Switched on Pop - Why is 90s Pop so Bizarre?

Episode Date: July 27, 2018

The Switched on Pop Summer Throwback Series continues! This time, with a deep dive into the musical detritus of the 1990s. In true 90s fashion, our episode is inspired by a pair of classic VH1 shows; "Behind the Music" and "Where Are They Now?" Our subjects are two songs representing the lunatic fringe of 90s culture, "Cotton Eyed Joe" and "How Bizarre." In the course of our musicological investigation, we uncover dark truths about these seemingly anodyne hits that will make you question everything you know about pop music. And in the end, we reach a definitive answer to a perennially vexing question: "WTF was 90s music so weird?" Songs Discussed Rednex: Cotton Eye Joe Pop in an Oak The Way I Mate Cotton Eyed Joe: Fiddlin John Carson Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys Karen Dalton Chieftains Nina Simone  OMC: How Bizarre Right ON Start making your summer hit track on Splice and check out our chord pack at splice.com/onpop-chords Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It's free for iOS users. Welcome to Switched on Pop. I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. And I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. Charlie, we're continuing our summer throwback season here. Loving it. And in this episode, I want to revisit a time that for us 80s babies was an incredibly formative decade. I want to go back to the 90s.

Yes, great, wonderful. So many summer jams. There's so much to talk about 90s music, but one question keeps nagging me when I think about this musical decade. I guess there's no other way to phrase it. Why is 90s music so weird? Oh, wow.

I don't know. I guess we could say that it's a, musical representation of Fukuyama's end of history. And so a, I don't know, a postmodern malaise. I don't even know. I love it. I love you. No, no. We'll get there. That was a rhetorical question, though. I appreciate your enthusiasm. But hopefully we can agree this was a strange time in music. First of all, we had all these crazy musical contradictions sharing the charts. We had nirvana's smells like teen spirit. Yeah.

Sharing the charts with something like Aqua's bubble gum social critique, Barbie girl. Yeah, really different musical traditions. It was a bizarre time. And I think in order to unpack it, let's do close listening. You know, that's our specialty. Let's pick two massive hits from that decade and try and understand what makes them tick. So in the first half, Charlie, I want to discuss. a song, well, I'll let it introduce itself.

Great. If I hadn't been for cotton I joe, I'd been married a long time ago. Where did you come from? Where did you go? Where did you come from? Cutting a Joe? This is absurd. This is actually the perfect synthesis of smells like teen spirit and Barbie girl because you have the distorted synth lines mashed up against the very bizarre sort of Euro pop thing, but I don't know where the country comes from. So we're, we're, we're mashing up a whole other genre. This is too much. Very maximalist. Okay, so we're listening to

Cotton, I, Joe. What's the first memory that this song conjures for you, Charles? Having my parents drive me to the movies listening to the radio in the back of the car. Great, and you're what, like eight or something at this point? I'm getting to the age where I feel embarrassed all the time. Speaking of embarrassed, this song makes me think of Bar Mitzvah. season at my junior high school. This was the track that brought everyone onto the dance floor because of course this song had its own dance that you can do. It's one of those rare songs that has this pre-easy choreographed dance that everyone can join in on. Back to back with the electric slide and then the macarena. Yeah, exactly. Why is this song so freaking popular? Because you can still hear this song today

at weddings on the dance floor. I mean, it is. still with us. Yeah, it's even like a stadium anthem, I feel like at sports arenas. Yes, exactly. I mean, this song came out in 94, so two decades plus on. It's still very much with us. I want to go deep into Contonite Jotrilla. I want to go deeper, perhaps, than anyone has ever gone.

Dear Lord. Before, first I want to analyze this song, as we do, try and find out why it is so effective at hooking our ears, you know, for 20 years plus. And then I want to get into the history. history of the song because when we do, we'll see that Cotton I Joe doesn't just tell us something about the 90s. It actually tells us something about a century plus of pop music. You're going real deep, man. All right. I'm here for you though. So let's stop right in the acapella vocal that starts this song. That makes us immediately go, oh, it's time to rush onto the

dance floor on mass. Let's just figure out what's going on here, because we've got this vocal, we've got a strong southern accent. It's super rhythmic and syncopated, and there's also a lot of delay present, right? Yeah, every single time that he says a word, they sort of ping pong back and forth into your left and right ear delayed multiple times. Exactly. So it's not just Cotton Eye Joe, it's Cotton Eye Joe.

It's almost nauseating. Right. Okay, so that's the very beginning of the song. And I think this is really effective, especially, again, if you think of this as a dance floor anthem, at kind of grabbing your attention. And then step two is the moment that blows our minds, so to speak. Because what they are doing here is taking this acapella,

unrefined vocal, and then all of a sudden putting something completely unexpected underneath it. And this creates a kind of suspense for us because it's like, wait, what is happening here? These two things are not supposed to go together, this acapella country vocal and this harsh 90s Euro pop synth line. Yeah, yep. Though interesting that the synth line does balance the delayed vocal because the synth has

a thing called a gate on it where it keeps getting cut off, right? it gets cut off in a rhythmic sequence gated, kind of to then let the delayed sound of his voice fill that other space. So they are really contrasting sonically, but actually musically, somehow strangely work. I totally agree. I couldn't put it better.

That could be the epitaph for the song. Somehow strangely it worked. So now we've had this moment of dissonance, right, where these two genres are colliding. And then step three is kind of where it, all comes together. We get the fiddle and the four on the floor bass drum. Again, two worlds that should not merge and yet they do. And as you said, strangely, somehow it works. You know, it takes me back to when we used to play in a little old-timey band together, but we were missing the mega synth in our

string band. We totally could have made it. That's right, Charles. And then step four is when it all comes together. All these different elements, the vocal, the fiddle from the country world, and then the synthesizer and the four-and-floor bass drum from the Europop dance world. It all lands in this satisfying conclusion. It's so Eurovision. Absolutely. It is very Eurovision. Okay. So now at this point, they've slowly, step by step, brought us into their weird Eurovision world, right? And I think in doing it kind of one step at a time like that, they've convinced us.

They've persuaded us. Yes, this is happening. And yes, you actually like it. This song is so old and I've heard it so many hundreds of times. I can't really definitively have a relationship to it other than it just is. You know, so it's almost hard to hear that build. But I think your breakdown is correct. Yes.

No, I know you mean. It's hard to have distance on this one. I mean, and that's a product of our generation. Maybe people older than us and younger than us might not necessarily feel this way. They might be listening to this saying, no, actually. This doesn't make any sense. Please stop. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, it's only been reified for a certain generation. But if you have been convinced, then what's remarkable is that the song is able to get away with some really surprising things that I think other pop songs would not be able to do. Pray tell. Let's listen to the female vocal that comes in a little bit later, which I've never really paid attention to before and all of a sudden listening to it I'm thinking wow this is not very good in the sense that the singer is like barely hitting the high notes here it's almost extended beyond her range pre auto tune and yet it doesn't matter because we've been hooked in at this point and they

could probably do anything to the track including as you'll hear these gang vocals in the background and these silly little yodels and stuff it doesn't matter they've convinced us. But let's listen to this female vocal for a second. That sounds like somebody trying to do Madonna and karaoke very poorly with a banjo in the background for good measure. Ouch, yeah. This is, wow, this is, this is about as catty as we've ever gotten on the show. And then it ends with this really goofy, like, shotgun sound effect, bringing us right back into the chorus. We come back to the same statement. It shouldn't work, and yet somehow it does.

It makes me wonder what was happening in country music in this period. Is this like when country music fully crossed over into just being straight up pop music completely separated from its roots in acoustic and folk-oriented sounds? In order to answer that, Charles, you're going to have to take a journey with me, okay? I queued you up. Look at that. So strap in because you'll notice I have not talked about the creators of this song. yet. Do you have any idea who recorded Cotton Eye Joe this track we're listening to in 1994?

Definitely a one-hit wonder. Yes, but you might be surprised how much mileage they've gotten out of that one hit. The makers of Cotton-Ey-Joe is a Swedish band called Rednecks. Is that Rednecks spelled with an X? Yes, it is. Absolutely. And I, okay, at this point, I definitely need to look this up on the computer and see were they ever Eurovision contestants because I won't. Damn it, no. They weren't. No, Eurovision adjacent.

Okay, Charlie, but I don't think you're prepared. You don't sound strapped in for the journey we're about to take. I need you to really, you can't be Googling. I need you 100% here because there's going to be a lot of twists and turns here, okay? Okay. And in order to begin, sound effect, please. We need to go back to, Sweden, 1994.

Three producers are messing around and they come up with this bizarre country electro dance hybrid, Cotton Eye Joe. This song unexpectedly starts taking off. Let's call these three producers for the sake of shorthand, because again, this has a convoluted tale. Let's call them the Swedes, okay?

Sure. Okay. Now, the Swedes all of a sudden have this unexpected hit, Cotton Eye Joe, quickly becoming an international success. What do they do? They need to start a band. Okay.

So they hire four people to dress up in overalls, put dirt on their face, dance around with a bunch of straw, wave Confederate flags around. Oh, no. And mime playing fiddles, banjos, and singing. And I also noticed from my quick Wikipedia, they also had dreadlocks because cultural misunderstanding. Yes. this is whatever warped idea of the American South was, you know, Karan's in Sweden in the mid-90s. Okay.

And despite to our eyes what must be the borderline offensive, certainly ridiculous spectacle of four Swedes lip-syncing and prancing around in this like fake southern attire, rednecks just skyrockets to success. They are touring all around your. Europe on the back of Cotton Eye Joe. Wow. Okay, let's zoom forward now. 2001.

It's been seven years of the Swedes and their kind of fake band performing around Europe. And the Swedes are realizing, you know, the music industry is changing. Napster is on the scene. We can't be reliant on record sales anymore. And what they propose is that, okay, we're going to take rednecks. we're not even going to make it a band anymore. Rednecks is no longer a band. It's a spectacle. It's like this theatrical experience. And it's just going to be a live show. What do you think? The four members they hired are like, no, they suddenly have this crisis of artistic conscience. They're like, no, that's not what we signed on for. And the Swedes go, okay, you're fired. Whoa, wait, what? And they eliminate en masse the insubstions. The insubstead. And they eliminate en masse the insubstant. The entire rednecks lineup. They're all gone and they replace them with four entirely new people.

Oh my gosh. To prance around in overalls and wave Confederate flags. It is a spectacle. Okay, so it's a spectacle. The Swedes get their way. This goes well for about four years and then drum roll, the return. The female singer who was ejected in 2001, let's call her Anika. All of the sudden she is back on the scene because she has gained through

power of attorney copyright over the name Rednecks. So all of a sudden, all the intellectual property of Rednecks belongs to her, and she goes ahead and fires all the members that replaced her. Whoa. And now, for the second time, the entire lineup of this band has changed, and she starts hiring her husband, other friends to take over. And for the next four years, now Anika, having usurped Rednex, from the original Swedes tours as rednecks.

Okay. Right? Returning it to its artistic roots. Wow. Okay. Then in 2009, her copyright expires. Okay. And the Swedes take over once again.

And for now, if I'm keeping track the third time, the entire, no, the fourth time, I don't know. The entire lineup of rednecks again is fired and replaced with new people. Oh, my God. Gosh. Okay, so now the Swedes are back in charge, 2009. They have been managing this band on and off for over 15 years. And they say, okay, we've kind of had enough of this. Rednecks is no longer a band. It's no longer a live show. It is a concept. And rednecks can be anywhere and anything and made up of anyone. So now there's not even just one rednecks anymore. There's rednecks New Zealand. There's rednecks Scandinavia. Rednecks is wherever and whoever you need them to be at any time. Wow. This is, yeah, very much the 90s all wrapped together. You have the beginning of the decimation of the public sector and in particular organized labor. And so this feels like, you know, consultants coming in and sort of kicking everyone out of the company, making all the efficiencies, IPOing it and then sinking the company.

but through Rednecks a band. You, you, wow, Charles, you nailed it. Because not only that, Rednecks is not only a concept, it is for sale. Interesting, yeah. I don't mean that metaphorically, me. I mean, you can literally go to the Rednecks website right now. Okay. You can go to the merchandise section.

I'm checking this out. And among, you know, CDs, T-shirts, posters, etc. you can add to cart the entire intellectual property for the band Rednecks for two million euros. No way. Yeah. Okay, hold on. If we had that money, Larry, we could own Rednecks right now. Pop band for sale, now only $2,900,000 and it's all yours.

Oh my gosh. Like I said, we had a pretty great little string band going. The only thing that was missing was that synthesizer. you and I and all of our listeners could become rednecks? Yes. Am I right in thinking that you're saying we crowdsource the funding and we get a bunch of people together and we all have equal shares in rednecks? Because I'm into that.

I would do it maybe just to actually shut down the brand for good, to be frank. Well, I don't think this is an inappropriate valuation. I mean, they're still doing really well off Cotton Eye Joe. And Charlie, it's not just Cotton Eye Joe that you would get. to own. What do I get? You would get to own other hits such as old pop in an oak. You ever gonna see my old pop and I smoke. Oh, that's the same song. Okay, okay. Well, I've never heard something so derivatively copied just to make more money. You know, you're right. You're right, Charlie. And that was unfair of me because I just picked a song. You know, probably, man.

have songs that sound familiar. That was totally unfair. Let's do them justice. Let's pick another one. Okay. Let's listen to the way I mate. The way I mate. Oh my gosh. Their concerts must be some like amnesiac hell. We may never know, but they are still popular. They're still popular, Charlie. They're still popular, Charlie. They're still touring. people are still going. They're still making money.

So I'm not, it wouldn't be a bad idea to buy this band if you had the means, is what I'm saying. It makes me think of like Naomi Klein's book No Logo, which is that corporations figured out they didn't actually have to own anything. They just had to own a brand. And so this is really the period of time in which everything gets offshore, manufacturing gets gutted with it's all, you know, multi-decade history. But this is like the height of brand mania. So we could own the brand rednecks, which again, Just to be very clear, I would not be very proud of owning that brand given all of its appropriations, misunderstandings, and just, yeah, bad imagery. Yes. And yet, Charlie, there's another side to this story, too.

No. You've painted the dark side of developments in the 20th century. I'm pretty saccharine. Now, let's paint the light side. Okay. And in order to do that, we have to move away from rednecks for a second. and move into Cotton Eye Joe himself, or the song itself, I should say.

Sure. Because this little excerpt that underlies all of this 1994-Euro country mashup is an incredibly old song. And as we trace it from its roots in America before the Civil War, in fact, all the way up to the present, I think we can tell another story, which is a story about the enduring power of music. I'm gritting my teeth, but I'm very curious. And that's all I can ask of you, Charles.

So Cotton I. Joe, this is a song that predates the Civil War, and like so much of great American music, it originated as a slave song. This was something that began in African American communities and then went on to have a truly long and truly bizarre life of its own. First, it becomes like so much African-American music warped through the minstrel tradition. Right. Unsurprisingly. Now we're in the Reconstruction era and this song is being used in blackface performances by white musicians, both to mock and celebrate black culture. Right. We unfortunately don't have any recordings from this time. But we can see how the song in the beginning of the 20th century moves from the minstrel tradition into something a little more mainstream. It actually becomes a square dance classic.

Really? Wow. Okay. So this song originating as a slave song before the Civil War becoming a minstrel tune is now making its rounds throughout the American South, either with lyrics or instrumentally as a square dance song we can hear now for the first time. a recording from the early 1920s by Fiddlin John Carson. And you can hear clearly that this is a song for square dancing because Fiddlin John Carson yells, grab your partner for the first step. Right, right. And from this point, we can watch this song

wend its way through a number of different styles. Fast forward a few decades into the 1940s. It's a hallmark of the Western swing sound as popularized by bands like Bob Wills and his Texas playboys. Down in the cotton bites down below, everybody's singing the cotton night Joe. Everybody's singing the cotton night Joe. Had not been for cotton night Joe, I'd have been married a long time ago. I'd have been married a long time ago.

Oh, now you're starting to see this fuse with other traditions. Yeah, this kind of jaunty, swung combination of jazz and country. Yeah. Moving forward through the decade, we get to the 19-8. 60s in like so many folk songs, this one is revived for the Greenwich Village folk music scene. We can listen to a kind of haunting version of it by the singer Karen Dalton. There's a self-consciously coffee shop folk song. Exactly, right?

So yet another kind of palimpsest in this Cotton Eye Joe story. And then finally, I think to something of its current iteration, we can listen to a version of the song that came out in the 90s just before the rednecks version. This is Ricky Skaggs and the Chieftains, and I think you'll hear, it might be a little familiar at this point. If it ended up for Cotton Eye Joe, I'd been married a long time ago. Where did you come from? Where did you go?

Where did you come from Cotton Eye Joe? Wow, okay. So it almost sounds like the Red Necks version of Cotton Eye Joe is like a minstrelsy of the Chieftain's version, which comes. comes through the history of minstrelsy. Yes. Yeah, it's wild stuff. I mean, I think you've put it really well, Charlie.

This is like a Swedish minstrel version of white America, which in turn is a minstrel version of African-American culture. It's so insane. Yeah. And by the way, now it's for sale, right? Like how that's disgusting. It's like actually the worst parts of modern culture and capitalism. You can literally buy an old slave song and the spectacle of the Swedish band around it. I hear you, Chuck.

And yet I maybe opt to take a more positive view because to me you could also say what's equally remarkable is the enduring power of the snippet of American folk music that came out of a very dark, time in American history and yet manages to stay relevant over a century and a half later, that's remarkable. And certainly it can be marshaled in these disgusting ways, as you say. But what I'd like to think is that the essential power of that song is not diminished. And in order to make my argument a little more forcefully, I need to bring out a big gun. And that's Nina Simone, who did an absolutely mesmerizing version of this song in 1959. Where do you come from? And where do you go?

What a voice. Where do you come from? Cotton I hide you. So my hope is that this song can still be redeemed. in a sense by focusing on its interpretations in the hands of people like Nina Simone, rather than a band whose name I hesitate to even say now rednecks. I guess how I want to wrap up the first half of this episode is in rediscovering the power of this song, not through its presence on the dance floor at bar mitzvahs and stadiums,

but by the more nuanced interpretations that it continues to have for people. So I don't think the song is done by any means. I don't think Rednecks has ruined it. I think there's still more life in this Cotton Eye Joe. I agree that musically, the song must have a great degree of integrity just within its structure to be so future-proof. And at the same time, when we look at the history of the ways in which it has been bought and sold and reinterpreted through other genres,

also really mirrors a lot of American history and some of the darker sides of American history. But I do appreciate your narrative of being able to reclaim cultural items, being able to acknowledge their history, gives them a lot more strength. And I really hope that someone might actually buy up this rednecks band. They can put it out of business. And frankly, I don't really understand what cultural copyright can exist when really this should not have any sort of copyright. It's so many hundreds of years old and from a different culture. It feels like someone just needs to put that thing out in the creative commons. I love it. I love it. Well, if any listeners out there have two million euros lying around and want to do something for the greater good, go ahead,

buy rednecks and put it out of its misery. Now, Charlie, we've just broken down a weird 90s song that had a number of surprising resonances. Wow. I want to do the same thing in the second half, and I'll just tease it a little bit by saying, this one is equally bizarre. Bizarre. It's very bizarre.

Okay, see you on the other side. How bizarre. Maria, you have a podcast now, and you need to start acting like it. What's the first step as a podcaster? Well, you have to ask lots of questions. I'm Maria Sharpova, And I'm hosting a new podcast called Pretty Tough.

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No. We'll dive into their stories and get valuable insights from top executives, actors, entrepreneurs, and other individuals who have inspired me so much in my own journey. Pretty tough is your front row seat to the women who have demonstrated the power in being unapologetic in their pursuits. I hope you'll join us. New episodes drop Wednesdays on YouTube or in your favorite podcast app. Immigration may be Donald Trump's signature issue. President Trump is now targeting predominantly democratic cities for ice raids and deportations. Dozens of protesters clashing with immigration and customs enforcement agents in Minneapolis Tuesday. We will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens.

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Every Saturday in your audio and video feeds. Welcome back to Switched on Pop Summer Throwback Edition. We are deep in the 90s. And Charlie, I want to spin one of my favorite 90s songs now. Brother Pell is on the back, sweet singers in the front. Foozing down the freeway in the hot, hot sun Suddenly red blue lights

Flash has from behind Loud voice booming please step out onto the line Bellet Bridge words of comfort Sineer just hides our eyes Policeman taps the shades As that a Chevy 69 Halberzah How bizarre

How bizarre? You cut it off right before the hook, man You're killing me We'll get there, we'll get there How bizarre, Charlie, what does this song make you think of? What memory does this dredge up for you? I told you this is a period of just deep social embarrassment. So, you know, unfortunately, nothing good but like riding on buses and hoping that someone nice will sit next to me.

Oh, you're such a sweetheart. For me, this song is some unfinished business because I loved this song when it came out in the 90s. You were very cool. And yet I have no idea who it is by, what the story is, what it means. I just dug it, you know? I just loved this song. And now, just as we did in the first half, I want to, A, find out why this song is so effective. And B, see if what we might see as kind of an aberration, one of these weird 90 songs,

actually doesn't have something deeper underneath it. If you're going to keep taking me down this post-modern Malays thing, you know, that is my jam. I like talking about that stuff, but maybe there's something more upbeat about this one, I hope. It's going to be a mixed bag, Charlie. No, no spoilers. Okay. We begin, as always, with the music. Give me that hook.

Here it is. Come on a look around. Okay. The prominently featured Spanish guitar and accordion is fascinating. The pretty out of tune backing vocals are also bizarre. And this definitely makes me think of the very early cynical version of myself. It only got more cynical.

Being like, man, anybody can write a pop song because, geez, like, those lyrics don't mean anything. Yes. No, you once again have hit the nail on the head, Charlie. True to its name, this song is bizarre. It's really bizarre. Let's just go through the odd musical melange that's present here. Great.

As you said, we've got Spanish-style guitar, which we can hear at the very beginning of the song. It's particularly good in the pre-course lead into the chorus. It's kind of the lead. It's like, how bizarre. Don't-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-t. It's the whole thing. Yeah, yeah, totally. The guitar is the hook.

The guitar is the hook. And then we've got accordion in the... in the hook, which is very surprising. Throughout, we have this programmed drumbeat, just kind of chugging along without any variation. Oh, yeah, I hadn't noticed that. And my favorite, I think the coup de grace, this whole bizarre musical melange,

is the trumpet. Oh, I know, right? Which is kind of a little bit mariachi, a little bit like movie soundtrack a little bit salsa. I don't know. It shouldn't belong

and yet it feels so good when it all comes together. Wait, is this Sugar Ray? No. No, once again, I'm intentionally withholding the band's name. We'll get there.

I have no idea who this is but it has the, there'll be these little interludes be like, how bizarre? And it'll have like a DJ effect on it at the same time. And it feels very like 90s trying to wrap

reference hip hop in a very off color way. That's kind of in there too. I have to say that I think really the most bizarre thing is the disaffected backing vocals, which are slightly out of tune. Yes. So like, every time I look around, you're like, did you even try? To your ears, perhaps jarring to mine, charming, but I totally hear where you're coming from. It may, I have to say, it may be in your defense, it probably invites choruses of other people singing along. It has a vernacular quality to it. Ah, yes, yes.

I think that's a really good call. Right. It's inviting. It's not intimidating. Yeah, I didn't feel bad singing it because I couldn't butcher it any further. Burn. At this point, let's reveal the artist behind this track. It is none other than...

Oh, mc. What? OMC, of course. Everyone knows OMC. Of course. That's like, oh my curmudgins? I don't know. That's, I'm not going to say that's a good guess.

I'm just going to say that's a guess. That is a guess. But here's where the story begins is with the name of this group. OMC. You're right, it does stand for something. And that is Otara Millionaire's Club. What? The Otara Millionaires Club named after the neighborhood outside of Auckland, New Zealand,

where this band came from. It's leader, Pali Fumana, Maori of Polynesian descent, named this band after the majority Maori, very rough area of Auckland called Otara. So this is kind of a tongue-in-cheek name, Otara Millionaire's Club. Oh, interesting. That doesn't make sense to people from... New Zealand. Those things don't go together. It's like straight out of Compton. This is claiming credit for your kind of disadvantaged neighborhood. Okay, that's very cool. There's a lot more going on

than I had anticipated because I thought this was just a silly pop song. Absolutely. So did I, Charles. No, this is a really unlikely hit. In fact, this is the biggest act to come out of New Zealand since Lord. Yeah, exactly. I think they did better with Lord, but hey, what can I say? Well, for all the hate you're going to throw out at OMC, I'm going to throw love right back because this is unlikely rags to Rich's story to me.

Oh, cool. A band coming out of one of the roughest neighborhoods in a forgotten country to have international pop success. I think that's pretty cool. That's super cool. That's super cool. The curmudgeon was actually me, And it just has to do again with that terrible, like,

this music reminds me of a time that I didn't feel good about myself because I was a middle school. So, you can slash all those previous comments from the record. I get it. No, I mean, that's why we're doing this summer throwback, Charles, to exercise your demons. You know, this is a free therapy session. Unfortunately, though, the story doesn't have a happy ending.

Oh, shame. Like so many musical one-hit wonders, OMC, Burns Bright, and then burns out. Oh, bummer. Polyfumana cannot handle this level of fame. It also emerges around his death in 2010 that he had been a long time sufferer of neurological disorder. Oh.

He is unable to sustain any momentum from this hit, and OMC as quickly as they rise to the top of the pop firmament crashes back down. They never have another hit, They never even release another album. Oh, man. Sorry, OMC. That's a bummer.

That might be the end of OMC, but I don't think it's the end of How Bizarre. I think we can give some more belated credit to Polly Fumana and this group by digging into the lyrics of How Bizarre. Before we do, I want to prime you by just maybe giving a little more background to what it was like to be a touring Maori artist

in the antipodes during the 90s. I did a lot of research about OMC, and I came across one anecdote that kind of gets at the discrimination that this band must have faced as they made their way around New Zealand and Australia. One anecdote is revealing an Australian radio DJ asked during an interview

if he used sheep feces to style his hair because that's what Māori's do and then proceeded to crack up. Huh, that's, yeah. That's just one instance of what I imagined were many. I mean, this was someone who came from poverty and tried to make something over itself and was knocked down at every turn. Right. Now I feel absolutely terrible,

realizing that all of my associations with a song are just sort of these personal associations without actually having looked into the reality is that there's a really amazing person and story behind it. Which is to say, I don't mean to play into those same criticisms. I just thought that how bizarre was a silly song, but there's a whole lot more there.

And I don't blame you for that at all because I didn't know either. I was not expecting all this when I dug into the history of this song. Yeah. With that in mind, though, let's go back to the supposedly bizarre lyrics. Yeah, great. Of the very first verse here and see if there's not another meaning we can derive from that. Brother Pell is in the back, sweet sinners in the friend, cruising down the freeway in my heart.

God flash has from behind. Loud voice booming, please step out onto the line. Bellet Bridge words of comfort. Sinait just hides our eyes. Policemen taps the shades and set a Chevy 69. How was I? Whoa, this is like a song about getting pulled over by the cops. Oh, wow.

This is like an NWA track, but with a lot more fun. Exactly, right? This is three people of Maori descent driving down. the street getting pulled over, demanding to be lined up along the curb. Yeah. And then in this kind of almost magical reversal of the terrible ending that we might expect from this kind of encounter, the cop lowers his shades and asks, is that a Chevy 59, how bizarre?

How bizarre is literally like, wait, we thought that there was going to be some sort of injustice here and yet the cop was just interested in our really cool car the irony in that makes it a sort of fun upbeat summer song because there's this great contrast exactly right and it's like a commentary on this particular instance yeah and the bizariness of uh maybe the avoidance of violence yeah and then it's also perhaps just a commentary on the world at large which is bizarre unfair crazy. Yep. Let's go back

to the hook now. Oh, baby. It's making me crazy every time I look around. The whole world's crazy. Yeah. It's in our face. Oh, wow.

Right? I had never spent any attention looking into these lyrics and I was just like, oh baby. Okay, so it's just an oh baby song. Everybody can write, oh baby.

It's making me crazy. Crazy rhymes with baby. But it's interesting though because it doesn't the every time I look around, it's in my face, doesn't share the rhyme scheme. and instead is jarring and bizarre.

Oh, interesting, yeah. I would assume would be an intentional creative choice to create some dissonance in your ear to pay attention to the bizarreness of the sound, the bizarreness of the world. Yeah, wow, well said, Chuck. I didn't think of that. Yeah, you're right.

It's in my face. That's not a very generous or positive sentiment. And yet, when it's sung with this kind of sweetness and with as you said a slightly out of tuneness, it becomes very endearing and very human and very catchy. So there's a lot going on here maybe more than meets the ear. Oh my gosh, yeah, absolutely. You notice that later on in the song,

they say something like jumps into the Chevy and headed for big lights, wanting to know the rest, hey, buy the right. Yeah. Do you think this band's for sale too? I mean, hey, buy the rights. Like, is it like, is it like, if you buy the rights of the song, you get the rest of the story? Charlie, I have no answer to that.

You just linked OMC with Cotton Eye Joe unintentionally. Yeah, wow, hey, buy the rights. You know, I will say that sister Sina, who is mentioned at the very beginning and who sings the hook on this track, they just recently released her album, which never came out in the 90s. So yeah, maybe there is a second life for some of the members of OMC. Let's go. And I can only maybe end this segment by encouraging people like you, Charlie, hater, Charlie, to go listen to a couple more tracks.

Check out on the run and another song with a slightly out of tune vocal that I can't help but love right on. Oh my gosh. I don't know about you, but I would happily put this on my summer 2018 playlist. Oh, absolutely. I'm now listening to another song of theirs, you can hear the connections to other Polynesian music as well with the Hawaiian slide guitar kind of sounds and even just the sort of guitar rhythms and backing acoustic instruments. And so all of a sudden, I'm like, oh my gosh, OMC isn't some silly little pop song. In fact, I should have noticed that when I was a kid too, right? Because like accordion, trumpet, guitar.

Right, right. They do not sound like anything on the pop tracks. And yet somehow I just thought it was Sugar Ray, which is I feel really bad about it. I was a real jerk. I guess to answer the question that we posed at the beginning of this episode, why were the 90s so weird, the only answer I can give is because we weren't listening close enough. Yeah. How bizarre. How bizarre, Charlie. Glad we listen closely now.

This episode of Switched On Pop was produced by me, Nate Sloan. And me, Charlie Harding. Our editing, mixing, sound design, and everything that makes this show sound good is done by Bill Lance. Our design is done by Luke Harris, and we are a proud member of the Panoplay Network. You can find more episodes at Switchedonpop.com, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast player you prefer. And please reach out to us at Twitter, Switched On Pop, or shoot us an email at Contact at Switchedonpop.com with your favorite misunderstood 90s jam.

We're going to keep playing through songs of summer episodes throughout the summer heat wave, and we'll be back again with another throwback episode in two weeks. I hope you enjoy the sun. Thanks for listening. listening. records.