Dionne Warwick - No Night So Long

I've always been intrigued by the notion that random crap that happened the year you were born is interesting. I told you i've been listening to David Foster Wallace talk about stuff, and he gave a graduation speech once where he said the real value of education is giving you the choice to break out of that self-centered view that existence is a tedious personal offense. It's practicing the ability to choose how you interpret a situation that leads to a meaningful life, and what you worship can have a profoundly negative impact if you're not careful. What would be the opposite?

Dionne Warwick's 1980 album No Night So Long. Pretty impossible to pretend that isn't a dead animal coat, isn't it? I don't have any moral queeziness about fur, or leather, or feathers, or eating animals; it's mass production and consumerism i find deplorable. Statues don't do it for Dionn, falling in love gets her high. I mentioned she got her start as a replacement Shirelle, didn't i? The coat is from her closet (and the jewelery), she made sure they printed that info on the actual jacket like it's important.

I don't care about the Psychic Friends Network, or that she was Whitney Houston's cousin, or even that she's the Miller Light of Adult Contemporary R&B. She's good at it. I'm rarely in the mood to overlook how much it blows, but if you're going to put on some garbage early 80s sequined glamour love drivel, Dionne Warwick isn't even close to the worst thing you could pick, by miles.

No, what bugs me isn't Dionne Warwick at all. It's her wardrobe lady, Suzy Creamcheese. Yeah, Leslie Fearon straight up said i'm going to make Zappa's imaginary groupie my actual brand name, then did, and probably made more money picking out ugly dresses for celebrities than Zappa did. Puke.

Granted i was like 4 months old when this thing came out, but by the time i was able to form coherent thoughts in the middle of the decade i found it very confusing that this stuff was considered romantic. Sade and En Vogue sound sexy, this just sounds like shoulder pads and the smell of baby powder. Still, it's better than Patti Labelle, or Anita Baker, or Stephanie Mills, or Shirley Murdock. That's personal preference, feel free to completely disagree. Sure i'd rather listen to Aretha Franklin, or Tina Turner, or Sade, but you're asking a lot when you limit it to the first half of 1980. Diana Ross and Donna Summer were pretty much her only competition. Not a lot of black female singers releasing major label albums in the post-disco wilderness of mainstream pop for the first few years of the decade.

There see i said both nice and terrible things about it, and the best part is it's all honest. I don't have to love or hate it, it's really not hard to enjoy once you accept that it's coming from a shallow and materialistic perspective.

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