REO Speedwagon: "Can't Fight This Feeling" C/D?

For a start, the organ's out of tune in the chorus, and the "more"/"for"/"shore"/"OAR" rhyme is unforgivable.

http://www.collectorcarads.com/addetail.asp?CarID=8661

If I gave a flyin' fuck about the Byrds, they'd be fightin' words.

Me and my friends often quote the dialogue that opens the video.

Singer: "it feels pretty good for me in this key"
Pianist: "it feels pretty good for me in this key, too!"
both: "hahahahahaha!"

I also like how the video implies they started recording the song before the drummer had even walked over to his kit.

the Armored Saint lead singer from that video Beavis and Butthead used to play gives him a run for his money.

Incorrect. Have you ever seen the video for Manfred Mann's cover of "Demolition Man"?

the Armored Saint lead singer from that video Beavis and Butthead used to play gives him a run for his money.

http://www.morrigans-pit.org/pics_live/anthrax220303_john.jpg

Wha? You mean John Bush (now in Anthrax?) You wrong, mang!

Ugliest "man" to appear on MTV:

http://www.ananova.com/images/web/55667.jpg

The video, newly, uh, celebrated.

http://io9.gizmodo.com/this-80s-soft-rock-music-video-is-the-most-disturbing-t-1763416920

i always appreciated the video cos it made it clear that dudes that looked like calculator salesmen could be 'rock stars'

i bet kevin cronyn, as ugly as he is, got more pussy than all of us combined.
― Eisbär (llamasfur), Sunday, May 23, 2004 3:06 PM (11 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm

i've heard this song at work so many times that i actually like it now. :'(

previously i always thought the intro was great w/ its twinkly melody and softly sighed moans but thought the rest of the song was garbage. but i guess i couldn't fight this feeling anymore :(

DID NTO KNWO THIS

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REO_Speed_Wagon

It's the cover of their first album!

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e4/Reospeedwagon.jpg

We can all agree that “Keep On Lovin’ You” is their true classic tho, rite?

no

The music video for Cant fight this feelign is so bizzare and sureal to me - as if a David Lynch film

Oh tehre just so much I didnt know about 80's power ballads!

We can all agree that “Keep On Lovin’ You” is their true classic tho, rite?
yes

OTM

this song rules

I always loved the lyric, "You played dead, but you never bled/Instead you laid still in the grass, all coiled up and hissin'." That said, it's not even my favorite song on Hi Infidelity.

We can all agree that “Keep On Lovin’ You” is their true classic tho, rite?

No.

This is better, both classic tho

they're not even in the same league? somebody run a poll, Keep on Loving You will walk it

chorus of CFTF coming in is so thunderous and passionate, it's like the big chords in "rosanna." unstoppable. the final fate of pete townshend's windmill technique.

I was leaning heavily towards CFTF but after listening to both gotta go with KOLY. CFTF is just a little toooo twinkly piano ballady. gr8 chorus, yes, but no better than CFTF

how can the KOLY video be so charming and the CFTF so cringe

I got a soft spot for REO Speedwagon as they were just one of those ubiquitous rock bands that was just everywhere when I was a kid growing up in Indiana at the end of the 70s early 80s. Those guys toured the midwest all the time (kinda still do) and had a really big following. Not Bob Seger or John Cougar popular, but but not far either at least in that 79-81 time.

"Keep On Loving You" is a much darker love song. Gary Richrath hits a couple of truly epic pick slides in this one and he was really good at that. Richrath's were also very melodic like a vocal line.

Talk is cheaper when the story is good, I might prefer "Take It on the Run" to either one.

Boston and REO definitely got that huge overdub chorus of voices down cold and that pretty much became Def Leppard's sound too.

Foreigner's "Waiting for a Girl Like You" is another tune that has a similar vibe as the REO power ballads.

All this music takes me back to being 11-12 years old and brokenhearted at the skating ring.

that huge overdub chorus of voices
yes!

"Take It on the Run" def a contender.

Poll: REO Speedwagon Classics

I just looked up to see who the producer was on Hi Infidelity and his wikipedia page belongs on the "people who have definitely written their own wikipedia entries" thread.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Beamish

I always liked these guys. In the corporate rock pantheon I'd rank them below Boston, but definitely ahead of Styx and Kansas.

Lol @ that bio

How can it be that no-one has ever posted the video of this song before? It's a timeless classic!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpOULjyy-n8

"Roll with the Changes" is an absolute classic. Their later pop stuff is hit or miss. "Can't Fight This Feeling" veers into dud territory.

I was going to stick on the tv appearance from around the time of the 1st l.p. last night. Then I didn't so will see if I remember tonight.
Another band whose first couple of mps are pretty different to the way the band sounded at its most popular.
Much heavier.

they all look like calculator salesmen

Kevin Cronin sure is one ugly motherfucker, more so even than Lou Gramm

he looks atrocious in this video due to the hair, but he looks more like a hairstylist or tennis coach IRL now, much more aesthetically pleasing 'do

Maybe this belongs in the men who look like old lesbians thread

http://reospeedwagon.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/kevin-cronin.jpg

Well, fuck. TIL that Gary Richrath died in 2015. The Wikipedia entry includes this cryptic statement from Kevin Cronin:

"He had some stomach problem or something and he went in the hospital to get treated for a stomach ailment and there were complications and he didn't make it."

did Kevin kill him?

Maybe his stomach problem was the knife sticking in his gut.

Maybe he was one of the 'men' alluded to in Keep on Loving You

Kevin Cronin sure is one ugly motherfucker, more so even than Lou Gramm

The whole band were on the homely side.

the "more"/"for"/"shore"/"OAR" rhyme is unforgivable.

Since this is an engagement/wedding ballad, it would have been germane to toss in a rhyme about "givin' up the whores". Unfortunately, we see the lack of imagination of mid-80s AOR reflected in this missed opportunity.

...although it was clever of them to allude to the AOR genre by using the anagram "OAR"!

longish story that's stuck with me for decades, content warning for teenagers doing hard drugs. it's 1982. me and a friend of mine in high school, I will call him Bob, we have both known since we were kids that we wanted to try heroin. some people are just like that. we are in a pod of friends, the rest of whom aren't as dope-seeking as us, but anyway all of us hang out in some formation daily, nightly, whatever, we work the same jobs, we're always hanging out, getting late night coffee, sitting around the stereo. we're big music snobs, we like Bowie and Lou Reed and Iggy and that's basically our entire lane, we're into some newer stuff which is like, Talking Heads. any brainier new stuff. so one weekend, I don't know where Bob's at, and instead of hanging out I just do whatever with other people from inside the same pod, but on Monday I see him -- "Where were you all weekend?" "Oh I couldn't wait to tell you, dude I hung out with these people who were friends of somebody from work and I got to try heroin." "Whoa holy fuck dude, what was it like?" "Well, it was great, but, like, after I did it, we were all hanging out at their apartment, you know, talking and listening to music, and talking about music, and it was late, and one of them said, you know, 'we can talk about all this music that's good or whatever, but when you really need something great, when you really need the music that's there for you, there's only one band.' And then the other ones jumped in, like they already knew who he meant, and they said, 'absolutely right, REO Speedwagon.' And I was just sitting there listening for a long time, you know, and I was on drugs, so I wondered if maybe they were joking and I wasn't getting the jok., but I just listened for a long time and that's what they were saying, and finally I couldn't take it, and I said -- hey -- I hear what you guys are saying, but don't you all realize that REO sucks?"

He told this story with incredulity in his voice, like holy shit Joan I spent Saturday with people who actually like REO.

I remember this story every time I hear REO Speedwagon, for forty years.

lol

that's what i call ridin' the storm out