Reaching For The Stars, Vol. 129

Chart Week: September 4, 1982 Song: “Valley Girl” - Frank Zappa Chart Position: #34, 8th week on the chart. Peaked at #32 for two weeks.

Frank Zappa was not a pop artist. Nothing about his music was aimed at earning airplay on mainstream pop stations. If you heard his songs on the radio, it was almost certainly after midnight on shows like Dr. Demento. Over his long, prolific career, he released 40 official singles. Only three of those cracked the Hot 100.

That’s not a surprise given that his music was generally experimental, often intentionally abrasive, and designed to subvert AT40-style pop both in structure and content. He tapped into a variety of genres, often mashing disparate styles into something new that made sense solely (at first) to his ears.

When he finally earned the only Top 40 hit of his career, it came about as often happens with artists who operate on their own wavelengths: because the public completely misunderstood the message in the song.

People my age mostly knew of Zappa because of two of his children, Dweezil and Moon Unit. Both appeared on MTV as guest VJs later in the Eighties. I don’t recall if they were particularly charismatic or better than the regular VJs. However, the first time you heard their names you could NOT forget them.

We first met Moon a few years before her MTV hosting days when she provided the vocals on “Valley Girl.”

Frank spent most of his waking hours secluded in his Southern California home studio. His family was under strict orders to not interrupt him unless it was an emergency. In 1980, 13-year-old Moon slipped a note under the door to his studio saying how she would like to sing on one of his songs.

At first he ignored her request. But nearly two years later, as he was completing his Ship Arriving Too Late To Save A Drowning Witch album, he had a moment of inspiration that required Moon’s input. He recalled her coming home from social outings and making fun of the unique patois some kids her age were using. To Frank, this was a perfect opportunity to mock the spoiled rich kids of the San Fernando Valley whose vapid lives were best demonstrated by the infuriating way they spoke.

He asked Moon to recite some of the phrases she had collected. “Grody.” “Gag me with a spoon.” “Bitchin’.” The extreme overuse of the word “like,” which has plagued teenagers ever since. Together they crafted a song about these kids, Moon providing the lead vocals. It was a pretty basic track, far more conventional than most of Frank’s music. He saw it as the perfect vessel for pop radio, a chance to lure people in and force them to hear a wicked piece of social commentary.

After recording the track, Frank gave an acetate copy to Moon, who passed it on to her favorite DJ at Pasadena’s KROQ radio. The song quickly became popular there. As that single gifted to KROQ was the only one in the wild, other Southern California stations bootlegged it off their signal and added it to their own playlists. Once CBS released it as an official single it spread across the country, cracking the Top 40 for three weeks.

However, most listeners were not taking it for the piece of criticism Frank intended it to be. Rather, they saw it as just another silly, novelty song that filled space between the latest New Wave hits. The average listener might have laughed or rolled their eyes, but few picked up on the deeper message, which pissed Frank off.

“People think ‘Valley Girl’ is a happy kind of song, but it isn’t. I’ve always hated the Valley. It’s a most depressing place…It just goes to show that the American public loves to celebrate the infantile.”

Celebrate the infantile! Wonderful!

Soon Valley Girls, once an esoteric, Southern California subculture, were everywhere. That fall the TV show Square Pegs debuted, with the “cool” character clearly a Val. The next spring came a movie called Valley Girl, featuring Nicolas Cage in his first starring role.1 One of my friends made, for her project in computer lab, a program that translated Valley Girl speak to standard English.2 Older relatives teased me about Pittman Hills Middle School being overrun by Vals.

A funny song, for sure. Or, rather, fer sure, fer sure. As with most novelty songs, though, it grates pretty quickly. It didn’t help that the whole Valley Girl thing was super annoying when it was happening and I’ve never built up any nostalgic pining for it. As much as Frank wanted people to view it as a satirical critique of modern times, I’m not convinced it works that way. Or, rather, if you had no idea who Frank Zappa was, or what he was about, it would not strike you as that different than “Pac-Man Fever”: an older dude trying to capitalize on a teenage fad. Now that I understand Frank’s intent, I can better tune into the sarcasm. But I also view Frank as someone who was very smart, bordering on brilliant, who made incisive critiques based on the paradoxes of modern society. “Valley Girl” doesn’t seem especially astute, and in fact is not far removed from how I and millions of other 11-year-old dumbasses were making fun of girls who talked this way. Shouldn’t a 42-year-old come up with something better than the idiots at the bus stop?

Frank was a legend, but this is, like totally, a 6/10.

Two other notes from this show that blew my mind.

The team that produces these re-broadcasts of AT40 inserts extra songs into the programs, which local stations have the choice of playing or skipping.3 Often they are songs that would become hits but just entered the Hot 100 that week. For example, later in this show they played “Athena,” the final Top 40 hit of The Who’s career, which was new to the chart at #77. Other times the song is to honor a legendary artist who just passed.

Last weekend I was shocked to hear them play Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You.” I downloaded this recording two years ago; it wasn’t the latest over-the-air production released with a last-minute homage to Dolly. The explanation for its inclusion was that Dolly’s movie The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas had just been released, and “IWALY” appeared on the soundtrack. I guess that was reason enough?

This was also one of the shows that was ripped directly from a radio broadcast. So I scanned for the next top-of-the-hour news break, searched the stories in the headlines, and found this re-broadcast was from 2022.

So a show that was aired four years old, that I downloaded two years ago, correctly lined up with Dolly’s death.

Freaky!

Then last Monday evening when I turned on the US Open for the first time, I learned that ESPN, always with its finger on the pulse, selected Billy Idol’s “Hot In The City” as this year’s theme.4 Teenagers all across the land rejoice that their music is being recognized!

Guess what song was at #26 on this countdown?

What the heck is going on here?!?!?

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  1. Co-starring Deborah Foreman, teen crush to millions. ↩︎

  2. Brilliant! I probably changed my mind on what I wanted to write 20 times before half-assing something at the last minute that earned me a B+. ↩︎

  3. Many of my downloads are from a Canadian station that skips the extras and, instead, plays a random song by a Canadian artist from the Eighties in those spots. Makes me laugh every time as there are not a ton of acts to choose from. ↩︎

  4. Several other Idol songs are also used, and Idol and long-time guitarist Steve Stevens appear in some of the opening and bumper packages. Very briefly, I should note. Those dudes, even with tons of surgeries and augmentations, do not look great. ↩︎