The Atrocious Music Collection: #14 in a series
Artist: Rupert Holmes (b. 1947)
Album Titles: Pursuit of Happiness, Partners in Crime, and Adventure
Category: Professional MusicianYears: 1978-1980
Cover art style: 70s sexy-nerdy
Audio samples: Acquisition: Left at the party
Click on pictures for full-sized images
Look, Rupert Holmes is an extremely successful songwriter and recording artist. He has written acclaimed musicals, plays, novels, TV shows. He performs. He produces. He is an extremely talented and successful individual. He really doesn’t belong in the collection. He knows how to write – this is a professional after all. He wrote the damn Piña Colada Song for goodness sake. (Fun fact: Did you know it’s really called Escape?)
Be forewarned: the ear-worm quotient is high with this one. Holmes knows how to write a memorable hook. I did not need to re-listen to any of these songs, many of which I haven’t heard for several decades, to write this. Listen at your own risk.
So why is Holmes in the collection? He got in because someone brought three Rupert Holmes albums to the Atrocious Music Party and left them with me. It might have been Andy D., but I really don’t recall. Obviously they were deemed Atrocious by the person who brought them, but on listening to any one song, you are not likely to group them with the rest of this crowd – the poorly conceived celebrity project, the oddball outsider artist, the obscure band.
But…to overdose on late-70’s Rupert Holmes, to ingest all three of these albums in one sitting, or even two-in-a-row, is to change the equation. Like a mild toxin, or (more accurately) a rich dessert - like one of those chain-restaurant over-sized chocolate brownie mudslides (with ice cream and whip cream) - there may be no ill effects after one mudslide (or one dose of poison), but keep at it, have three or seven right in a row, and things rapidly go south.
The albums in question are Pursuit of Happiness (1978), Partners in Crime (1979), and Adventure (1980), and they represent a particular aspect of that era in a concentrated form. (In other words, there’s not a lot of diversity here.) In addition to just being too much Holmes musically, they provide quite an overdose of Holmes visually as well. I’m not going to throw stones, living in a glass house as I do (as most of us do when it comes to appearances), but he’s got the looks of a songwriter, a back-stage guy, not the front man. And the clothes, the poses, the turtleneck!
Escape (The Piña Colada Song) contains some Holmes-ian signature moves. He tends to tell a story in his songs – he was essentially writing show tunes even before he did The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Escape also occupies a disco-culture territory of easy sex and no-consequences cheating. In Escape, both members of the couple use the 1979 version of Ashley Madison (AKA the newspaper personal ad) to try to cheat on the other, only to discover they’ve set up a blind date with each other! (See? It's ironic. And sort of romantic.) All is forgiven, and everyone has a good laugh.
Similar ground is plowed in Lunch Hour, but it’s a bit darker, everyone cheating on everyone, fitting in quickies in that all-too-brief lunch hour, because everyone is hungry, hungry, hungry (…for love, get it?). The song Partners in Crime goes even further, focusing on power-imbalanced relationships like pimp and prostitute, or boss and put-upon subordinate (who then turns the tables on him as a dominatrix). Not sure if he’s glorifying or normalizing this kind of thing, or just suggesting this is how all relationships work. Either way, it’s clearly pre-#MeToo.
The equating of hunger for food and love in Lunch Hour illustrates another one of Holmes’ tendencies; namely, to ride a metaphor hard during a song, to ride it in as many ways as possible, to ride it unto exhaustion. It could be gambling and love (Blackjack), or temperature and love (Cold), or even talking and love (Speechless).
Anyway, you are welcome to experience the full-on Rupert Holmes by digging into these three discs but, if you would rather, I think there is a way to experience the musical equivalent to the pants-stretching, belchy, sickly sweet sensation of eating too many 1,000+ calorie chocolate Rupert Holmes desserts in far less than the two hour running time of these discs. I think the full effect can be gotten in just one song, Nearsighted.
To achieve this, you’ve got to give it your full attention, and you might even need to listen to it twice. But Nearsighted is such a perfect late-70’s ballad that it climbs over the mountain, goes 'round the bend, and jumps the shark. It’s also got some of the best of Holmes’ trademarks, like an overused metaphor (poor vision and love), a melody you will never forget, a key change, and a happy ending.
Just make sure you play it loud for the full effect. Share it with your neighbors.