Ed. Note: Welcome to Sound City week here at Music of Matthew dot com! This week we’ll be covering some notable albums recorded at the legendary Sound City studio in Los Angeles, which was covered in great detail in Dave Grohl’s excellent 2013 documentary “Sound City”.
Rick Springfield has been somewhat of a punch-line for cheap 80’s rock in the decades since he rose too fame, but Working Class Dog is a tour-de-force of what made power pop a massive cultural success in the early 80’s. You have the big power chords, fist-pumping choruses, and massive guitar hooks all in dutiful attendance, but the true defining sound of Springfield and power pop in general is the vocal harmonies. They’re immediately recognizable as soon as you hear them– layered with 3+ voices, tighly interwound, with a depth to them that drives the whole section forward. It’s an iconic part of 80’s music that can’t help but bring a smile to my face.
Working Class Dog features Springfield’s #1 smash hit “Jessie’s Girl” that is still a fixture at weddings and parties to this day, as well as the excellent “Love Is Alright Tonite” which stands as one of the defining examples of 80’s power pop. But Springfield equally shines on the ethereal album closer “Inside Silvia”, a deep cut that delights in its reverb and delay-heavy vocal perfomance laid on top of a synth-driven R&B chord progression that floats in space for five full minutes. It’s the early sounds of what digital vocal processing would eventually become in later years, and immediately brings to mind Imogen Heap’s “Hide and Seek”.
Standout Songs: “Love Is Alright Tonite”, “Jessie’s Girl”, “Inside Silvia”
