If you'd grown up in north-west England in the 70s and 80s, then Barry Manilow was quite exotic.
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Originally posted by The Awesome Berbaslug!!! View PostBut I remain unmoved. Perhaps my hatred of 70s-ness and Vegasy stuff is so burned into by brain now that I can’t keep an open mind, but that’s just too fucking cheesy, even to be enjoyed ironically. Recall that I don’t like ABBA either. There must be a connection.
Abba are what Schlager did next. They're the evolution of this sort of thing. If you're not going to like one, you're not going to like the other. See I think that you were probably far more exposed to this sort of carry on, the real undiluted Vegas nonsense than people over here. People like Manilow were hugely popular in the UK, but they were relatively rare, and had an air of exoticism.
I just have a strong aversion to all things of that ilk - the Vegas Elvis years, disco, bell-bottoms, shirts with big collars.
I watched a lot of godawful TV in the late 70’s/early 80s because it was the only thing on, but, I guess, like a lot of small kids, TV is just mesmerizing. But then over a span of just a few years, we got Star Wars, Tron, new wave, Atari, MTV (at certain hours), and lots of show like Knight Rider. All of a sudden it felt like we were rocketing toward an exciting future and I was going to get to be a part of it. And everything that smelled like the past - especially the recent past - had to be binned.
Also, so much of the cheezy entertainment of the late 70’s was, subtly or unsubtly, about sex. And I had no interest in that. I was 8.
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Manilow's songs are earworm friendly, even crud like Bermuda Triangle. As for gay, hiding in plain sight was actually a good strategy because the audience was so naive and the media played along and didn't out gay singers because they were good for sales.
Was he any good technically? Dunno. Could he entrance a live audience? Clearly so. He was helped in the UK by the fact that Radio 2 could put an MOR single in the charts. But no Top 20 hits after 1983 shows his pop crossover appeal had a shelf life.
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He may have had several cringeworthy moments, but the difference between Manilow's latter day self-deprecation and that of James Blunt is that - as a gifted songwriter and arranger - he's earned the right.
Whereas Blunt is just some Johnny-Come-Lately who managed to fool a hell of a lot of people with one dreadful song.
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Also Blunt is a posh english person and fake self deprecation is a thing some of them are taught from the cradle.Last edited by The Awesome Berbaslug!!!; 04-11-2018, 10:21.
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