Who Did It Better? Vol. 1: "Lady"
This will be the first post in a series of ten. The idea for this series came to me one day as I was listening to the radio. Yes, I am a holdout terrestrial radio listener, which sometimes means that I hear the same 250 songs over and over again, but also sometimes means that weird little coincidences happen. In this case, on the local "generic adult contemporary" station (you know, the one that is on in a vast multitude of gas stations and waiting rooms of businesses too smart and/or cheap to invest in a Muzak subscription), The Commodores' "Lady" was just winding down. As they went to commercial, I flipped to the classic rock station...which was in the middle of "Lady" by Styx. Two completely different songs, with the same title. It rapidly occurred to me that there were other artists who had "Lady" songs, and so a short time later, I went back and game some of them a listen, to decide: who did it better?
The contenders:
"Lady," Styx: https://www.youtube.com/watch?
"Lady," Little River Band: https://www.youtube.com/watch?
"Lady," Commodores: https://www.youtube.com/watch?
The comparison does not include songs with mildly longer titles like "Lady in Red," "Lay Lady Lay," "Lady Is a Tramp," or the Beastie Boys' "Hey
Ladies."
You'll notice that these songs were all released from roughly 1973-1980. Ladies were big in the 70s.
To me, while these songs all range from "decent" to "great" from a pop music perspective, there is a clear winner.
It's The Commodores. Lionel Ritchie is a fantastic singer, you have that classic late-70s/early 80s Motown production, it's eminently
re-listenable. You cold play that song at any wedding today and get people grooving. It's so good that I allowed it even
though it has a parenthetical in the title, which is formally "Lady (You Bring Me Up)".
The worst of the bunch is Styx. All of Styx's dramatic ballad songs were written by lead singer Dennis DeYoung (while their rockin' songs were mostly written by guitarist Tommy Shaw; just by saying that, I already feel like I know way too much about Styx), and "Lady" is pretty formulaic even for DeYoung. It sounds, in fact, like a solo piece from a "rock musical," of which he has written a couple. It's not as much pure treacly crap as "Babe," which is
pretty awful.
Kenny Rogers has two kinds of songs, and "Lady" is maybe the archetype of the Kenny Rogers Pantydropper. Just look at that video of the live performance. There are 15,000 women in that place who would fight each other to do Kenny Rogers while he's singing that song. Those that are still alive would get out of their wheelchairs TODAY to fight to do Kenny Rogers. Sure, your "rock bands" in the late 70s were plowing through underage groupies like nobody's business, but Kenny Rogers had the MILF market nailed down, and was up to his eyebrows in unshaven snatch. You know this is true. Kenny gets a huge assist here from Lionel Ritchie, who actually wrote this song.
Despite The Commodores having the "best" song of the bunch, my personal favorite of the bunch is The Little River Band, who I think are vastly unappreciated. Now I will grant that the song is very AM Radio Gold, or Yacht Rock, or whatever they're calling it now. But the Little River Band are definitely on the Mount Rushmore of Australian pop/rock bands (AC/DC are clearly George Washington, you can fight if you want about who gets to be the Teddy Roosevelt between LRB, INXS and The Bee Gees).
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