We watched Dynasty back in the 80s, but nobody in the family really enjoyed it that much. It was always a poor man's Dallas, without a JR or a Bobby or even a Cliff Barnes to engage your empathy. Joan Collins was Joan Collins and the rest of them kind of faded into the wallpaper. Apart from Heather Locklear, but she was much sweeter in The Fall Guy.
The word "Dynasty" gets mentioned in thousands of songs, so I limited myself to references that were definitely about the show. Most of them pronounce it "die-nasty", as the Americans do, rather than our softer British "din-asty".
As a starter, I offer you Estelle...
I grew up in the 1980s
In a four bedroom house
My family, my grandma, three or four aunties
Uncles and brothers in and out of prison daily
Certain times when there was no heat you stay under covers
John Kay was the lead singer of Steppenwolf, a band you probably didn't know were still going in the 90s... by which time, John had got his name on the posters.
Here's a song I really didn't like in the 80s, mainly because Karel Fialka got his young step-son in to do some of the vocals, and as a teenager, "I hated little kids".
I see Dallas, Dynasty, Terrahawks,
He-Man, Tom and Jerry, Dukes of Hazzard,
Airwolf, Blue Thunder, Rambo, Road Runner,
Daffy Duck, The A-Team, The A-Team, I see the A-Team.
Looking for a perfect 80's pop song? I'm sure you'll agree this is hard to beat. Prince's record company didn't quite agree though. They didn't want to release it as a single. Which makes me want to start a new feature called, "Record Companies Are Idiots". That one could run and run.
Don't laugh at me because I'm a fool... clearly I didn't fool any of you by suggesting that yesterday's Snapshots had nothing to do with the date on the calendar. You all have far too much Wisdom...
Al Matthews was the actor who played Gunnery Sergeant Apone in the movie Aliens... and Benny's dad in Grange Hill. He was also a Radio 1 DJ for a time, and hit the UK Top 20 in 1975 with this...
No charge is free. Electricity also comes with a charge. Hammond make organs. A pierced organ is a Prince Albert. A ring is sometimes called a (wedding) band.
We arrive in the Cambridgeshire city of Peterborough this week, birthplace of Erasure's Andy Bell, Maxim Reality & Gizz Butt from The Prodigy, and Ashton Merrygold from JLS. Me neither.
One of my favourite Sheffield bands, The Long Blondes, wrote the following tune about Peterborough, which is never very far, they tell us, although they do conclude "I'd rather be in Sheffield than Peterborough".
Mondegreens. Misheard lyrics. You'll find them all over the internet, but here are ten GENUINE ones from my past. I honestly thought these were the actual lyrics... until finally, often many years later, I discovered the truth.
Possibly the earliest mondegreen I ever encountered... or at least, the earliest one I can remember. She just can't get enough chicken, love. I still hear that today...
This is one of the ones you'll see a lot on websites that discuss mondegreens. Most of the other examples they quote sound preposterous to me, apart from Bohemain Rhapsody's famous "Beelzebub had a devil for a sideboard". But this... this was exactly what I thought Madonna was singing in 1986. Apparently, a lot of people also thought the opening line to this song was the racially offensive, "Last night I dreamt of some dago". Poor old Madonna. Enunciate, luv.
Young girl with eyes like the desert
I'm having a hard time accepting Madonna will be 60 this year. Bad enough that Kylie just turned 50.
I've been planning this particular Top Ten for a while now and whenever I heard a song from my youth with a lyric I just couldn't explain, I had to go and check out the real thing. I swear I always thought Andy Bell was asking for Martin Scorcese's number in this song. I have no idea why.
What religion or reason
Could drive a man to forsake his lover
Now I've read the real lyric, I can't even hear the Martin Scorcese bit anymore. It's gone.
Enough what, Michael? Stamps? Airmail stickers? Postal Orders? (Do they even have Postal Orders anymore? Probably not. Another archaic item from our past.)
For many, many years it always baffled me how The Bloke Out Of Boston (do you know his name?) could possibly see his own backside if he was walking away. Was he looking over his shoulder into a mirror? Wasn't he looking where he was going? Accident waiting to happen, right there...
You might wonder why Meat was such a big fan of Our Cilla... I certainly did. Then again, BOOH was written by Jim Steinman, who is officially BARKING MAD, so why shouldn't he throw in a reference to Cilla? Maybe he was after a blind date...
I'm gonna hit the highway like a battering ram,
On a Silver Black Phantom Bike
When I found out the real lyrics, I was just as confused? Is that a Black Phantom bike that's painted silver? Or is it Silver-Black? What the hell is Silver-Black, Jim? Is that even a colour?
1. Elvis Costello - The Angels Wanna Wear My Red Shoes
These may not be as amusing as some of the ones above, but they speak to how I spent a large part of my late teens and early twenties: headphones on, sat beside the stereo, listening to Elvis Costello albums and trying to write down the lyrics. There were never any lyric sheets in Elvis's records and the way he spat and twisted and punned his way through the language was endlessly fascinating... but also a little frustrating when I just couldn't work out what he was singing. Even now, almost 30 years later, I can still remember the time I spent puzzling over this one song in particular...
"Our love got fractured into echo and suede"
Our love got fractured in the echo and sway
"But since you got in my pumps, you just suspend my sentence"
Ever since you got me punctured this has been my sentence
Fortunately, the greatest lyrical couplet this song has to offer was clear as a bell...
Oh, I said, "I'm so happy I could die"
She said, "Drop dead" then left with another guy...
Your turn! There must be a misheard lyric or two in your back catalogue. Do share.
60s garage rock classic from a bunch of American GIs who were also a band. Immortalised because it's one of the songs playing in the bowling alley in The Big Lebowski. You mark that frame an 8, and you're entering a world of pain, Smokey...
Clumsily lumped in with the Britpop crowd, though they were much louder and more energetic. Maybe Damon got the idea for Song 2 from this lot? (Probably not.) Still, I never hated them.
Sadly remembered now as riding the coat tails of fellow Sheffield poets the Arctic Monkeys, I always felt LMT had the potential to step out of Alex Turner's shadow. But they obviously had some pretty negative experiences in the music industry... as this track illustrates.
The b-side to TBS's only Number One, A Little Time, this is crammed with typically Heaton barbs.
Those winter nights just spent indoors That criminal fizz in the drink he pours We smooch all night to "The Theme From Jaws" (In other words I hate you)
I went to see a doctor and she said 'Yes, go ahead' 'Throw yourself into the sea' I wrote a will for my friends And this is how it read 'Me, me, me, me, me, me, me' No friends, everything for me, me, me No friends, just me, just me
I love the way that one switches from haunting acoustic guitar to jaunty seaside piano and back again
Yes, it's a female empowerment anthem, and infidelity is a horrible thing so Kelis's hatred is well justified... but you've got to spare a thought for the bloke. No, wait, hear me out... you've got to have some balls to go messing around behind a woman like Kelis's back. I mean, she will cut them off in a heartbeat, sunshine.
Oh, sorry, was he not all there? My bad.
(P.S. Kelis, honey - you need a bigger bath towel.)
1. Ugly Kid Joe - Everything About You
What I liked about this song - and felt UKJ could have developed further rather than resorting to bizarre Harry Chapin covers and a fast slide into obscurity - was its bouncy sense of fun. There wasn't a lot of that going around in rock music at the time. Fun had pretty much died out in the late 80s (apart from when we were laughing at Axl for being a dick) and grunge nailed the coffin shut. Imagine if Nirvana had had a sense of humour... only I guess they wouldn't have been Nirvana, wouldn't have surfed the zeitgeist as they did, wouldn't have sold half as many records... but Kurt might still be with us. Is it better to live fast, die young and leave a miserable-looking corpse... or still be around 30 years later (the Uglies apparently reformed in 2010) even though most people only remember you as a one hit wonder?
