Salon.com > Lionel Richie http://www.salon.com Sat, 18 May 2013 00:26:47 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 REO Speedwagon will save us http://www.salon.com/2012/08/08/reo_speedwagon_will_save_us/ http://www.salon.com/2012/08/08/reo_speedwagon_will_save_us/#comments Wed, 08 Aug 2012 01:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12974943 About five years ago, I decided that the REO Speedwagon song “I Can’t Fight This Feeling” was the worst song ever written. Children of the '80s love these windy, unwinnable debates, and I was often killing hours and brain cells in a beer-soaked, pop-culture throwdown. Which is more offensive: Starship’s “We Built This City” or Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby”? Whose crimes against humanity are worse: Richard Marx or Billy Ocean?

When I wasn’t arguing about '80s music in a loud bar, I was watching people do so on VH1, whose core programming in 2007 consisted of comedians cracking jokes about Teddy Ruxpin and Milli Vanilli. I couldn’t get enough of it. I’d stagger home on Friday night, flop on the futon at 2 a.m., and pass out watching “I Love the '80s,” which probably should have been called, “I Hate My Life, but I Love the '80s,” or maybe just, “Hold Me, I’m Lonely.”

Anyway, nothing gave me the creepy-crawlies like “I Can’t Fight This Feeling,” with its opening tinkle of piano, shimmery as a glitter rainbow, and its lyrics of sweaty-palmed, middle-school dance vulnerability: I can’t fight this feeling any longer, and yet I’m still afraid to let it flow / What started out as friendship has grown stronger, I only wish I had the strength to let it show.

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