Author: zachary.hoskins@gmail.com
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Jheri Curl June: Scritti Politti’s “Boom! There She Was”
The last post of Jheri Curl June is always a bittersweet one to write. On the one hand, there’s the satisfaction of knowing we have another solid month’s worth of writing about classic 1980s R&B under our belts; but on the other, there’s the sense of emptiness that comes when we realize we have to…
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Jheri Curl June: Dan Hartman’s “We Are the Young”
Few artists exemplify the ability of jheri curl music to cross racial boundaries like Dan Hartman. This is a man who started his career as a sideman for the literal whitest musician of all time, Edgar Winter, and went on to co-write and produce for one of the Blackest, James Brown. So it should come as…
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Jheri Curl June: Madonna’s “Lucky Star”
Look, I know we called this final week of Jh3ri Curl Jun3 White Boys’ Week, but I think we would be remiss to talk about jheri curl music’s appropriators without a shoutout to the anointed queen of all swagger-jackers: Madonna. Almost a decade before she brought a sanitized version of Harlem drag ball culture to Middle America…
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Jheri Curl June: Daryl Hall & John Oates’ “I Can’t Go for That (No Can Do)”
What better way to start White Boy Week here on Jheri Curl June than with the smoothest, most soulful white boy duo, Daryl Hall and John Oates? Hall and Oates began writing and recording music together in 1970, and scored their first number one hit in 1977 with “Rich Girl.” It wasn’t until the 1980s, however, that the…
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Jheri Curl June: Loose Ends’ “Watching You”
As we’ve mentioned in past Jheri Curl Junes, by the end of the 1980s jheri curl music had been overshadowed by fresher genres like hip-hop and New Jack Swing. Loose Ends’ 1988 hit “Watching You” is a perfect example: it’s still very much a Jheri Curl song, but the beat knocks harder and the production is less slick,…
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Jheri Curl June: The B.B. & Q. Band’s “(I’m a) Dreamer”
Probably the best thing about having a girlfriend whose mother is Black and lived through the 1980s is that I’m never short on jheri curl music recommendations. Just last week, in fact, Kia (via her mom) hipped me to a track I’d never heard before: the très-jheri 1986 single “(I’m a) Dreamer” by Italo-post-disco act the B.B.…
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Jheri Curl June: Yarbrough & Peoples’ “Guilty”
In many ways, Yarbrough & Peoples offer a much more pleasant male-female music partnership dynamic than earlier Jheri Curl June inductees René & Angela. Calvin Leon Yarbrough and Alisa Delois Peoples were childhood friends who eventually became a musical duo. After being discovered by the Gap Band and Lonnie Simmons, they recorded their best-known hit, “Don’t Stop the Music,” in 1980. They…
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Dystopian Listening Party Podcast, Jheri Curl June Edition: Jamie Starr’s a Thief
Well, folks, it’s our first-ever Jheri Curl June podcast–and before you ask, yes, we’re talking about Prince again. This time, though, we’re shedding light on a somewhat less-discussed side of his career: the series of (very) thinly-veiled side projects and ghost productions he released in the early-to-mid-1980s under various pseudonyms, most famously “Jamie Starr.” If you’re…
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Jheri Curl June: Wendy & Lisa’s “Satisfaction”
In our upcoming podcast (posting Monday!) on the musical side projects of Prince, we discuss the weird kind of Stockholm Syndrome that seems to have gripped everyone who collaborated with the little guy. André Cymone, Morris Day, Vanity: all fought tooth and nail to get out from under Prince’s lacy-gloved iron fist; then, when they were finally free,…