This is a great column with tremendous insight into every BB #1 since 1958. The author is always very complimentary towards DRATS and if you scroll through the comments, you’ll find a refreshing change - the vast majority of those weighing in are truly focused on musicality and are not rabid, bickering fans.
I sure wish I'd been following this project all along. What a magnificent effort. I now have a handy new chart reference to review when I just want to kill a little time or maybe help lull me into asleep!
Very well done . Well familiar with the song and its story as told , but I especially like that Tom addressed the one line in UPSIDE DOWN that's always sort of bothered me :
I never cared for the 'respectfully' angle, Tom's right in another instance I might have found such a woman's comment pathetic, until Tom looks at it in this way , saying she's almost playful as she sings it , fully aware, and if everything about this relationship is on the table , and its understood by both of them and its hunky dory, who am I to argue with what works for them.from:
https://www.stereogum.com/2079186/th...e-number-ones/
The song depicts a simple-enough situation: Ross is dizzily in love with a guy who won’t stop cheating on her. Once upon a time, Ross might’ve wrung melodrama out of that premise. On “Upside Down,” she’s so into the guy that she doesn’t even care:
“Respectfully, I say to thee, I’m aware that you’re cheating/ But no one makes me feel like you do.” Another singer might’ve found pathos in those lyrics, in the woman whose self-respect is so low that she’s forced herself to accept her man running around with other women. But there’s a playfulness in the way Ross sings it. She might even be teasing him a little bit. She’s horny and happy, and we can probably infer that she’s content to mess around on the side if the mood strikes her, too
I also liked the implication that this song is so strongly CHIC , that in a way, Diana has become something like a guest group member in her participation.
Saying it another way , Diana has stepped more into Chic's world with this song & album , than the other way around.
Great stuff ! Thanks zani57!
Last edited by Boogiedown; 04-08-2020 at 05:28 PM.
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