Friday, January 27, 2006

"Money (That's What I Want)"

Originally a Motown song (co-written by label founder Berry Gordon), it was later elevated to new heights by the scorching Beatles version. Confident, sexy, and trashy-sounding, it's fantastic. To my ears though, the best version is by The Flying Lizards. Their take exhibits the same characteristics, but in a completely different way. The instrumentation is primitive, robotic, and groovy in that Kraftwerkian German way. And then there's the vocals. Backed by muffled, strained invocations of "That's, what I want," singer Deborah Lizard exudes contempt and self-assurance when she declares, "I want money." She will totally step on your face with her stilleto heel and you will pay her to do it. I mean, if you're into that sort of thing.

I was just pointed to a live performance The Flying Lizards did for the BBC back in the '80s. Like many other "live" BBC performances, they're just miming the song, but the totally fake way they go about it made me laugh. Watch especially for the guy on the left who ends up reading the repetitive "that's what I want" lyric off successive sheets of paper.

(for those reading this through an RSS feed aggregator, there's a video to click on here, just go to my actual blog site and you'll see it)

Also? is really, really cool.


This post dedicated to Carole, the only person I know who loves this song as much as me.
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7 comments:

  1. Anonymous2:30 PM, January 30, 2006

    Oh my god, that was AWESOME! Now whenever I hear the song I will picture Deborah's face and that will make listening to it even better.

    Also, I like the rubber hand/toy guitar solo freakout portion. Priceless

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous2:31 PM, January 30, 2006

    Oops -- that last comment was from me.

    - Carole Lizard

    ReplyDelete
  3. St. Murse9:39 PM, January 30, 2006

    Yay! I knew you'd love it.

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  4. Anonymous8:48 PM, March 06, 2006

    Wow that was awesome, i was watching the wedding singer and the song came on, that exact version,i wanted to hear the whole thing but it got cut off. Thanks for not only having the song but also having a video!! It was priceless!! especially the solo toy guitar freaking out part!!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous8:49 PM, March 06, 2006

    sorry forgot to leave my name
    -shetina-

    ReplyDelete
  6. St. Murse9:47 PM, March 06, 2006

    Glad you enjoyed it, as for the video, all praise goes to whoever posted to YouTube.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Anonymous7:29 AM, June 17, 2006

    This song rules!

    ReplyDelete

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