I Blame the Goatherd
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Well, it's official. I've gone 'round the bend. Try as I might, I've been unable to escape the insane siren call of No Doubt singer Gwen Stefani's "Wind It Up" (from her second solo album), and now, after weeks of hearing it, I am in its evil thrall. It might have been a crass, arrogant attempt to duplicate the oddball success of her single "Hollaback Girl," which stood out with its half-ghetto cheerleader chant/half-nursery rhyme set to a martial techno-beat. But, if anything, "Wind It Up" is more over the top than its predecessor, and probably one of the most bizarre pastiches in the history of pop music.For anyone who doesn't already know, "Wind It Up" starts with Gwen yodeling a quote from "The Lonely Goatherd" (right - plucked out of "The Sound of Music"), and kicks into an insistent college marching band drumline under a self-referential, boy-baiting rap from Gwen as 808 State-style synthesized bass notes plunge in and out. A sample of "The Lonely Goatherd" shifts keys, Gwen yodels some more, and I sit there in stunned wonder.Speaking of stunned wonder, I saw her and her troupe - including her four pop-and-locking female dancers (the Harajuku Girls) dressed as Japanese schoolgirls in white-blonde wigs, four male dancers flipping the "schoolgirls" like gymnasts, and a crew of live percussionists - do the song on "Saturday Night Live" and "The Late Show with David Letterman" in the past few days.Still, the best view of "Wind It Up" is the official video, complete with cracked "Sound of Music" and Trapp Family references (Gwen in a nun's habit on a soundstage mountaintop, Gwen in a quasi-dirndl, Gwen strumming a fake guitar and then sitting on a gigantic bed like Julie Andrews' Maria to impart wisdom, "Do-Re-Mi"-style, to her schoolgirls and schoolboys) - not to mention Gwen done up as what appears to be a Hollywood trophy wife. Mind-boggling.Watch it at your own risk.
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