GREAT APES: A Little Respect ✏️

🎸🪵🔥

Welcome Tuesday!

That’s what we say here in the United States on days like today: “Welcome Tuesday!” Notably, this phrase, when written — it is only ever written — does not take the comma that often divides a direct address (“Welcome, Nate!” or “That way, Grahnkt!”). And who knows why? 🤷🏽‍♀️ Its roots go back months, and everybody is already using it in emails, so probably the facts are too buried or blurry to be interpreted now.

Let’s see if GPT-4 can sift through the muck:

Wow! So it works for other days! That’s going to be very useful indeed. Big thanks to GPT for saving my ass.

Now, when the synth-stan band Erasure released “A Little Respect” as the third single off of their 2nd studio album, “The Innocents,” back in September 1988, they probably had no idea that anybody would listen to it, much less like it. But, over the years, their dismal lack of self-belief proved unfounded, and today “A Little Respect” is considered my many listeners to be “good.” In fact, it’s their top track on Spotify, with over 260M streams(!), the royalties from which they used to buy a brand new drum rug.

With all the paint and polish stripped away, here’s Erasure’s “A Little Respect” performed by this blog’s co-founder Keith Murray:

Boooooom! Those falsettos!!! Zoweee!!!!

I (Chris) texted with Keith earlier today to discuss this recording. Here’s that conversation with some of the foulest language edited out:

CHRIS: Keith, how do you respond to cool-hounds who say “A Little Respect” isn’t even Erasure’s best song, that it’s only their biggest hit, that cognoscenti prefer “Chains of Love,” “Stop!,” or their cover of the Everly Brothers’ “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” off of 2003’s concession of defeat “Other People’s Songs”? And while we’re talking about it, is it fair to claim, as some do, that Vince Clarke did his best work when Andy Bell was nowhere to be seen, with bands like Yazoo or Depeche Mode?

KEITH: I guess I wouldn’t know how to respond to that at all. What can someone even mean by “best song” if the metric they’re using isn’t “popularity”? The best song is the one that resonates with listeners, that moves them to engage, that encourages multiple listens on streaming platforms. I guess the only other objective measure we could use would be, what, “song length”? No. No!

That’s why all musicians love Spotify so intensely — finally, we get to know, without question, what song represents the height of our artistic vision. How comforting it is to know for sure that “Nobody Movie” is definitely —DEFINITELY — the finest song-craft of our career. How grand for Paul McCartney to look upon the Beatles’ streaming numbers and know that his little friend George thoroughly mopped the floor with him, as a writer. Just utterly kicked his sorry ass. Twice as good. And how convenient it is for Depeche Mode’s Dave Gahan, who for like forty years has been saying, “Vince Clark’s best work has been with Depeche Mode, no doubt. I’ve crunched the numbers, and ‘Just Can’t Get Enough’ is better than their best song, ‘A Little Respect.’ I should point out, however, that our very best song, ‘Enjoy The Silence,’ was written without him. It is roughly 163,000,000 quality-units better than Vince’s best Depeche Mode song.”

CHRIS: Persuasive, but do you worry about the distorting effect of the Spotify algorithm? Pavement’s #1 song is a Brighten the Corners b-side called “Harness Your Hopes” that was known only to die-hard P-brains until, in 2017, Spotify’s autoplay function started goosing the tune’s numbers (it now has 97M plays (see for comparison their #2 “Cut Your Hair,” a longtime fan fav with 36M)). Experts on Spotify’s algorithm have theorized that its preference for songs that sound similar to lots of other songs will tend to choose the most regular (blandest?) tune from the catalog of a band that’s usually quirky. Surely THAT can’t be our definition of “best”…

KEITH: I think that’s just a good example of the notion that you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it believe the long-promoted fallacy that “Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain” is the best Pavement album. As the wise and benevolent Spotify algorithm makes clear, Pavement just got better as their career progressed. It’s convenient to believe that “Cut Your Hair” is (was?) a “fan fave,” but that’s based upon a once-viable but now-antiquated system of song-rating: the MTV system. Yes, before Spotify, MTV was our most accurate means of measuring a song’s quality; whichever song MTV played the most was the best song. And so for a long time, we were led to believe that “Cut Your Hair” was Pavement’s best work. But now we have the Algorithm. The human error that was an inextricable flaw in MTV’s metrics has been purged from Spotify’s process, and we now can be sure that “Harness Your Hopes” is Pavement’s best song.

I mean, hell, Pavement’s fans, a famously stupid cohort who score disastrously low in all STEM testing, have always been vocal in their belief that “Terror Twilight” is Pavement’s worst album. It was long considered a debacle so profoundly corrosive to the band’s legacy that they had no choice but to break up shortly following its release. And now, look here! Spotify shows us that “Spit On A Stranger,” the album’s opening track and lead single, is Pavement’s fourth best song! You’re goddamned right.

Thank you, Spotify, for everything.

Erasure, looking for the rug they just bought at Guitar Center for their drums to sit on, using every last penny of royalty money they’ve made as a band.

As always with the “Great Apes” cover series, we like to provide lyrics to go with Keith’s recording. He approaches other people’s songs pretty casually, and will often end up “tweaking” a lyric here and there 🙄, so if you’re trying to sing along at home you may not have much luck using a google-searched lyric sheet. Here, then, are the words that Keith ended up singing in his take on “A Little Respect.” Have another listen and follow along below — the recording will make a lot more sense this time!

A LITTLE RESPECT, by Erasure

(Keith Murray cover version)

I tried a’this cover

Well, it’ll sump intimate me Swede, uh

Obey beer afraid

Vroom Reagan, aha!

Mom sewin’ Le Whipped Goo

Upbeat for Eva-poo

That chicken minnow rescind

Why you make him eat what’s so hot?

That chicken minnow

That chicken minnow

That chicken minnow

That chicken minnow

Sooo… Art, Huew, Colin

Obey the fleas

Kibble: it’ll risk Bet 2B

In his fascia, Walter

We’ll chew opinion “I’m Sal Tumi”

Wheat-cut meatloaf, not raw!

Hand me that piece of pie — hot!

Mom sewin’ Le Whipped Goo

Upbeat for Eva-poo

What real itchin’ ol’ Rhee’s in

Quick draw the mandible, take Isla the…

Dough chattel minnow

Dough chattel minnow

Dough chattel minnow

Dough chattel minnow

Sooo… Art, Huew, Colin

Obey the fleas

Kibble: it’ll risk Bet 2B

Mom sewin’ Le Whipped Goo

Upbeat for Eva-poo

That chicken minnow rescind

Minnow you make me weren’t so hot

That chicken minnow

That chicken minnow

That chicken minnow

That chicken minnow

Sooo… Art, Huew, Colin

Obey the fleas

Kibble: it’ll risk Bet 2B

Art, Huew, Colin

Obey the bees

Kibble: it’ll risk Bet 2B

Last but not least, a heartfelt “Oi! Mate…” to recent annual paid subscriber Julia Heller. Oi! Julia Heller, mate! Thank you!

As anyone who listened to our last Stoop Chat knows, we went to see the new Guy Ritchie fantasia “That Covenant” last week, and well, it was a total goddamn treat. Not because of the film, mind you — that was only okay — but because we used Julia’s annual subscription fee to purchase our snacks: a huge popcorn, and two gigantic, icy soda pops. (Afterward, we even had money left over to buy a couple beers and record the Stoop Chat — still courtesy of our saintly enabler Julia.)

Remember, it is the ironclad policy of Slow Descent Into Radness that we use all paid subscription fees to fund alcohol or equally unhealthy digestible goods. Yes, that’s a new addition to the policy; we hope it won’t cause a stampede of “unsubs.” It’s something we’re trying out, and we’re open to your feedback. As ever, if you plunk down for a paid subscription and want to offer prescriptions as to how we may use your fees, just reply to the “welcome” email you receive after signing up — we will do our best to honor reasonable requests (“Please only buy whisky; no beer”) and ignore ridiculous ones (“Just please don't use this to buy drugs🙏🏼💗”).

Saluting you with a wooden deer hoof,

Keith & Chris 🦌