I blame my mother for the sickening breadth of knowledge I possess when it comes to Easy Listening Artists. In the first grade my teacher, Miss Carlin, asked us all to name our favorite songs. At six and seven we had begun to recognize the concept of "cool" and knew that Raffi did not fall under that heading.
My classmates claimed Michael Jackson's "Bad" and "Thriller" as their favorite tunes. One particularly precocious girl named Becky proclaimed that she adored Madonna's "Papa Don't Preach." I declared my passion for Julio Iglesias' version of "To All the Girls I've Loved Before." Even Miss Carlin seemed surprised at my choice. I suppose I can't blame her -- it's not often that a little girl in pigtails claims the Latin god of middle-aged divorcees "my most favoritest singer ever."
When my classmates ridiculed me for liking a man they'd never heard of before, it suddenly dawned on me that Julio, much like Raffi, was most decidedly uncool.
Sadly, I had similar experiences over the next few years with my affinity for Barry Manilow and Tom Jones. By the time I was nine I knew that any music my mother played in the car was categorized as noise pollution by 95 percent of the population, and that I should never ever, under any circumstances, admit to knowing the words to "What's New Pussycat." In order not to be ostracized by my peers I never could acknowledge that I knew who Engelbert Humperdink was.
Denying my musical heritage worked for a while. Feigning ignorance when it came to identifying elevator music freed me from the humiliation that resulted from my working knowledge of contemporary adult artists. I trained myself to reject the vocal stylings of Neil Diamond and Barry Manilow, until their dulcet tones really did cause me physical pain. I so was convinced that their brand of noise was an affront to true musicians everywhere that I openly castigated my mother for her taste. She got so fed up with my hostility toward the mellow masters that when I was 16 she exacted her revenge.
Easter morning my sister and I went to look at our baskets, and we each found a CD. My sister, three years my junior, got Bush (who were huge at the time), and I got "Neil Diamond -- Classics the Early Years." Genuinely outraged I railed about the innate crappiness of Neil Diamond. My parents innocently maintained that they thought I liked Mr. Diamond. Mother swore she's heard me sing "Sweet Caroline" before. Glaring, I informed her I wouldn't be caught dead singing a song by Neil Diamond. The album was relegated to the back of my CD collection, and I almost forgot that I owned Neil. That is until one day when the same curiosity that makes you rubberneck at accident sites caused me to put the CD in my stereo and explore the world of Neil Diamond. It was surprisingly satisfying. Two years later I owned three of Neil's albums. I was a closet fan.
I was outed when I got to college and my roommate went through my music collection. "What is this?" she asked me with a look of obvious disapproval.
Horrified, I realized she had stumbled upon my vice.
"Oh, those are just some old CDs of my mother's," I lied.
"Oh," she replied, and we observed a moment of silence before she continued, "My mother's a big fan too. Do you have that song about jeans?"
"If you mean 'Forever in Bluejeans,' it's on there," I told her.
"Do you want to listen to it?" her voice dropped to almost a whisper.
"If you do," I replied.
She nodded and we played Neil, very quietly, enjoying the guilty pleasure for half an hour. Eventually, we got bold enough to declare that "Desiree" was indeed a very cool song. Of course, we didn't tell anyone else we listened to Neil.
The implications were too much for us to bear. For whatever reason, crooners like Neil and Barry have been much maligned by just about everyone. They've been labeled as irredeemably hokey and horrible, and no one under 40 would dare admit to listening to their music. Not too many in the over-40 crowd would either. While they're fairly universally ridiculed, at the same time they make new records, sell out concerts and their songs are as recognizably a part of the popular culture as Elvis and Michael Jackson.
Huge portions of the population are fond of Neil and Barry. I know of several groups of ladies who've gotten together and rented a limousine to go on the town and on to one of Neil's shows. They can't get enough of the man who declared "Girl You'll Be a Woman Soon." Julio Iglesias' ardent admirers clean his star on the walk of fame daily with a toothbrush. They consider it an honor to maintain a little piece of immortality for the man who would be lost without a blowdryer.
Barry Manilow, arguably the most abused figure in music, has an incredible following. He tours constantly, spending a lot of time in England, where the women folk are rabid for the man. His New Year's Eve concert at Foxwood Casino in Connecticut sold out quickly, and he added another show due to popular demand. Last week he had a skating special dedicated to him. He crooned Sinatra standards as skating superstars like Kristi Yamaguchi glided around the rink. Next month he'll be appearing on virtually every talk show promoting his upcoming album. Obviously the man's career is not in too big of a decline.
Confessing to a love or even just simple tolerance of soft rock is tantamount to admitting an addiction to cocaine in our society.
Neil and Barry are among those things that everyone does but nobody talks about. These artists seem destined to be degraded by a hypocritical public. While I'm sure that the feelings of Barry and his cohorts are hurt by the public skewering the fruits of their careers have received, I know they take comfort in the fact that they still take in millions of dollars a year.
In Barry's case I'm sure he's also bolstered by the fact that just about everyone knows all the words to his "Copa Cabana."
Everybody together now, "Her name was Lola, she was a showgirl.."
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