The Hottest Hit On The Planet ** :
“Lady Marmalade” by Labelle
When Patti Labelle first heard “Lady Marmalade” she knew it was a hit.
Then, after Patti Labelle recorded “Lady Marmalade” she was convinced that it was a hit.
Patti Labelle was right, but there was one thing that Patti Labelle didn’t know. Patti Labelle had no idea what she had sung a song about!
Nobody had told her. And she didn’t think to ask!
This – pop stars singing songs and having hits which they don’t know the meaning of – seems to happen far more frequently than you might think. That seems odd to me. Do pop stars not care what they are singing about? Are they not the tinniest bit curious? Do they not ask their producers “what’s my motivation here?”? Do words mean nothing to them?!?
It’s one thing when you find yourself having to explain to someone that one of their favourite songs is not quite as innocent as they seem to think…
… and then watch them get all defensive and they go, “It’s just a song. It doesn’t mean anything.”
It’s quite another thing when Britney Spears tells James Corden in Carpool Karaoke that she doesn’t know what “Oops… I Did It Again” is about. And then she says: “It’s just a song.”
Especially since the meaning of “Oops… I Did It Again” is obvious! So obvious that it kind of felt weird when James asked in the first place, simply in order to set up his stupid Dominos joke. “Oops” is about a flirtatious, pretty girl, who can’t help but have guys fall over her all the time. Somewhat like Britney herself in the year 2000.
As the lead single of an album following up one of the Biggest Pop Smashes Of All Time, it also works on a meta-level, but let’s not get into that.
Pop stars seem particularly prone to not understanding what they are singing about when they are singing about sex workers. (“Oops… I Did It Again” could potentially be about a sex worker, one whose clients keep falling in love with her, but that’s probably not what Max Martin had in mind).
The Andrews Sisters never figured out that their 1945 hit “Rum & Coca Cola” was about a Trinidadian mother and a daughter-sex-worker-team, servicing American servicemen during World War II.
But it’s a fact mon… it’s a fact…
Seriously? “Both mother and daughter working for the Yankee dollar?” How was this not obvious to them?
It admittedly wasn’t quite as obvious as in the original Lord Invader version which included the lines “saw that the Yankees treat them nice/and they give them a better price,” but still…
And how did Patti Labelle not figure it out?
Let’s look at the second verse:
“On her black satin sheets
Where he started to freak”
I mean, look… sure, “Lady Marmalade” doesn’t have to be a sex worker. New Orleans is a party town. I’m sure there are lots of girls strutting their stuff on the street for free.
The kind of girl that might bring out the savage beast inside a “grey flannel life” living-man and cause memories of that night constantly creep into his subconscious when he’s trying to sleep. Making him wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat crying out “More! MORE! MOORRREEEE!!!!”
But put all that together – combined with the fact that our titular character is called Lady Marmalade, not exactly a grey-flannel-life sort of name! – and it seems extremely obvious that our heroine is a prostitute; one who is extremely good at her job!
It wasn’t just that Patti didn’t know what “Lady Marmalade” was about when she first sang it. Even as it was becoming a hit and racing up the charts, and Patti was presumedly singing it pretty much every night, she still didn’t think to ask!
Patti only found out “Lady Marmalade”’s true meaning when some nuns got angry at her.
The nuns been singing it too, also not knowing what it was about – what did they think “hello, hey Joe, wanna give it a go?” was about?!?!? – but, like Patti, recognizing a timeless classic when they heard one. Then they found out what it meant, and they got angry. The nuns got so angry that Patti heard about the nuns getting angry and… well, you don’t want to mess with an angry nun.
So, that covers “voulez-vous coucher avec moi, ce soir?”, but what about the other non-English lyrics in “Lady Marmalade”? What about “gitchi gitchi ya ya ta ta!”? Or maybe it’s “getcha getcha ya ya da da”? What’s that all about?
Nobody seems to know for sure, but there are theories. There are some who insist that the phrase is Iroquois.
This theory seems to be based on a superficial similarity to the line “By the shores of Gitche Gumee / By the shining Big-Sea-Water” from Song of Hiawatha, and the fact that Gitche Manitou means “Big Spirit.” Even if Song Of Hiawatha wasn’t written by a white dude, this would feel like a bit of a stretch.
Most likely it’s just another one of Lady Marmalade’s sales pitches, this time in Louisiana hooker-slang.
Or at least Bob Crewe’s idea of how Louisiana hooker-slang might sound.
The likelihood of Bob Crewe – hit producer of The Four Seasons – being more down with Louisiana hooker-slang than the combined resources of the Internet approaching zero, I’m going to guess he just made it up and that “gitchi gitchi ya ya ta ta!”, doesn’t mean anything – in any language.
With all that going on: “Lady Marmalade” is something close to the perfect hit. A saucy strut of a song with an air of scandal and mystery.
Performed by an R&B trio dressed up like astronauts, or maybe aliens, boldly taking fashion where no R&B trio had gone before!
Written by The Four Season’s producer. Produced by New Orleans’ R&B hit producer-genius Allen Toussaint. With The Meters as the backing band!
You couldn’t ask for more, MORE, MORREEE!!!!!
“Lady Marmalade” is a 9.
** Yeah, I know. I’m sure a lot of you are looking at “Lady Marmalade” up there, your fingers at the ready to write “I dunno DJ Professor Dan… I’m pretty sure that “Lady Marmalade” was a March-ish 1975 hit, not an November-ish 1974 hit”. And sure, technically you are right. But this is 1974 we are talking about and we’re running out of classic uber-hits.
What do you want me to write about? Billy Swan’s “I Can Help”? No-one wants that!
Meanwhile, in Queen Land:
“Killer Queen” by Queen
Freddie Mercury – or Farrokh Bulsara to his Dad – knew that “Killer Queen” was about a sex worker. Although, to be fair, Freddie had an unfair advantage over Patti Labelle, what with writing the song and all.
On the other hand, Killer Queen – the character in the song that is, not necessarily the song itself – is more subtle about her profession than Lady Marmalade – once again, the character in the song, not the song itself – was. Killer is not strutting her stuff on the street.
Killer would never have used the words “hello, hey Joe, you wanna give it a go? Hmmm!”
- Killer Queen: a high class call-girl who, in conversation, spoke just like a baroness. “Hello, hey Joe, you wanna give it a go” is not the kind of thing a baroness would say.
- Killer Queen was the kind of high-class call girl who might keep a Moet et Chandon in a pretty cabinet.
- Who might quote – or misquote – Marie Antoinette.
- Who consumes both caviar and cigarettes.
- And is well versed in etiquette.
- Whose perfumes came naturally from Paris (naturally).
She was both fastidious and precise! It’s quite possible that it has never occurred to you that “Killer Queen” might be about a high-class call girl. To be completely honest with you, I wasn’t aware that this riveting creature was a call-girl either. That’s how subtle she was about it. All that not keeping of the same address was paying off!
I’m not sure exactly what I thought. Socialite? Drag Queen?
Socialite Drag Queen?
Or, since she was a “killer”, some sort of Villanelle style assassin? Honestly that last interpretation seems the likeliest. If it turned out that Killing Eve was nothing more than Killer Queen: The BBC Series it would not surprise me in the slightest.
(That’s not the only video mashing up the two, either.)
Part of my cluelessness is due to Freddie’s oh-so-precise elocution being ironically difficult to understand. Did you know the lyrics were “recommended at the price/ insatiable an appetite”? I’m not sure what I thought those lyrics were?
Some sort of upper-class society reference – maybe something about which fork to use – that only those well versed in etiquette might hope to understand.
Freddie was born in Zanzibar.
He was educated in a snooty boarding college in Mumbai (formerly, and at that time still, Bombay), before migrating to the UK with his parents when he was a teenager because there was a revolution going on.
He instantly seemed to fall in love with everything British.
Hence the name Queen. Hence such album titles as Night At The Opera and A Day At The Races, the former of which finished with a rendition of “God Save The Queen.” He wrote songs like “Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy” (which is clever, but kind of annoying, which makes it a 6.)
Freddie also gave the impression – even before he became a rock god – of coming from a far more affluent, almost regal, background than he did. Freddie did not move in the same circles as a real-life Killer Queen.
“No, I’d never really met a woman like that.” Freddie told Melody Maker. “A lot of my songs are fantasy.”
You don’t say, Freddie: Composer of such deep cuts as “My Fairy King”, “Ogre Battle” and “The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke”?
Brian May also shared some insight into the song’s major influences:
“Freddie is very fond of cabaret” Brian told Record Mirror, “so we all got into that on “Killer Queen.” They also got into it in concert, where they would start their encores with a hard rockin’ and riffin’ cover of “Hey Big Spender.”
“But I don’t think that’s the way the band is going.” Brian continued “We’re going in lots of directions at once.” And indeed they would.
It was only early days for Queen – “Killer Queen” being their first genuinely big hit – but their entire aesthetic was already fully formed.
Freddie was already wearing unbuttoned pirate shirts, leotards, tights, or whatever else would show off his greatest asset – the hairiest chest in pop – flaunting his sexy-ugliness – the teeth! Egads the teeth!** – as far as it would go.
And what that guy could do with a microphone stand! Most rock stars were content to use microphone stands to stand microphones on. Freddie used it as an extension of himself!
And soundwise… in my snarkier moments, I sometimes feel that Queen are the world’s greatest parody band. So much of their output seems to be a piss-take of whatever music they are nominally playing. And so much of their earlier stuff seemed to be a piss-take of the pretentions of both prog-rock and Led Zeppelin’s Tolkien obsession (see the song titles above).
I mean, what to make of “Seven Seas Of Rhye”?
Led Zeppelin were never this much fun! Led Zeppelin never finished their songs with a rendition of “I Do Love To Be Beside The Seaside.”
(“Seven Seas Of Rhye” is a 9.)
“Killer Queen” might be a parody of Sparks – “This Town Ain’t Big Enough For The Two Of Us” being a hit only a few months prior – or it might just be Freddie being as Freddie as he ever had, darling.
Compared to “Bohemian Rhapsody” shortly afterwards, “Killer Queen” may feel a little small.
It begins after all, in the most conventional and deceptively introverted way possible; a click of the fingers, the repetitive plinking of piano chords.
But it ends up sounding like the future, as if the band was about the launch off into space. Which in a way, they were. Along the way, the band turns this quaint little tune about a high-class call girl, into a special effects extravaganza!
Freddie sings “dynamite with a laser beam” and his vocals, which already had some sort of laser-beam like effect on them, are blasted into the stratosphere.
The future of rock had arrived. And it was an arena-rock cabaret fireworks display!
“Killer Queen” is a 10.
** Freddie Mercury had four extra teeth (!) due to a condition known as mesiodens. Freddie never had them fixed because he thought they might be the reason for his incredible voice. Also, rock stars didn’t seem to care about their teeth so much back then… David Bowie didn’t appear to even own a toothbrush until the late 80s.
Meanwhile, in Soft Rock Land:
“You’re No Good” by Linda Ronstadt
Most definitely not a sex worker: was – part Mexican, part German, part English, part Dutch…
And if her big, round, doe eyes are anything to go by, part deer…
Linda Ronstadt. From the desert climes of Tuscon, Arizona, where she grew up on a ranch and had her own pony.
She was also part genius: Her grandfather had invented the flexible ice tray!
When Linda left Tuscon, Arizona for the bright lights of the Laurel Canyon, her father gave her two pieces of advice.
The first was, “Don’t let anyone take your picture with your clothes off.“
Linda would try and follow her Dad’s advice, but it was the rock’n’roll industry in the 70s, so magazines – usually Rolling Stone, sometimes Playboy – seemed to be constantly trying to get her naked.
Linda’s Dad never said anything about having her picture taken with pigs, though.
Like most people, he probably thought that went without saying.
The other piece of fatherly advice? “Watch out for those guys in the city.” Those guys in the city, according to Linda’s father, were no good. Baby, they were no good.
Fortunately, one of the first guys Linda met in the city was a guy from Tuscon. Together they formed The Stone Poneys, scoring a mid-60s hit with “Different Drum:”
A song that could have been a hit for The Monkees – it was written by Monkee Michael Nesmith – but the powers that be wouldn’t take it.
This explains why Linda is singing about her boy being “pretty,” just in case you were wondering about that. (“Different Drum” is an 8)
Here are The Stone Poneys playing “Different Drum” whilst sounding as though they are playing to the beat of a different drum.
Years had passed, and Linda had infiltrated the Laurel Canyon inner-sanctum, singing backing vocals on Neil Young classics, and having The Eagles as her backing band.
Everyone seemed to like her.
She was a simple, unspoilt country girl from Tucson, Arizona, who seemed most comfortable wearing jeans and a floral blouse.
She also did more to popularize bangs that anyone other than Zooey Deschanel. It’s very likely that everyone was at least a little bit in love with her. Even Californian Governors were in love with her.
For Linda was dating the Governor of California, Jerry Brown.
They met at a Mexican restaurant. Both spent large portions on the 70s on various magazine covers. Sometimes they were on magazine covers together.
Jerry kept on trying to win the Democratic nomination for President, but despite having Linda and all her soft-rockstar friends – most notably The Eagles, Jackson Browne and Joni Mitchell – in his corner, he didn’t quite get there. But at least he got more votes than George Wallace, so that’s something. And he won California. In California they loved the Governor.
Were British Invasion also-rans also in love with Linda? Probably.
Peter Asher, the Austin Powers impersonator from one hit wonders Peter & Gordon (their one hit being The Beatles’ penned “World Without Love”), found himself hanging out in Laurel Canyon after working for The Beatles’ Apple Records and both signing and producing James Taylor. Also, James’s sister.
Then he saw Linda perform in a club called The Bitter End: “There was this incredibly gorgeous, ridiculously hot girl wearing short shorts and bare feet, the epitome of California hotness in every respect.“
Since everybody in Laurel Canyon played on the records of everyone else in Laurel Canyon, Linda’s records tended to feature half the population of southern California, and sounded just as “chilled”, and “gorgeous” and “accomplished” – and filled with “musicianship” – as you would expect. And then, in the middle of it all, there was Linda and her irresistible “aw shucks” country charm.
Sooner or later Linda was going to have a hit.
It was inevitable. All she needed was the right song. It was a pretty sure thing that the song would be an old one.
“I don’t record anything that I didn’t hear in my family’s living room by the time I was 10. It just is my rule that I don’t break because, I mean I’ll record it on somebody else’s record, but my own stuff I don’t attempt that because I can’t, I can’t do it authentically.”
“I really think that you’re just hardwiring synapsis in your brain up until the age of maybe 12 or 10, and there are certain things you can’t learn in an authentic way after that, you know like a language or math or music or something like that.“
Just to be clear, Linda was talking genres, not specific songs.
Linda would sing songs that were more recent than when she was 12, but they’d have to sound ancient. So, if you’ve ever wondered why Linda Ronstadt has never made a trap or dubstep record, that’s why. What Linda did do however, was a lot of covers.
“You’re No Good” was a cover. A cover from the early 60s, so Linda would have been in her late-teens, perhaps the last moment before her brain synapsis were hardwired for good. Dee Dee Warwick – yes, her again! – originally recorded it with Lieber and Stoller, and her version sounds like the “I’m dumping your sorry ass” smack-down song that the lyrics call for.
Linda’s version isn’t like that. Linda doesn’t sound as though she’s dumping your sorry ass. She doesn’t even sound all that spiteful. She sounds sad about it. She sounds nice. There was a lot of demand for nice-sounding singers in the mid-70s.
And there was a lot of demand for country-tinged soft rock from southern California.
And with half of southern-California on the record, “You’re No Good” was some top shelf country-tinged soft rock. The dualling guitar solo is particularly delicious. The moody-noodle-y bits towards the end, are quite stunning.
It was the era Linda was made for. She would spend the rest of the decade as one of its biggest stars, constantly striving to stop Rolling Stone taking pictures of her half naked.
Retaining her image as an old fashioned girl – in a fast changing world.
“You’re No Good” is a 7.
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All great songs.
Lady Marmalade the pick but the one thing that bothers me is why is she called Lady Marmalade?
I don’t know if Marmalade is slang for anything else but my only point of reference is the orange jam like substance. Which gives me the visual image that the Lady has gone overboard with the fake tan despite the song asserting that her skin is the colour of cafe au lait. It also makes me think of Paddington. Who went through some tough times in those films but I’d never describe him as a savage beast. Though he is very likely to say more more more to a Marmalade sandwich.
That video of the Stone Poneys is quite something. Or rather, what the band are producing is quite something. I just have no idea what that something is as it sure doesn’t match what Linda is singing.
I know someone named Cinnamon. I have to wonder if her parents expected her to be a stripper. Anyway, perhaps Marmalade is a traditional name is some culture we’re all unfamiliar with. (Kinda doubt it but I’m trying to be generous here.)
And I’m going to have to listen to “Killer Queen” again.
I love the story of how a well-known musician praised the sound of the snare drum on “Lady Marmalade.” I’ve been looking for proper attribution for two days with no luck.
In any event, it had to be a great day for drummer Herman “Roscoe” Ernest III and producer Allan Toussaint when they heard about the shout-out from Paul McCartney.
I’m glad you brought up “Rum and Coca-Cola” because the Andrews Sisters were who I first thought of when you were describing Patti’s ignorance. I think that its fair to say that The Andrews Sisters did eventually figure out what their lyrics meant, but apparently they received and recorded the song pretty quickly and didn’t have much time to think about what it really meant.
And then there’s Linda.
Agree with your numbers for LaBelle and Queen, but “You’re No Good” is at least an 8 and maybe a 9. Most of Linda’s other covers could only aspire to be as good. (We’ll see whether you get to “Tracks of My Tears,” though…)
Oh, I didn’t even notice that. YNG is a 10 for me.
“Blue Bayou” is the one for me.
It’s enough to make me believe that Tuscon, Arizona might actually have a blue bayou. It’s a 9.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kp9G0zkorio
“Hammer to Fall” should’ve charted. The music video for “I Want to Break Free” looks so tame, I don’t know why it warranted a purported blacklisting. Queen continued to chart everywhere else in the world.
“Killer Queen”. That’s Track #1 from Greatest Hits. I’m not going to google. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong. $5.99 on sale at Tower Records. What a great song.
If you watch Lisa Cholodenko’s Laurel Canyon, and you’re a Sparklehorse fan, you might enjoy watching Alessandro Nivola performing “Someday I Will Treat You Good”. He also covers “Shade and Honey”. Frances McDormand plays his manager.
Alicia Vikander sings “Blue Bayou” live, in Justin Chon’s Blue Bayou. Nicely done. Vikander’s not just singing, she’s singing in character.
I like Laurel Canyon a lot, definitely owing much to the Sparklehorse stuff, but a good movie outside of that too.
The thing about Linda Ronstadt, not only is she gorgeous, she has a singularly emotive and beautiful voice. And yes, everyone was in love with her in the 70s.