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A couple of weeks ago I featured the world’s happiest gal dancing to my song “Neutron Dance”. Now, the Krown Princess of Kitsch Khoreography turns her attention to the sweeping horns and strings and theatrical chorus melody of another one of my most danced-to songs. Black leather against backlit drapes encourages an even more dramatic performance, made exceptionally special by how the dancer’s mouth moves aggressively though rarely quite mouthing the words. Other favorite aspects of the performance are the freeze poses and excellent recovery from a stumble in the first chorus. The moves in the instrumental are especially impressive. Kudos from the author to this Neutron Dancer in Boogie Wonderland!

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What’s to make me join yet another social network when I’m already a member of so many, dragging myself ’round the clock to fulfill my duties as a responsible citizen on each of them? What’s to make me listen to a record that sounds like everything else – same beat, loop or intellectually challenged lyric? It’s one thing to be first. It’s another to be 43rd.

I like to be comfortable wherever I am, especially if it’s in a social space. In order to command my undying attention and devotion a social network’s got to have something that none of the others have, fill a spot in my life and psyche that needs filling. Conversely, a degree of familiarity in social network design, what works about other social networks that I really want to see working here, also assures happier orientation and participation. The only way I’ll hang or even notice a new social space in the first place is because enough of those things I’m already comfortable with are there fused with outrageously original, fantastic and artistic social design

It’s the same with a song if you think about it. An outrageously unique record stays in your heart and brain cells and sets the pace for years. One that’s merely derivative lasts for a few weeks or months and burns out forever, maybe relegated to replay at high school reunions.

In founding a community fresh, creative thinking always wins. In what new way can people hook up and push or pull what they want easier than they can anywhere else? Do we honestly need one more music or video social net whose only differentiator is it’s one more place to post?

It doesn’t work any differently in any business. Quantumly different products and services burst onto the scene be they social networks, songs, technologies, films, stores, diets, Snuggies, whatever – and trillions of lemming like spin-offs spring up trying to bite off a piece of the green before the bloated landscape sinks like a rock. 

I never felt a conflict between “art” and “commercial”. In entertainment, the greatest successes usually include aspects that time and again appeal to the masses mixed with something so outrageously fresh that it redefines the direction the entire business is going in.

I’m (among other things) a songwriter. I’ve never tried to write anything that sounded like everything else that was out at the time. (What artists and producers do with my songs once they decide to cut them is totally in their control. Oftentimes they mash out the uniqueness like chunks of potato to join the rest of the homogenized mess and usually disappear as fast as the songs they ruin.)

But as much as I strive to be unique there’s a cardinal rule that any songwriter would be nuts to ignore: If you wait three minutes to get to the chorus your song won’t be a big fat hit. That’s just how it is. People live for and remember the chorus. So that rule, plus the fact that rhyming is a good idea, are two ‘industry best practices’ that would be fairly idiotic to ignore. The trick is to juxtapose these tried and true things with other aspects of the song where you take chances and create something unlike anything else around.

Any popular piece of art has many of the same characteristics as a popular social network. They both inspire people to talk about it, share it with their friends and go to it often. Popular songs like popular web destinations bring something out in someone’s personality that may have remain tucked inside had they not ventured into that space. 

In 1978 I co-wrote “Boogie Wonderland” for Earth Wind & Fire with The Emotions. I really wanted to write a disco song and, with my collaborator, Jon Lind, figured out a way to use the word ‘boogie’ that was different from the zillion other disco songs out there. Everyone used it to mean ‘dance’. We used ‘Boogie’, in conjunction with ‘Wonderland’, to mean an exhilaratory state of mind one enters into while dancing. 

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“Boogie Wonderland” was actually based on the movie “Looking For Mr. Goodbar”, where Diane Keaton goes to a disco every night to forget her pitiful everyday life and ends up almost being murdered because she has so little sense of self. Everyone always tells me how my song makes them feel so good but if you really listen to the lyrics it’s about someone on the brink of destruction who goes out to numb and forget themselves, only feeling like everything is alright when they “Dance! ooh ooh ooh ooh dance in Boogie Wonderland”. 

This is a device I often use in songs – mix a heavy theme, lyrically distinct from other songs of the genre, into happy, uptempo music. The BW lyric was distinctive as was the massive horn and string arrangements and the structure of the song itself. But that payoff chorus was in the same place as other hit songs and that hi hat disco spirit was very much there. Formula plus a squinch or more of innovation wins big every time. I need that same rhythm in my social networks.

(To hear the demo and read way more about how Boogie Wonderland was written go here.)

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In what could easily turn into Kitsch O’ The Day’s Musical Monday because of all the insane versions of my songs on YouTube, this one by Pink Lady, a Japanese duo who had a short-lived but utterly fantastic cheese wheel of Kitsch tv show in the 1980’s, is way near the top of the heap.  The Oriental opening, bad lip-synching of the pink person on the right,  cheesy choreography, clear fascination with American dancers, glitzy costumes, dorky synth patches, bombastic arrangement and cheap set all add up to musical heaven in Boogie Wonderland.

When I first started having hits, this was the very first cheesy version of one of them I saw. I prayed I could keep knocking ’em out as this is the kind of reward a Kitsch lover such as myself dreams of.

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I know you are all watching the Oscars tonight but you weren’t invited to the White House anyway so no conflict.

Trust me, I’m happy about  “Boogie Wonderland” being in da House.  I wish it was the incarnation of Earth Wind & Fire in the photo the Washington Post used  that was there too.  

Definition of “Journalistic Kitsch”: Use photo that is 35 years old despite fact that  group is still together.

I hope the same kindness is shown toward  me the next time I’m in that paper.

When I co-wrote the song “Boogie Wonderland” in 1978 every other record that came out had the word “boogie” in it to capitalize on the Disco craze that had wrapped itself around the world tighter than a spandex miniskirt. I spent hours with Jon Lind, eventual writer of such hits as Madonna’s “Crazy” and Vanessa Williams’ “Save The Best For Last”, discussing how we could use the word “boogie” in a song without using it as a synonym for ‘dance’ as trillions of composers before us already had.

I had just seen the movie “Looking For Mr. Goodbar” in which Diane Keaton goes to the disco every night, picks up men and brings them home, eventually stumbling on a serial killer. The state of mind of a club-goer who gyrates their brains out on a dance floor, escaping for a precious few hours their otherwise dysfunctional life is the state of mind that to us was Boogie Wonderland, a wondrous and temporary headspace where all is well and life is bouncing to a happy beat until the record ends and life deflates back into its more depressed state.

Over the years, the term “Boogie Wonderland” mutated to “Willis Wonderland”. Not by me but by friends and almost any writer who wrote about me and attempted to describe my living quarters and lifestyle. But as any good writer knows, one must be judicious about how often one uses these monikers. What starts out as descriptively hip ends up tragically trite. Dare I say “King Of Pop”? So I’m very careful about how many “Wonderlands” I drop.

So imagine my surprise a couple of days ago when I received an invitation from a company whose work I like and who, from time to time, represents my art inviting me to a “Winter Boogie Wonderland” roller skating party. That would be like me calling an event of mine “Allee’s World Of Wonder” (their name). What are people thinking?! And why on earth would you send me an invitation when you used my title?

I know, I know. What you hope and pray for as an artist is to create something so catchy and unforgettable that it becomes a lexicon in the culture. In that respect I am eternally grateful to be borrowed from. But word to yo mama, if you’re borrowing someone else’s creation at least take the time to edit your mailing list.

That’s like when, in seeking songs for the movie “Beverly Hills Cop”, the music supervisor sent me a copy of my own song, “Neutron Dance”, instructing that this was the song one should emulate – translation: rip off – when submitting songs for the movie. I bitched at first, boycotting the stampede of writers who rushed to steal the beat and spirit of ‘Neutron Dance”. Only to call up my co-writer, Danny Sembello, and tell him we were being stupid by not ripping ourselves off. Who better to do that?! And way better to have a song in a hit soundtrack that you would eventually win a Grammy for than to remain pissed off that your creation was used as a blueprint on the way to someone else’s wealth. No time for the “Neutron Dance” story to be written here but point is stop soaking in your own stew and take some action!

So I emailed my folks at World Of Wonder to express my dismay that I wasn’t at least asked if I minded that “Boogie Wonderland” was being co-opted for their own use. MUCH to their credit they immediately offered to change the name and design new invitations. I said a simple credit would do. This arrived the next day:

Duly credited at the bottom this makes me very happy to be borrowed from. This made me even happier:

Songwriters are so often overlooked. We’re the faceless creators of the hits that singers and producers get the lionshare of attention for. We’re the people who never get paid when their songs are part of movies that made zillions in video and DVD sales. We’re the folks who rarely get paid at all anymore these days as people have universally decided that music is in the public domain and less deserving of compensation than a pair of underpants or a fishing lure or any other product someone made. Performers have ticket sales and tee-shirts to grab the cash from. SAG members have a Union. Songwriters just get fucked.

So I want to thank World Of Wonder for having a conscience and being responsible for their borrowing. You have more than made up for the transgression. Perhaps you’ll be having a party next “September” and need a good title? “I’ll Be There For You” then as well.