Music of the Day, 3 January 2025
wherein my recent musical mystery is solved
Several weeks ago, an American idiom came to mind, followed closely by the conviction that it had been used in a popular song back in the 1980s. That’s all I could remember, so I set out to track it down.
YouTube led me to a song with the same title, but it is much newer and has a very different feel than what I was expecting. And as much as I appreciate its artist, his take and its video1 have not aged well at all. I was so disgusted2 that I stopped searching.
But the question apparently shared some deep space with the radio station in my mind, because both the artist and the lovely melody emerged from those depths today. And in enjoying it, I learned an interesting bit of musical trivia that I should have twigged back in the day.
Now that I know that “Close But No Cigar” was the first single from Thomas Dolby’s 1992 album Astronauts & Heretics, several things have come clear. It was released in April (a couple of months ahead of the album), and at that time I was in the final throes of completing my dissertation work so that I could graduate in June. I know I heard it, but back then I wasn’t attending to much beyond graduating and moving to another Ohio city, where my then-spouse had accepted a job.
When I did focus on it, I thought it a nice, characteristically Dolby twist on a love song, with a neat guitar sound that niggled at the musical bits in my head. That was my first thought on hearing its opening notes today—”I know that guitarist, but fuck me, I can’t figure out who it is!” Wiki’s personnel list for the album revealed it’s Eddie Van Halen.3 He played on two songs for the album, returning a favor Dolby had done for him.
I am thoroughly digging every element of “Close But No Cigar” today. The music is great (how can it not be?!); the ethereal background vocals’ soaring “ooooooohs” are hitting my feels hard even after several repetitions of the song; and do I need to comment on the lyrics? Everything I’ve heard by Thomas Dolby—which isn’t nearly enough—has set me both grooving and thinking.
It isn’t as simplistic as this, but the song has me wondering if I even had lie detectors of the sort Dolby references … if so, they didn’t ping until much too late on any lies in my romantic relationships, including the ones I told myself. Ah well. I still adore the song and will be listening to all of Astronauts & Heretics sometime over the weekend.
this is an unusually strong reaction for me. Weird that being seen as a second-class citizen by a plurality of voters can bring such responses on
and also reveals why Astronauts & Heretics is categorized as both new wave and zydeco
Funny post. That Weird Al clip...😳😳😳
Eddie played lead on Michael Jackson's "Beat it". He did it as a favor for a mutual friend/producer. He was so concerned about how his fans would react to him being associated with MJ that he asked to be uncredited.
I've never heard this song before. I knew nothing of Dolby outside the big singles, although as I get exposed to more these days I've come to really appreciate him. Thanks for sharing!