Wednesday, July 16, 2014

"Pop Goes the Movies (Part I)" by Meco

Song#:  0918
Date:  02/13/1982
Debut:  77
Peak:  35
Weeks:  11
Genre:  Pop, Dance



Pop Bits:  Meco jumped on board the snippet train (ala "Stars on 45") the previous year with the Beach Boys-themed single "Summer '81 Medley," credited to The Cantina Band (#81). After dabbling with a couple more movie-oriented LPs that featured his takes on scores/songs from "Star Trek," "The Black Hole," and "An American Werewolf in London," Meco decided to just jumble a bunch of movie themes into a mega medley and issued the album "Pop Goes the Movies." Sections of the medley were extracted from the LP and stitched together for this single edit that got Meco back into the Top 40 one last time.

ReduxReview:  The medley fad was still somehow going around this time with a few other singles like this one yet to chart. I think we were quite lucky in the US that the fad faded fairly quick. In the UK and Europe, it continued on and there were medleys of disco tunes, Bee Gees, Harry Belafonte, Rod Stewart, etc. Ugh. In general, this one is not too awful but stretching the tempo of classic themes like "The Magnificent Seven" to fit the beat is quite irritating to anyone who loves these compositions. It's somewhat listenable, but highly unnecessary.

ReduxRating:  4/10

Trivia:  Soon after this venture, Meco branched out into swing music for his next album. "Swingtime's Greatest Hits" came out in 1982 with the edited single "Big Band Medley" issue. Unfortunately, he was beaten to the punch by a short couple weeks by Larry Elgart whose "Hooked on Swing" medley got to the chart first and reached #31. Meco's single then failed to chart.

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