I Love Bad Music: Here’s What I DO Know

HT Contributor Eliot Glazer has tremendously terrible taste in music. But he makes everything sound so damn appealing, so we allow him this soapbox…

On October 31, 2007, I felt I had reached the apex of my obsession with one musician whose signature vocal stylings had been – for years – some of the most downright “ghostly” I’d ever heard (and not in a good way, either). That coupled his foreseeable legacy of having informed American consumers that cotton was, indeed, “the fabric of our lives” resulted in the *necessity* that I dress as Aaron Neville for Halloween. Needless to say, it was a smashing success.

Both karaoke outings and inebriated episodes have allowed me to achieve superstardom among friends and their friends in my dead on impression of Aaron Neville, which I have been doing since high school (before Horatio Sanz, too). How better to explain my fascination with his staccatoed dulcetones or his parsing of every singular note, resulting in a sonic boom of musical teardrops than to just reproduce it myself?

Sure, performing the “Cotton” jingle (as performed by Neville) is always a surefire hit (“The touch…the feel…of cotton, the fabric of our li-hi-hi-hi- hi…ves”). But it’s his timeless, lite FM-ready duet with Linda Ronstadt, I Don’t Know Much, that drives the nail into the proverbial coffin of music meant to accompany a root canal.

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The video doesn’t help, either. Whatever tiny planet occupied by a small colony of insects on Aaron’s forehead is not enough to distract from Linda’s completely elementary school librarian ensemble that screams, “My vagina froze over years ago.” And, um, is it *really* necessary for you guys to act out the “timeless lovers” deal? Because on its own, the song is enough to turn stomachs, but having to visually witness Linda’s hand brush against Neville’s brittle jherecurl or our attempting to distinguish whose wrist bracelets is whose (Aaron’s specifically match his sleeveless leather vests) is not only exhausting, but requires us to pay attention to what is essentially a three-minute promo for Precious Moments.

Sure, I can spew venom for miles on Aaron Neville. He is, as far as I’m concerned, Frankenstein’s monster with the voice of a eunuch, and it scares the bejesus out of me. Nevertheless, there isn’t a karaoke establishment in all of New York that doesn’t have “Don’t Know Much” at the ready for when I blow into the joint.

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