THE GREATEST RECORD EVER MADE: Tempted

This is not scheduled for inclusion in my long-threatened book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1). Consider it a bonus track!

An infinite number of tracks can each be THE greatest record ever made, as long as they take turns. Today, this is THE GREATEST RECORD EVER MADE!

SQUEEZE: Tempted

Written by Glenn Tilbrook and Chris Difford

Produced by Roger Bechirian and Elvis Cpstello

Single from the album East Side Story, A & M Records, 1981

I may as well make this confession straight up: I did not care for "Tempted" at all when I first heard it. I saw the video a couple of times on MTV, didn't even realize it was Squeeze, and dismissed it as the sort of dull and dreary wallpaper pop I associated with acts like Daryl Hall and John Oates. I did not like Daryl Hall and John Oates, and my only pleasant association with any of their music was the memory of seeing my first stripper several years before that, disrobing to the tune of "Rich Girl."

It's difficult to reconstruct my own Squeeze timeline. It's likely that "Cool For Cats" was the only Squeeze song I heard while I was still in college, and that wasn't sufficient to interest me in the group. A little bit later, I simply adored Squeeze's "Pulling Mussels (From The Shell)," and loved seeing Squeeze play that and "Annie Get Your Gun" in what was supposed to be their farewell performance on Saturday Night Live in 1982. I came to retroactively recognize the pop brilliance of Squeeze as the '80s trudged on. "Tempted" was part of that brilliance, even if I was slow to comprehend that truth. I can't explain why I was initially so dismissive of such an engaging temptation.

Singer and keyboardist Paul Carrack was only a member of Squeeze for a very brief time, replacing original member Jools Holland in 1981 and squeezing himself out in '82. He happened to be the lead singer on "Tempted," Squeeze's biggest number in the States, leading casual observers to think of Carrack's role in Squeeze as a much larger part than it really was. In reality, it's no slight to Carrack (nor to Holland, nor to any other member of that band) that Glenn Tilbrook and Chris Difford were and are the defining principal players in Squeeze. Whomever Glenn and Chris play with, the result is considered Squeeze by default.

In 2020, Squeeze planned to tour as an opening act for Daryl Hall and John Oates. The personal symmetry of that happenstance borders on the WTF. I did eventually develop a tolerance for Hall and Oates, but I doubt I'll ever be a fan, and the tour therefore wasn't for me (even if the quarantine scene hadn't sent 2020 itself to the cornfield instead). If it had happened, I doubt I would have gone even just to see Squeeze.

No, not even if there were strippers. But Squeeze? I admit: I was tempted. 

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This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl airs Sunday nights from 9 to Midnight Eastern, on the air in Syracuse at SPARK! WSPJ 103.3 and 93.7 FM, and on the web at http://sparksyracuse.org/ You can read about our history here.