Friday Night Jukebox, Vol. CXXIV--Dishwalla: Counting Blue Cars

Back in the day when I was still a young man managing a Camelot Music store, I made mention to my then boss about what shit a particular song was (if memory serves, it was Stars on 45 and their hit song, the oh-so-cleverly named "Stars on 45 Medley"--horrifyingly dreadful would be a vast understatement as to its artistic worth), and my boss got all defensive and said I was wrong because so many people had bought the song.  He wasn't a very good boss and he was an even worse purveyor of pop music, and he was also dead wrong:  beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but shit music is shit music no matter how many people buy it.

I make mention of this because this week's tune happened to end up on some half-assed critic's top 20 worst songs of all-time list that I'd seen at one time or another, and it got me to thinking what with nearly everything released by Madonna, Michael Jackson, and Abba being utter shit, the disco craze, and the umpteen brutal and completely unnecessary cover versions that become hits, among many, many other bad songs, I could literally think of thousands of songs that were considerably worse than this one.

And having a certain fondness for it, I added it to the FNJ pantheon of pop.

There really isn't much to tell about Dishwalla--they formed in 1993 in Santa Barbara, CA (lucky bastards), had a big hit a couple of years later, and have managed to make a career out of said hit.  They've now released five albums (one just this year), continue to tour, and have done a number of charitable concerts for worthy causes.  They are also--which has been a theme of a number of  FNJ bands this year--another group that is nearly twenty-five (or 35, or 45) years down the road and still making music because they managed to compose a single song that made the top 40.  If only I'd had a scintilla of music talent....

Of all the songs featured thus far on FNJ, this one is probably the lamest--but just because the cool kids aren't listening to it doesn't mean it's not a damn fine little tune.  Released in 1995 on their Pet Your Friends LP, "Counting Blue Cars" would go on to reach #15 (with a bullet!) on the Billboard Hot 100.  It is what it is--a nice catchy pop song, with some heartfelt vocals, and an earthy guitar on top of some driving drumming .  But what really made "Counting Blue Cars" more than just your average pop tune, though, was the sheer number of people who absolutely lost their shit (I remember this because I was still in the music biz in '95) because in the song Dishwalla had the audacity to suppose that God was a woman.   The horrors--because it's okay to believe in an all powerful, all knowing, mysterious being in the sky who can do magic tricks, but believing that this all powerful, all knowing, mysterious being in the sky who can do magic tricks is a woman is just a bit beyond the pale.

Sometimes it's just the sheer absurdity of it that makes life worth living--and a good pop song that celebrates such absurdity worth listening to again and again.

Lyric Sheet:  "Tell me all your thoughts on God/'Cause I would really like to meet her/And ask her why we're who we are..."

Enjoy:

Fuck Donald Trump,
emaycee