Song of the Day 2/15: Bad Company, “Young Blood”
The competition for scummiest asshole in Florida is so crowded it has to be held in categories, like drag races. In the congressional class, while Anna Paulina Luna is giving him a run for his money, Matt Gaetz still reigns supreme. While the Department of Justice has dropped its sex-trafficking investigation against him, former Rep. Kevin McCarthy hasn’t proved so easy to slough off.
McCarthy is reportedly the one behind the House Ethics Committee’s ongoing investigation, which has obtained texts that allegedly show Gaetz setting up a trip with a young woman that his associate paid for sex. By itself that doesn’t prove anything, but Gaetz’ preference for, um, inexperienced women is well-established by this point. So this song’s for him.
The song, written by Doc Pomus, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, was the Coasters’ first hit, released in 1957. Their version reached No. 8 on Billboard’s Hot 100 and No. 1 on the R&B chart. Bad Company’s cover, released as a single in 1976, made it to No. 20 on the Hot 100.
Well, I’d have gone with “Christine Sixteen” by KISS, or maybe “My Sharona,” by The Knack. Or perhaps “Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon,” by Neil Diamond.
I wonder whether Gaetz idolizes Jerry Lee Lewis and Edgar Allan Poe.
No. But he has Gary Puckett & The Union Gap’s Greatest Hits album.
I always hated “My Sharona.”
Gary Puckett was my second choice.
Good choice, but Puckett is telling the girl that she’s too young for him. Gaetz would be saying the opposite!
I was thinking “This Girl Is a Woman Now.” Will probably get another chance to use it soon.
I hated My Sharona when I heard it every five minutes, but with the passage of time I like it. The first Knack album is very good and marked the end of the era of disco-as-pop-music.
I much preferred “Good Girls Don’t.” I still can’t stand “My Sharona.” Part of it is what a dick Doug Fieger was.
My go-to for late night zoning out is the 70’s music video channel on PlutoTV, which lately has been featuring Ringo’s cover of You’re Sixteen You’re Beautiful (And You’re Mine) in heavy rotation.
Since its release this song has only become creepier each year. The video has a hairy middle-aged Ringo chasing his object of affection around the scenery, played by (who I later learned was) a convincingly teenage-looking Carrie Fisher (at age 21 or so), who was at the time dating Paul Simon who is about Ringo’s age.
The supposed victim was 17, so I’d have to go with “I Saw Her Standing There.”
Internet says Simon started dating Fisher a few years later, in 1977. Ringo covered the song in 1973.
True but Ringo’s video was 1978. The song was always creepy since Johnny Burnette’s version first charted in 1960 .
In another Star Wars connection, Burnette’s version was featured on the soundtrack for George Lucas’s “American Graffiti. Back then there was plausible cover that the song was from the perspective of another teenager.
I didn’t realize the video was made so much later. Or that Carrie Fisher was so young when she made Star Wars.