Reply To: Artificial Heart discussion
Never heard of Rick Springfield?! Geez, even I’d heard of him. Of course, I’d only heard of him because JoCo covered one of his songs, and since I was only subscribed to the podcast, I didn’t realise that was a cover until a while later, but still. 😀
JoCo did say when he played the song at PAX that he doesn’t know whether the protagonist really is Rick Springfield, or is just some guy pretending to be Rick Springfield in order to pick up French chicks. It has a chance of working precisely because the French chicks probably don’t know what Rick Springfield looks like. Or it could be the real Rick Springfield, who was at first happy to get some peace and quiet in France, but is now a little annoyed that nobody knows who he is, and he’s having a little self-esteem problem because back home everyone idolised him, and all of a sudden he’s just some sad guy in a bar who the girls won’t even talk to, so he’s trying to convince them that in the US, he’s actually a superstar. (BTW, have you heard the way francophones pronounce ‘superstar’? It’s nothing like how JoCo does it.)
Of his two French songs, I have to say I prefer Re : Vos cerveaux, and I greatly admire J’eauQu’eau for singing that all the way through that on stage despite not really knowing it very well and not having the ‘I’m Rick Springfield, I’m not supposed to be good at French’ premise to fall back on (I probably know more French than he does but I don’t have a lot of confidence speaking it in front of people, let alone singing.) I still find Je suis Rick Springfield amusing and catchy, and I am happy that he dared to write a song in a foreign language. Though of course a lot of songwriters, especially those who are not native English speakers (to pick an example at random: @dantes) do that.