It is a uniquely gay problem to routinely awaken to thoughts of Liza Minnelli, but here I stand before you, dark circles under my eyes, affirming that I’ve been afflicted by this condition for years now, since first listening to Results. Several times a year, sometimes for weeks at a time, I wake up with tracks from that Pet Shop Boys-produced 1989 classic — “I Can’t Say Goodnight,” “I Want You Now,” “Losing My Mind,” “Twist in My Sobriety,” “Don’t Drop Bombs” — firmly lodged in my head and playing on repeat.
If I’m up six times in one night, the offending song is there each time, until I fall back asleep. Liza isn’t the only artist in this unconscious overnight jukebox of mine; I often wake up to Beach Boys tunes, including “The Warmth of the Sun,” which of course has a special place in my heart, and their 1964 cover of “Why Do Fools Fall in Love,” with lead vocals from Brian Wilson that make me deliriously happy.
Other songs are so bad as to be insulting. It’s rude enough to wake up throughout the night because of jerry-built intestines and a brain that mysteriously instructs your limbs to move when they should be still. To do so while “Drops of Jupiter” plays continuously in your head is downright disrespectful. During the week I was plagued by that Train song, I traced it back to a Lyft driver’s radio; then there was the week of Fastball’s catchier, less offensive “The Way,” which I heard early one morning while wresting a grocery cart from the jaws of a connecting cart.
Every year or two, Duncan Sheik’s “Barely Breathing” reenters the rotation; I’ve never paid attention to his work, though a classical musician friend from high school was a fan. In March of this year, Hole’s “Dying” and “Hit So Hard” were my nocturnal songs du jour, until they were replaced by an unexpected blast from the past: Paula Abdul’s relentlessly upbeat, if lyrically incomprehensible, “The Promise of a New Day.”
Abdul had been a fixture of my early childhood, a Forever Your Girl-era poster hanging over my bed. When Spellbound, her sophomore album, was released in 1991, I was eight years old and listened to it obsessively. “Rush Rush” and the epic “Blowing Kisses in the Wind,” the Abdulian equivalent of a Ross Hunter-produced Douglas Sirk melodrama, were particular favorites, as was the energetic title track. But I didn’t replace the cassette on compact disc after getting my first CD player in fifth or sixth grade; by then I’d outgrown many of my former favorites.
In the years to come I rarely thought about Abdul, other than to (inappropriately) chuckle in 2005, when she really was “caught in a hit and run.” Nostalgia occasionally compelled me to seek out a video or two of hers on YouTube — usually “Opposites Attract” (whose choreography I’d like to platonically recreate with my dog) or “Cold Hearted,” which debuted in 1989 and still dances circles around its imitators. But it wasn’t until March, when “The Promise of a New Day” first greeted my insomnia — followed by other Abdul songs I hadn’t heard in ages — that I revisited the music itself.
Via the wonders of Spotify, Abdul’s slim oeuvre was added to my tablet with just a few clicks. It became my spring and early summer soundtrack, Spellbound again the most enchanting of all. Yes, it’s formulaic, full of dumb dance songs in which Abdul hoots, gasps and yells aerobic instructor encouragement (“Yeah! C’mon, c’mon! Here we go!”) nearly as much as she sings. The production is often slick as hell, as in the audacious “Vibeology,” which suffers nevertheless from painfully stupid lyrics like “I’m in a funky way.” It veers distressingly off-track only rarely: the treacly “Will You Marry Me?” is as insipid as you’d expect of a love song written for Emilio Estevez.
In a sign of Spellbound’s eccentricity, Abdul’s take on John Hiatt’s “Alright Tonight” outshines a perfunctory Prince cover, despite its cruise line jingle vibe (and a glaring mismatch between Hiatt’s cerebral middle-aged ruefulness and her thin, plucky vocals). But it was “Rush Rush,” one of her rare ballads, that surprised me most of all. It should’ve sounded much more moronic to me as an adult than it did back then, but its earnestness won me over — even the violin solo that once seemed destined for Muzak glory. (In this guitar and violin cover, it begins at the 1:26 mark.)
Kicking off with an innocuous “You’re the whisper of a summer breeze/You’re the kiss that puts my soul at ease,” it quickly stumbles, Abdul sounding all of 14 as she pointlessly clarifies “What I’m saying is I’m into you.” The song continues in that vein, mixing yearning lyrics (“All I want from you is what you are/And even if you’re right next to me you’re still too far away”) with even clunkier, gee-golly sentiments like “Oh man, I love you so!” It’s exceedingly dopey, as is “The Promise of a New Day,” and I enjoy every moment of both.
It’s not been a great last few years around here, from marital stresses and parental health crises to losing partial use of my arm. This spring and into the summer, I went outside several times a day and stood there with a hose, watering patches of sod with a weighty sense of purpose you only feel after realizing how little sovereignty you hold over anything else in your life. Every now and then, I’d shift the sprayer from one hand to another while shaking off Parkinson’s cramps and trying not to feel a thousand years old.
Across the street, a shy young boy sometimes imitated me, watering his house instead of the grass. Listening to Forever Your Girl and Spellbound through earbuds connected to my watch (technology unimaginable outside of Dick Tracy in the early ’90s), I remembered being his age as I first thrilled to Paula’s dancing and choreography and the unbridled fun of her music. It provided as pleasurable an escape the second time around as it had more than three decades ago, even if I’m no closer to understanding its lyrics.