HOF Inductee No. 4: "Elvira," Oak Ridge Boys

Giddy up, um-poppa-um-poppa, mow, mow

Giddy up, um-poppa-um-poppa, mow, mow

High-ho silver, away

Early 80s country-crossover comes to the Hall of Fame. Named for a town that, if not for "Elvira," would be best known as the birth place of the atomic bomb, the Oak Ridge Boys came from a gospel music tradition. They found their home in the pop side of country music. While driven by the engaging lead vocals of Duane Allen, the hook is supplied by the deep bass vocal of a different band member. Fun fact: we always assumed that the bass in the band was the tall guy with the long beard, William Lee Golden, but it's not. He's a harmonizing baritone. The Marianas-Trench deep bass vocal is actually supplied by the most slightly-built member of the group, Richard Sterban. And that's the hook that propels "Elvira" into all-time earworm territory. 

Um-poppa, um-poppa, mow, mow, indeed.

The Oak Ridges have released 31 albums and 56 singles over their existence. The classic line-up has continued, relatively intact, since the early 1970s. But their run as country-crossover kings lasted only from "Elvira," which peaked at #5 on the pop charts in the summer of 1981 (the summer of "Bette Davis Eyes" and Rick Springfield's "Jesse's Girl") and into early 1982 with "Bobbie Sue", a #12 pop hit. They went back to being stalwarts of the country music scene, where they've remained ever since.

But the pop world remembers their brief shining moment as pop stars. And we remember them with a song that is forever stuck in our brains. My heart's on fire!

HOF Inductee No. 3: "We Built This City," Starship

Someone's always playing corporation games

Who cares, they're always changing corporation names

For some bizarre reason, Starship's perfectly OK pop hit from 1985 makes critics' lists of "Worst Songs of All Time." Really? Not the faux intellectual but ultimately trite "Imagine"? Not the irritating fluffiness of Wham's "Wake Me Up Before You Go Go"? Not something anything from a boy band of the late 80s or early 90s? This, Mr. Critic, is your choice for all-time worst, because you are incapable of poetic analysis, i.e., too stupid, to understand the line "Marconi plays the mamba"?

Is this song in the pantheon of all-time classics, up there with "Good Vibrations" or "Satisfaction" or Olivia Newton-John's "Physical"? Be real. But it does deserve to be in the pantheon of all-time earworms. And so it is.

This has all the ingredients for a classic earworm. Catchy pop hooks. Clever lyrics, fragments of which remain embedded in your skull nearly 40 years later. Great vocals by Mickey Thomas, ably supported by the legendary Grace Slick. In fact, it is Ms. Slick's deadpan delivery of the great line about always-changing corporation names quoted above that makes the song for me. You know that she and the band get the humor in the band Jefferson Airplane / Jefferson Starship / Starship singing about "always changing corporation names."

But the line the critics fail to understand is about "Marconi" and the "mamba." Plays the mamba, critics shriek shrilly. A mamba is a snake. A "mam-BO" is something a band would play. Why is Marconi playing a snake and not a Caribbean dance? It's called poetic license, critics. In poetry, words are not always literal. Marconi invented wireless transmission via electromagnetic waves in the long end of the spectrum, the part of the spectrum we call "radio waves." Marconi made the radio playing your favorite pop tunes possible, "Marconi," as used in this song, is a symbol (synecdoche?) for radio.

So what about the "mamba" part. Yes, a mamba is a snake. It is a very poisonous snake. Marconi, i.e., the radio, is playing what? Poison! In the futuristic dystopia in which this song takes place, the radio is spewing forth venomous poison that only loosely can be associated with music. Not like the way it used to be? Don't you remember? We built this city. We built this city on rock and roll!

And we built on hook-saturated pop rock that makes one of the all-time great earworms.

HOF Inductee No. 2: "Y.M.C.A.," the Village People

The most ubiquitous remnant of 1970s disco culture surviving into the 21st Century is a worthy addition to the Earworm Hall of Fame.

"Y.M.C.A." was a disco anthem that crossed over into the pop charts, reaching #2 on the Billboard charts. It was kept out of #1 in early 1979 by two disco classics: first by Chic's "Le Freak," and then by Rod Stewart's "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?" It was the biggest pop hit by the disco vocal group the Village People. (Personally, I will always prefer the pop hooks of their first Top 40 hit, the equally campy "Macho Man"."

As originally constructed, the Village People were a disco vocal group that was not so much formed as it was cast, like a play, by French (actually Moroccan Jewish) music impresario Jacques Morali. The six original members were cast into roles denoting gay sexual fantasy types: the cowboy (Randy Jones), the construction worker (David Hodo), the leatherman (Glenn Hughes), the American Indian (Felipe Rose), the soldier (Alex Briley), and the policeman (who also appeared dressed as a Naval officer when warranted) (Victor Willis). The music was propelled by the powerful lead vocals of Mr. Willis, who, despite playing a gay stereotype, was not in fact gay. During the height of the Village People's fame, he was married to a pre-Cosby Show Phylicia Rashad.

And therein lies the inherent contradiction of the Village People. They were put together as gay stereotypes, but their appeal has been to the mainstream straight audience, especially their anthemic "Y.M.C.A." It is not the gay subculture who are spelling out the letters "Y," "M," "C," and "A" at every sports stadium. It is a bizarre contradiction between "Y.M.C.A." and another disco anthem from the early months of 1979, Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive." "Y.M.C.A." is pure gay camp at its campiest. "I Will Survive" is the story of woman's triumph over the break-up of a bad relationship with a man. Yet the campy gay sing-along is now the property of heterosexual America and the story of a woman's bitter break-up with a man is the anthem of many a gay man of a certain age.