TS: Billie Jean vs. Little Red Corvette

nothing touches Billie Jean

except for MJ, who then refused to take responsibility

"Corvette" is awesome wtf is up with you people

Was out for dinner tonight with some friends and put this question to them. All four of us say LRC.

― MaudAddam (cryptosicko), Wednesday, September 17, 2014 7:20 PM (22 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the four wisemen

the four tin eared men

prince is about even with kate bush in terms of annoying "omg bacon" style overreaction these days. it's like if you don't get all speaking-in-tongues foaming at the mouth about them you're a total poser.

the "people always told me..." prechorus is the best part of BJ, whereas there are 100 best parts of LRC.

lrc has no bass, thumbs down. i can't dance to this compressed new wave shit

the "people always told me..." prechorus is the best part of BJ, whereas there are 100 best parts of LRC.

― replacements gustafsson (get bent), Wednesday, September 17, 2014

OTM

people going with Prince here, is there any Michael Jackson song you would have voted for over LRC? is there any Prince song that people voting against LRC think is better than Billie Jean?

Gotta go with Billie Jean. I love both songs but sometimes Little Red Corvette will come on and I don't feel like listening to it, whereas I always, always want to hear Billie Jean.

lrc has no bass, thumbs down. i can't dance to this compressed new wave shit

― brimstead, Thursday, September 18, 2014 7:38 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

OTM. I like the song just fine but I'm not sure how I'd react, dancing-wise, to it playing in a social setting. The chorus is kind of anti-climactic, 'litt-le red cor-VETTE / baby you're much too fast', like you expect it to really kick in but it just rises up and diminishes, ahem, much too fast. The production could definitely do with being tweaked - there's something thin and plasticky about the overall sound that just doesn't quite hit me in the chest like BJ.

I like Prince more, and "Corvette" is probably one of his top 5 singles for me. but "Billie Jean" just never really rated as one of my favorite MJ songs.

she did a little squat at "jockeys"

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=d55_1248476389

I voted BJ and imo the only Prince that is on par with it is When Doves Cry. Maybe I've a preference for sparse and funky.

I think most of my friends don't know LRC, but EVERYBODY knows BJ. Doesn't mean it's better, but I think "When Doves Cry" would've made a better comparison.

people going with Prince here, is there any Michael Jackson song you would have voted for over LRC?

nah I hate MJ

http://rankings.gawker.com/prince-madonna-and-michael-jackson-singles-ranked-1635961045

(BJ just barely over LRC.)

I've been thinking about all of Prince's Revolution-era singles and almost every time I stack one up against Little Red Corvette, the challenger is better. I don't dislike LRC by any means, but it's midgrade Prince at best.

Will take LRC over "When Doves Cry," at any rate.

nah I hate MJ

― Οὖτις,

you need a love that's gonna last

"When Doves Cry" vs. "Billie Jean" would have been a much closer call for me, but I still think LRC > both.

"I Would Die 4 U" vs. "Wanna Be Startin Somethin"

always thought "When Doves Cry" was a lifeless dirge

Maybe it's just like your mother.

ha

Verses of LRC >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> chorus of LRC

Strangeness and "thin and plasticky" sound are a large part of what attracted young new-wave me to Prince. Now I'm trying to imagine LRC with big, glossy Quincy Jones production.

imagine it sounding boring and you're done

Billie Jean easily

is there any Prince song that people voting against LRC think is better than Billie Jean?

maybe Controversy!

dog latin its cool if dancefloor efficacy is important to you but by that measure calvin harris > paul mccartney so hmm

Billie Jean is great. But not many songs are better than Little Red Corvette.

^^ QED

BJ. I feel the better comparison would have been between BJ and When Doves Cry tho.

Or between LRC and Rock with You or Don't Stop til You Get Enough

everybody comparing parts of LRC or judging it as a dance track are on the wrong track entirely. that song does it's own thing and it's breathtaking

you must be a limousine

I voted BJ and imo the only Prince that is on par with it is When Doves Cry. Maybe I've a preference for sparse and funky.

― DISMISSED AS CHANCE (NotEnough), Thursday, September 18, 2014 12:08 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

...then surely you should also acknowledge Kiss (which I prefer to either, though it was an acquired taste, and it's possible I've largely missed what makes WDC great, which I don't think it is)? I don't regard BJ as the best on Thriller (nor LRC the best in 1999, necessarily), and admit to generally favoring Prince as the less creepy of the two weirdoes (and perhaps the more "rock" of the two "r&b"ers), and to having slightly disliked BJ since hating 2nd grade or whenever it was circa my first exposure to both megapop and its corporate (fast) food cognate, but I was ready to vote either way, and a re-listen confirmed that my vote is still for LRC.

I think I dislike now the same things I did then about BJ, even if I didn't know it, starting with the synthesized (?) strings that are just one sign of a taste-challenged overproduction that at times includes MJ's voice itself (though he does have some fine moments as well - I isolated the "People always told me" passage even before I saw JBR's post), and from which the relatively dinky-sounding guitar solo actually comes as something of a relief. I mean, I recognize that it's a different kind of song, but imagine if you hadn't put all that extra stuff on top of the great beat, the way (t)he(y) hadn't on Off the Wall (or Destiny) or even Thriller's better tunes - still-disco WBSS of course, Beat It (which I have taste problems with as well, extending from the guitar pyrotechnics to the vocal ones - the semi-unintelligible "no one wants to be defeated" part of the chorus tastes in my memory exactly like terrible soda), and above all the title track that absolutely flattens any such quibbles. Instead, a potentially great dance tune was subsumed within the weirdo's encroaching cinematic fantasies/paranoid delusions. LRC, otoh, seems to be very much the product of a recognizable human being, and that's my bottom line.

Incidentally, who thinks "Stan" was (un?)consciously modeled on BJ?

If you take all of the extras, including paranoia, off Beat It, you might end up with a dance tune like the B-52's' Mesopotamia. I'm not going to claim that it's a more socially useful song, but I definitely like it better.

Also, can someone explain why, on WBSS, MJ keeps calling me a vegetable? That doesn't seem very nice.

This is the only time I intend to vote for MJ over Prince

i dunno why but somehow it's mildly startling to see someone say 'i hate MJ,' seems like there's more agreement on his at-least-occasional-classicness than any other artist i can think of -- whereas i wouldn't blink an eye if someone said they hated the beatles, stones, elvis, etc.

there's a deny thy father thing going on with the boomer hate. sort of looking forward to a day when 80's music is less revered.

my loathing of pop music's most overrated egomaniac is p well documented around here but I'd be happy to go into it further if you like.

I am not a baby boomer.

I meant hating stones/beatles/etc typically has "screw you grandma you don't know me" undertones aimed at boomers

oh, i've got no problem with anyone hating MJ but it's interesting to me that he's become something of a sacred cow post-death -- i can remember a time when he was seen with a lot more ambivalence. i recall a lot of ppl expressing extreme disgust at the idea of him owning the lennon-mccartney catalog, way more intensely revulsed than i think they would have been if some random faceless corporation had owned the rights.

lots of people have always hated michael jackson

it's pretty easy to hate any omnipresent pop star. just look at their smug mugs.

I don't think anything changed post-death (great term, post-death). He was a joke for years, decades practically.

MJ is kind of like the Star Wars franchise - something I loved as a small child that has since become grotesque and unenjoyable after decades of overexposure, hysterical adulation, and the bloated weight of self-importance. I can't really locate anything to enjoy in the music itself. I've heard it all so many times and its subtexts - abuse, narcissism, Peter Pan syndrome, paranoia, delusions of grandeur - are all singularly unattractive, not sentiments I enjoy reveling in. As dance music there's a million things I would prefer, primarily from the eras immediately prior to his peak (funk/disco) and immediately afterward (hip hop). As 80s synth-funk/R&B goes MJ's weirdo obsessions (circa Thriller we have horror movies, pedophilia, illegitimate children, and an ode to either masturbation or gang warfare who can be sure) just gross me out and lack any sense of fun. In light of the arc of his life enjoying this stuff seems morbid and depressing in the extreme, sort of like how I feel listening to Nirvana. As an "innovator" eh what the fuck ever - he leaned on a lot of people sonically and stayed with the times for the most part. He owes a lot to the Motown machine and to Quincy Jones. I don't hear a lot of crazy formal innovation in his stuff that wasn't already happening in the late 70s and early 80s (Moroder, Prince, copping basslines from Rick James etc.). And I'm not really convinced that his vocal schtick of screeches and grunts accompanied by crotch-grabbing are any improvement over James Brown (or, since we're on this thread, again, Prince). Where he was unique was in the level of his stardom. But I don't give a shit about that.

xp

Simple: I called my relatives and asked them to vote. Black Panther guards protected them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlY0H6PTIrc

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/07/obituaries/leon-ndugu-chancler-versatile-drummer-is-dead-at-65.html