Rate Your Music Score: 2.97 out of 5!
By the end of the 1980s, pop radio was grasping at youth but had so little knowledge of what was hip that it buried itself in a cloud of sawdust.
There were a lot of young acts then whose fan base was generally much younger than the performers themselves. Debbie Gibson was only 19 in 1989, but by then, I considered myself too grownup to regularly listen to acts like Debbie. When "No More Rhyme" was on the chart, I was more interested in then-current hits by John Mellencamp, Tom Petty, Elvis Costello, Living Colour, Donna Summer, the Bee Gees, and the Bangles.
The real problems for me though came in 1990. I spent the summer being subjected to an organization that called me a liar right to my face because I dared to report the things that had taken place at my high school. There were witnesses, by the way, so anyone who says it didn't happen can shut their noisemaker now. I never went to any of my school dances, because I just wasn't interested, but this organization did have maybe 2 or 3 dances that I was at. But none of them was really much of a dance.
Remember the video of the prom in the early 2020s where kids were ridiculing the social distancing fad by dancing with their backs to each other? Well, the dances I went to were just as laughable. I don't think this organization even knew what a dance was.
A few months before, my high school had a dance that became the butt of jokes because the DJ only played old standards from the big band era instead of modern music. But one of the dances I attended at the organization that I was subjected to during the summer had the opposite problem. This kooky cult considered most current popular music too subversive and immoral for 17-year-olds. So the only pop music it allowed was acts like New Kids On The Block and Debbie Gibson that had a much younger fan base. These performers were considered innocent and safe to listen to.
A woman who worked there and was in charge of gym activities served as the DJ for this dance. All the music she played was too immature for older teenagers. So everyone just ignored the music. Instead, people just sulked and stewed about how lifeless this so-called dance was, and how we were being treated like kindergartners.
When we got near the end of the dance, the woman made a big issue of how there was only one song left. It was going to be a "special" tune. Nobody was paying attention though. But guess what song it was?
Yep. "No More Rhyme."
The woman made such a big deal out of playing the final song for the evening, only for it to be "No More Rhyme"! By that time though, nobody had high hopes for anything more mature.
At least I was around peers who knew how to act right - unlike at my old high school.
