Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Charlie Sexton: Beat's So Lonely

I was cruising YouTube a few months ago looking to see how dated the videos for popular songs from the mid-to-late 1980's look today. A lot of them have not held up well. This one, however, has. It's a non-embeddable video (come on, Universal Music Group, get with the program!), so right-click to open in a new tab or window. Charlie Sexton's "Beat's So Lonely":


Charlie Sexton could have been a one-hit wonder, a wunderkind* who had a huge hit song at age seventeen and then faded into obscurity. But he has stayed very active in the industry in the twenty-four years (nearly A QUARTER OF A CENTURY HOLY CRAP) that have passed since this song came out.


*When this song came out I remember thinking that this guy looked both like an anorexic Frankenstein and a little kid. In reality he is less than eight months younger than me. I guess I was a little kid back then, too.
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6 comments:

  1. whimsical brainpan1/13/2009 2:18 PM

    Funny, I don't think I've ever heard this song before.

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  2. Anonymous1/14/2009 8:36 AM

    I think to be a one-hit wonder you actually have to have a hit. I never heard of this song before either.

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  3. hedera1/15/2009 7:23 PM

    I haven't heard it either, but then, by the '80s I'd essentially quit listening to pop music. I liked the video, though - very industrial chic, and the band had great cheekbones. When we watched The Third Man, we watched the director's comments too, where he quoted Orson Welles: "Black and white is the actor's friend."

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  4. ...tom...1/15/2009 9:17 PM

    ...

    That universalmusicgroup 'user' on youtubes is a great source for a wide variety of music.

    Like the others I too had never heard this one before.

    Very good though.


    ...tom...

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  5. D.B. Echo1/15/2009 10:05 PM

    Perhaps my taste in music in the mid-80's was either too obscure, or too mainstream.

    According to Wikipedia, this song made it to #17 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1984. I remember it getting extensive radio and video airplay in the mid-to-late eighties, and I remember hearing "some chicks we found hanging out with Charlie Sexton" referenced in a comedian's routine.

    Maybe I just paid more attention to it because this was a guy about the same age as me - much like pioneering teacher Pamela Smart and former child actress Traci Lords.

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  6. arboretum11/18/2012 3:06 PM

    @ D.B.Echo: No, your musical taste wasn't obscure, I also bought the record. Still have it - and some of the other albums Charlie Sexton recorded over the years. Great artist. Unfortunately, I've haven't seen him live yet (just can't bring myself to buy a ticket for a Bob Dylan concert, too expensive - and I can't stand Dylan's voice).

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