I'm dating myself, but the easiest way to get me to make a fool of myself is to play Caribbean Queen by Billy Ocean. It's like kryptonite to me. By the time the chorus comes around, I'm no longer acting, I have become an actual fool.
I mean Michael Jackson and Prince especially made major moves that year but Billy Ocean essentially won 1984 with just that song. The rest of the album was a bonus.
I just can't resist the groove, it makes me happy, I want to dance, I want to sing (loudly), and act the fool. They say Dionysus was a Greek god but the scribes out of discretion didn't disclose his infatuation with the siren song of a Caribbean queen.
I'm pretty sure Liberian Girl was MJ's belated response to homie for stealing his thunder, despite what the biographers may say. The gloved one with the golden voice always knew a winner (see lifting the synths from 1999).
Incidentally, many sincere apologies to the women I've stepped to while singing that song or variations of it - I'm an equal opportunity prospective lover, and, as I've said, I'm a fool.
The song is so versatile that, not to disclose too much, I've sang of African queens, Nigerian girls, Ghanaian ladies, various European duchesses and American queens and more, not to mention many a real life Caribbean queen.
Musical flirtation must be an occupational hazard of womanhood and it's all for the good. I've found that on occasion, some do get caught up in the rapture of a song so infectious. And even when deflected, the song breaks it down gently.
Now of course there's a long tradition of such celebratory songs. Frankie Beverly and Maze gave us Southern Girl. Earlier, Lou Perez gave us Caribbean Woman, his charanga ode to that fine Caribbean woman. They know what's up.
But to return to the song, give me the extended version. At the very least, you need the seven minute version, a radio edit wouldn't do with something so exuberant.
Even after the insistent anouncement of the opening bars (you have to signal your intentions in these things), the song takes its time to get the the point and lets the saxophone lay down the law to start things off.
There's something quite unhurried yet insistent about the groove, propelled by the synth basslines. It's a pulsing pace yet it still manages to be langorous, as if to savor the dance. Caribbean Queen is a dancefloor anthem, feelgood in four on the floor rhythms.
Start with the voice. The warmth in Billy Ocean's singing just invites you into the conversation. To my ears, there's a lilting hint of Gregory Isaacs and the velvet touch of Dennis Edwards in the voicing.
The honesty also disarms:
"I was in search of a good time
Just running my game
Love was the furthest,
Furthest from my mind"
The kicker comes from the parentheses in the title: No more love on the run. This is about being captured.
With spare lyrics, the scene sets up the drama of the relationship but he makes you wait by doing two verses and bridges, so building up the tension that the chorus is a release. But, just as soon as we're released, the groove settles back down to enjoy the dance.
The drop in the middle, and the build up, also play their part making you savor each element. The bass gets it due, the drum beats and then the synths do their bit. It's like the Soul Makossa breakdown in Wanna Be Startin' Something. By the time the chorus comes back around you want to start singing it again.
The guitar riffs. the sound effects, Keith Diamond's keyboard, synthesizer and production are inspired and really shine here but it's the saxophone solo by Jeff Smith just puts things over the top.
Infectious thy name is Caribbean Queen.
The initial release in Europe was titled European Queen but didn't get traction. Canny marketing forced a new title and Caribbean Queen struck a nerve. I've also heard an African Queen version.
Surveying the 1984 music scene, most would hand it to Prince, you can hardly argue with When Doves Cry and the Purple Rain album and movie, let alone The Time, Sheila E and Appolonia 6. It was his year in music and pop culture.
But there were others too. I mean Cherrelle (courtesy of Jam and Lewis) dropped I Didn't Mean To Turn You On, Dennis Edwards and Seidah Garret had the almighty duet Don't Look any Further.
The S.O.S. Band's Just the Way You Like It album heated up the dancefloor. And even in the midst of all this, Sade's Diamond Life had been released and Smooth Operators were moving
A digression: Billy Ocean would win the 1985 Grammy award for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance for Caribbean Queen. But the other nominees that year were quite mistaken. Namely, let's be frank, The Woman In Red is hardly prime Stevie Wonder.
And to pick on the thread, the Grammys have never really rewarded the soul music that moved the masses. Unforgiveably, James Brown didn't get anything after Papa's Got a Brand New Bag until Living in America in 1987.
Sexual Healing is an all-time jam but the Academy barely acknowledged Marvin Gaye's transcendent 1970s run of albums that changed music.
Teddy Riley's only Grammy was for engineering Dangerous in 1993. How are such things possible?
Anyway, the point is that Stevie Wonder kept getting sentimental votes in honor of his Seventies's streak.
It was even harder to square Stevie winning the next year 1986 for In Square Circle when Alexander O'Neal wasn't even nominated.
The same thing goes for 1996 when there was Brown Sugar by D'Angelo or say I Hate U by Prince.
For Your Love is a effortless ballad from Stevie but come on, really?
In any case, the fact remains that Caribbean Queen stopped both Prince and Stevie Wonder in the charts that year which is saying something about what it means to black culture.
The song affects me the way its almost contemporaneous Somebody Else's Guy by Joycelyn Brown does - shower song fodder. I Can't Wait by Nu Shooz would disconcert me in a similar manner a couple of years later.
So anyway, catch me singing along with Billy Ocean:
Caribbean Queen (No More Love on the Run). Meet me on the dancefloor.
A few
more songs in the vein of Billy Ocean's opus. (
spotify version)
See previously:
Janet Jackson and the importance of bubblegum and
Baby me by Chaka Khan
This note is part of a series: One Track Mind
File under: music, soul, nostalgia, review, appreciation, culture, virtuosity, youth, dance, voice, groove, observation, perception, One Track Mind, toli
Writing log: April 28, 2024
