POP-A-LOOZA: THE GREATEST RECORD EVER MADE! Squeeze, "Tempted"

 

Each week, the pop culture website Pop-A-Looza shares some posts from my vast 'n' captivating Boppin' (Like The Hip Folks Do) archives. Continuing to recognize that an infinite of tracks can each be THE greatest record ever made (as long as they take turns), the latest shared post casts the Greatest Record Ever Made! spotlight on "Tempted" by Squeeze.

This chapter is not in the blueprint for my long-threatened book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1). I'm working on yet another slight tweak to that plan, sticking to the 135-track model but swapping out a few of the individual selections. If I like the result, I'll share the new Table Of Contents here in the near future.

Selecting (and changing) songs for a project like this is an interesting process. I don't make any claim to being objective--why in God's name would anyone ever want to be objective about pop music?--but I am pursuing a POV that's a little larger than just songs I like a lot. A number of my all-time favorite tracks will not be in this book at all. Choices are made to serve the book's flow and narrative, so I choose songs I feel like rantin' about this context. Other than one sidebar exception, the book won't include anything I don't like; each song in GREM! is something that obsessed me to some degree at some time, or at least caught my attention in some positive and lasting way. But nor is it representative of my Hot 100.

While I have a different book coming out first, the GREM! project is never far from my mind, and I still hope to see it through. Meanwhile, a Greatest Record Ever Made! celebration of Squeeze takes its own infinite turn as the latest Boppin' Pop-A-Looza.

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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.

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