Since we're on the subject of overwrought lovesongs...
Late night, 405 Northbound. I'm coming home from Carlos' gig at Carbon (ed. note: If you want to see the pop-and-lock crew work it, bust out Play Paul, A Number of Names and Lopazz) and I'm kind of tired on account of living on very little sleep these days, so I crank up the radio and start flipping stations. I finally settle on Jack because "Magic Man" is playing and I like to listen to Heart at full blast and curse myself for not being able to sing. "Magic Man" lasts about as long as it takes me to get from Venice Boulevard through the Sepulveda Pass, which is pretty long, and that last "duh-duh" kickstarts a ballad. No station ID. No middle of the night dead air. Just a girl pleading for her mom to let her run away with some guy seamlessly mixing into the tale of a lonely guy who promises that if he could fly, he'd pick you up.
Twenty-some-odd years into the lifespan of "Into the Night" and I never picked up on the opening lyric until tonight. (Blame it on me yelling at someone to change the station.)
"She's only 16 years old/Leave her alone/They said."
My first thought was, um, ewwww.
The dirty old man picking up on the hot high school chick is a traditional motif in rock music (although, it has been recently replaced by the MILF motif of "Stacy's Mom"). I can handle that. Hell, I can even admit that sometime during the course of the year when I wore a lycra miniskirt and military jacket everywhere, "Rock the Cradle of Love" appealed to my inner Kelly Bundy. But "Into the Night?" It's like finding out that the friend of yours who looks like Saffron Monsoon and has that awful habit of oversinging songs from the Little Mermaid soundtrack during class is carrying on with the Michael Bolton lookalike at the post office.
I get home and run to the computer to Google the song, where I end up going through several pages of people trying to figure out who sings "Into the Night," based solely on the lyric "If I could fly" and a few pages on Atmosphere (which, apparently, is not the same Atmosphere that made a really incredible mutant disco 12" that I once picked up at the Goodwill for a quarter). I finally find the Benny Mardones website and notice a distinct Michael Bolton-esq quality to his look. That just makes it so much worse.