TOTO "africa" classic or dud

Men At Work are awesome, and the fact that they were successfully sued for "Down Under" is one of the greatest copyright law travesties ever.

That is all.

Men At Work >>>>>> Toto

― the last famous person you were surprised to discover was actually (man alive), Tuesday, September 19, 2017 11:19 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is a mega truth bomb right here.

"Overkill" is so fucking good, i have lots of time for MaW

there's an interesting documentary about colin james hay on amazon prime

there's an interesting documentary about colin james hay on amazon prime

"Overkill" is so fucking good

^^

I CANT GET TO SLEEP

My mom really liked that documentary, I am def intrigued to explore menAW

Wiki not too helpful:

The song was used in an advertisement for Castle Lager in South Africa in the late 1990s.
The song was used in the video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City on the fictional radio station Emotion 98.3.
A Foster Farms commercial in the United States features a choir of animatronic chickens singing the song as part of the poultry producer's "Amazing Chicken" campaign.
The song was featured at the beginning of the Scrubs episode "My Way Home". The song was being played through J.D.'s iPod and the band's name was the first of many references to The Wizard of Oz in the episode.
"Africa" was featured in multiple episodes of the 20th season of South Park.
The song was featured in the first episode of the first season of Stranger Things.

I'm still leaning toward Vice City. The/a question is, how many people in their 20s and 30s know "Self Control" by Laura Branigan? Or any of the relatively lesser publicly heard songs from that game?

― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, September 19, 2017 7:56 AM (three hours ago)

Hey look at this:

http://www.salon.com/2017/08/13/toto-africa-lyrics/

― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, September 19, 2017 7:58 AM (three hours ago)

lol, these are the two links i posted yesterday, largely in response to your "no fucking clue" post, Josh.

thread moves fast, i understand.

Men at Work get a pass because the two huge Cargo singles ("Overkill," "It's a Mistake") rip their Business as Usual counterparts to shreds. But they still weren't very good.

business at usual was the first album cassette i ever bought

xpost That's funny. sometimes on my phone links show, sometimes less so.

ha, Business as Usual was the first album (LP) I remember getting excited about buying. It was a Thursday and I knew I would get it on the following Tuesday. This is how I remember that Thurs-Tues = 5 days.

the first cassette i bought was She's So Unusual

young(er) people do learn of classic hits thru, hm, classic hits radio (this song has been a mainstay at that format forever) -- doesn't have to be grand theft auto or glee or rock band

love this song. i made a few remixes of this recently. one is looping just the intrumental hook part over and over w stuttering gitchy noise. the other is that beat slowed down really slow with a repeater instead of pitch bending. ill post them here when i find them!

xpost Honestly didn't know young people listened to the radio. Even then, don't know what classic hits radio is. Trying to think what local station would play "Africa" ...

Men at Work rule

The common take is that Men At Work benefitted from the Police taking too long in the studio, due to a few superficial similarities, but yeah, that first album at least is pretty strong.

anecdotally, i heard "africa" at the roller rink when i was a kid, but i never gave a shit about it until vice city came out. i'm 41. and i didn't actually ever _play_ vice city.

Case closed. Blame "Vice City."

africa by toto is a meme

i definitely became more "interested" in toto once i learned they were studio whizzes who played on steely dan recs... as a youngster i just grouped them with stuff like air supply, didn't know they were the ones who did that awesome 'love isn't always on time' song

and i definitely grew to enjoy the production of "africa" and the huge, brilliant chorus

See - and I know at least on paper they are of a totally different class - but I always grouped them not with Air Supply and the like, but REO Speedwagon and bands like that.

I think only Jeff Porcaro played with Steely Dan. The rest of them were your otherwise ubiquitous studio hacks who handled everything from yacht rock to top 40. I'll give them this, though, "Human Nature" is a sophisticated little track.

BTW, I just learned than one of Toto's former and now, again, current singers is the son of John Williams.

If you're looking for an explanation of "Africa"'s surge in appeal among Millennials, don't underestimate the i-VI-III-VII progression of the chorus. For better and for worse, hat progression and its inverse (I-V-vi-III, which "Don't Stop Believing" is built around) have become to 00's pop what the 12-bar blues and the doo-wop progression were to the 1950s and 60s. Those two progressions were relatively uncommon in the early 80s, but you started to hear them a lot more when alt-rock and pop-punk went major in the 90s. Since the heyday of Blink-182 they've been fucking inescapable. But they're a pop lingua franca, so older songs that use them probably slot a lot more comfortably into contemporary medleys and playlists.

Inspired by UMS's praise, we watched the Colin Hay documentary this evening -- and it is indeed very good. Highly recommended to all.

All classic songs are cathartic and capture a sensation or feeling or moment in time or what have you... I don't know what this song captures... the lyrics are fucking dumb and obviously written by someone who doesn't know much about Africa so I'm inclined to think this song is not about africa but about the idea of it... this song is about wanderlust isnt it?

It's the catchy musical elements of the track that make this song great - the opening keyboard hook which repeats in the verses, the beauty of the vocal melody in the verses followed by the passion and longing of the vocal melody in the chorus (especially when married to that chord progression) and it's all impeccably played and performed.

Sometimes it's less what a track spells out, and more what a track suggests that is the appeal.

My theory is that it's a good song and ppl like it

― Universal LULU Nation (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, September 19, 2017 5:24 AM

otm

My re-entry point came with the Late Nite Tuff Guy edit, which re-surfaced last year. I had a few weeks of being obsessed with it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDwI0DTqD_A

never underestimate people's love for "randomness" and absurdity. for me there's a sort of tension between the lyrics and the music that elevates the song, even beyond the sort of nameless melancholy evoked by both the music and the lyrics. the impressive feat of "africa" is that it manages to get lyrics so poor to sound so good. indeed the lyrics almost function like dissonance does, something to be resolved by the music. that tension is what makes it relistenable without launching a massive "enough of this shit already" backlash.

See, I can't get past the lyrics. I have no real problem with the music (save the synth-sax solo), but the lyrics to me just suck.

Rushomancy otmfm

I will concede a glass-half-empty stance, but if the lyrics weren't so clunky and dumb this song could have been great. Or, yeah, "In Your Eyes" 1.0.

I really appreciate the aforementioned deep dive into the chord progression, I think there is really something to that.

Can I quibble, though? Pretty sure "Don't Stop Believin'" is I-V-vi-IV (not I-V-vi-III as thewufs wrote).

don't underestimate the i-VI-III-VII progression of the chorus. For better and for worse, hat progression and its inverse (I-V-vi-III, which "Don't Stop Believing" is built around)

It's I-V-vi-IV that is "Let it Be" and "No Woman No Cry" and "Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" and on and on. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%E2%80%93V%E2%80%93vi%E2%80%93IV_progression

never underestimate people's love for "randomness" and absurdity. for me there's a sort of tension between the lyrics and the music that elevates the song, even beyond the sort of nameless melancholy evoked by both the music and the lyrics. the impressive feat of "africa" is that it manages to get lyrics so poor to sound so good. indeed the lyrics almost function like dissonance does, something to be resolved by the music. that tension is what makes it relistenable without launching a massive "enough of this shit already" backlash.

― bob lefse (rushomancy), Wednesday, September 20, 2017 7:36 AM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah also, after the goofiest of all the song's goofiest lines "As sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti" it hits you with this existential dread:

"I seek to cure what's deep inside/frightened of this thing that I've become"

^^^ yeah that line is kinda BOC actually

Yeah sorry the last chord on "Don't Stop Believin'" is IV.

The existential dread line is ruined when he explained it:

Paich told SongFacts.com,

That was me using a lot of writer’s license. I remember seeing lots of films of starving and famine when I was a kid in pictures of Africa. Then I’d seen some movies and read a lot of the National Geographics, and always wanted to go to Africa, so I romanticized this story about a social worker that goes over there and falls in love with working with the country and doing good.

But he also falls in love and has to make a choice between helping people for the rest of his life or having a family and doing that kind of thing."

The fourth chord in the progression, I mean.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwNGR792Ifk

good lord

'we wanted flying cars, instead we got pitch-shifted toto'

-- bob marley

Can I quibble, though? Pretty sure "Don't Stop Believin'" is I-V-vi-IV (not I-V-vi-III as thewufs wrote).

The third chord alternates between vi and iii every other line, maybe that's what he meant?

'we wanted flying cars, instead we got pitch-shifted toto'

-- bob marley

― mookieproof, Wednesday, September 20, 2017 5:03 PM (forty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

LOL!

"I seek to cure what's deep inside/frightened of this thing that I've become"

I ruined these lines for myself a while back by singing "I seek to cure what's been pan-fried / frightened of this thing that I bacon". In hindsight it totally makes no sense, but if you wanted to do some targeted marketing of porkstuffs to 20-something necrovores, well you could do worse.

The third chord alternates between vi and iii every other line, maybe that's what he meant?

As I mentioned it was just a mistake, but yeah, I know that. It's a nice little twist, though I'll bet your average shitty bar band doesn't even know it's there, at least not without a fakebook. Still, I never want to hear "Don't Stop Believing" again in my entire life. Despite the horseshit exoticism and godawful lyrics, I won't get sick of "Africa" for a while to come - musically it's just a more interesting song, but also it hasn't even approached "Don't Stop Believing" levels of saturation yet. I swear, around the Boston area that song was already overplayed before the Sopranos finale even came out.