obsessed with music; and one were being seduced by a (mostly) straight musician in the country on holiday; and that musician, at 7am in an eccentric and mural-splashed hotel room, were to preface what he was about to play with, "This is the sexiest song ever written" - well, one could hardly do better than to hear Chris Isaak's sublimely erotic "Wicked Game."

ETA 7/7/09: In re-reading this, I realize how my ambiguous wording could be misconstrued. The musician in question was not Chris Isaak himself, but rather, a person who was playing various songs for me on his iPod speakers, including "Wicked Game." I sincerely apologize if I gave any impression otherwise; it was certainly not my intent.