Word: uptempo
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...months counted off, we hear "Round One... Round Two..." The bluesy "It Takes Two" borrows the chord pattern from "Sea of Love" and the mood of Barbara Lynn's "You'll Lose a Good Thing" (a Waters favorite oldie, used in the movie). There's a black-girl-group uptempo number, "Welcome to the '60s," that echoes "Heat Wave" and other Martha and the Vandellas tunes...
...island of musical serenity in the Kingdom of Nice. Here's how Edison Chen, one of the young rebels challenging the autocracy of amiability, describes it: "No sex. No drugs. Maybe a little rock 'n' roll." The ballads rise with a decorous lilt; even most of Cantopop's uptempo numbers could be sung (with English lyrics) in a Presbyterian church in Iowa. Most of the singers have good manners too. Perky, dreamy, neatly dressed, well behaved, they are the rock stars any mom would want her kid to marry...
...That's fine. But don't forget about writing good songs while you're busy making sure every genre feels included in the conversation. From Blink-182's "Every Time I Look at You" to Sum 41's "Fat Lip" to Jettingham's "Cheating" the mode is uptempo, plaintive but not gloomy, a little angry but good-humored. For all that blending of rap and metal and punk, they're still craftsmanlike pop songs, peppy, hook-centered, reasonably entertaining. None of them are insufferable, but the only one that totally kicks ass is American Hi-Fi's "Vertigo," which happens...
...back to basics -the 12-bar blues -in a song so uptempo and alluring, and so memorable, that it serves as the title for Ertegun?s gigantic memoir book: "What?d I Say." There was nothing revolutionary in the lyric, except its daring to be loose ("Hey, mama, doncha treat me wrong/ Come and love your daddy all night long," etc.). Nor was the notion of releasing a jazzy, largely instrumental number in two parts; the year before, Cozy Cole (whose drumming career had stretched from Jelly Roll Morton to Charlie Parker, and who had recorded a Leiber-Stoller number...
...Leiber?s parodies - "aural cartoons," Donald Clarke calls them - were also social criticism; they sounded black but could apply to alienated whites too. Stoller?s uptempo bluesy charts (usually 12-bar blues) found the ideal blend of honking sax solos by King Curtis and the singers, who had distinct comic personality: Gardner?s lead tenor in a vaudeville vibrato of fear and trembling, Bobby Guy?s smart-guy growl (a nastier version of the Ray Charles tout-voice), Dub Jones? mindshaft bass delivering the cool catchphrases (as parent: "You better leave my daughter alone" and "Don?t talk back...