Poptastic Day is about musical cheesiness, guilty pleasures, and songs that are so bad they’re good. But most of all, it’s about knowing that Pop is not a dirty word and that we must all do the goofy dance from time to time. Poptastic Day will never bring you a song that is officially considered “good music” (no Beatles, no Ramones, no Arcade Fire) and nothing that’s ever recieved a good review.
So, to start us off, I’ve chosen two songs that are the most Poptastic things I could think of. Not one, but two (yes, TWO!) helpings of TV spinoff goodness. DANG, we sure are good to you all.
Like I said a couple weeks ago, I’ve always been a Brady Bunch girl. I love that crazy family as much now as I did when I was 10. So you can imagine my delight when I found out there was a Best Of out on CD. The Brady Bunch (really just the Brady kids) released their first album in the winter of 1970, to try and compete with America’s newest oversized family, The Partridge Family. The Partridges had just begun their first season on TV and had already started racking up the hits. As cheesy as The Partridges may seem, the Bradys attempts to compete are even sillier. At least David Cassidy could sing. But I still have a fuzzy place in my heart for those Bradys, and this was by far their best attempt at being Poptastic.
The Brady Bunch - It’s A Sunshine Day
The Monkees were another show I watched when I was little, but this one was on before school, while I ate breakfast. (My Little Pony was on right after it.) They’re the first music I remember loving. My family still jokes about how I played my Monkees tape over and over until they were all ready to eat the cassette, just to make it stop. Even though I’m all growed up now, I still fight the desire to listen to them all day long.
Even though they too sprang to life via their own TV show, The Monkees are a little more complicated than the Brady Bunch. Sure, they were a manufactured group, but it’s not exactly true that they were talentless puppets like so many people like to believe. Micky Dolenz and Davey Jones were picked for their acting experience; Peter Tork and Mike Nesmith for their musical skill. The show’s creators hoped that the boys would all learn from each other. They toured and proved that they most definitely could play their own music and, despite a massive battle, The Monkees were eventually “allowed” to record songs they wrote themselves. The whole story is, of course, not that simple, but my point is that The Monkees may have come together in an artifical way, but they genuinely wanted to make good pop music.
The Monkees - You Just May Be The One
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