Nu Shooz, "I Can't Wait"

A near-hit nearly passed me by, but I finally heard the Ting Tings' "Shut Up and Let Me Go" late last night. (Somehow the iPod ad never crossed my path.) These are the moments I really miss having tastemaking friends and websites in my presence; I would have hated to have missed out on this fun little confection. It has the bounce of Chic's "Good Times" (and thus of "Rapper's Delight"), and with its chicken-scratch guitar is a close cousin to the twin jolly-marchers of '04, "Take Me Out" and "Float On."

But what it really reminded me of goes back to 1986. The Ting Tings are a duo: she's a cute, feisty blonde with a sense of humor; he's an equally cute, utterly silent dark-haired guy who observes and assists as she runs the show. They're eroticized enough for one to think Animotion, but I prefer to think of them as their generation's Nu Shooz.

Nu Shooz were technically a nine-piece band but for all intents and purposes consisted of a husband-wife duo, John Smith and Valerie Day. They briefly surfaced with a few cutely innocent dance-poppers, including "I Can't Wait", a surprise Top 10er with a gimmicky synth riff, whose video took the gamble that people would be attracted to Ms. Day despite, or even because of, her being presented as a Head of the Class-worthy nerd (watch as she mugs with gag false teeth at the end!). I fell for it; indeed, my revisionist history tells me that, slowly awakening teen that I was at the time, I was simultaneously crushing on her and her husband.

Of course, if that video were being made today, Day would have been forced to drop 20 pounds and squeezed into some humiliating thread of an outfit in order to fulfill someone's lad-mag fantasy. I'm actually quite glad I was a teen in far simpler, far less sexualized times.