Okay, now I have a serious problem with this week's selection --- what do you mean, where was last week's entry? That's not important right now: we have bigger issues to discuss. Um. The thing is, that although this song is seriously cheesy --- like,
Gorgonzola cheesy! --- it grinds my gears for an entirely different reason. Being a Science Fiction afficionado (yeah, okay: nerd. But as Professor Frink once said, Nerd stands for Not Even Remotely Dorky, so there!) it really bugs me that this song just hopped onto the sci-fi bandwagon that was going strong at the time, with films like Close Encounters and Star Wars, which in itself is not too evil. You expect this kind of thing, people jump on trends to make a quick buck.
I lost my heart to a starship trooper (Sarah Brightman and Hot Gossip) 1978
But what really annoys me is that the writers of this song (whose other major hit was as Typically Tropical three years prior with “Barbados”, another sterotypical(-ly Tropical) song) have and had no idea of the ideas and themes behind science-fiction, or the differences between various films and/or franchises. They cheerfully and with gleeful abandon mix metaphors, as it were, referring to Darth Vader (Star Wars of course) but namechecking Mars, which as every self-respecting nerd --- no, that is
not a contadiction in terms! --- knows, has nothing to do with the movie: it was set, after all, in “a galaxy far, far away”! They then go further, talking about the Federation, which is either Star Trek (good) or Blake's 7 (bad), and compound their crime by mixing in references to Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Flash Gordon, for god's sake! Throw in the theme from 2001: A space odyssey and you have just about written “Sci-fi for dummies”, but without any understanding or care as to what all those little names and places mean in the grand scheme of science-fiction.
It's like the way they intended to "get a slice of the sci-fi action" was to throw as many related words at the song as possible, with complete contempt for and disinterest in how relevant each were to the other, kind of like someone who has no clue about football trying to make out they know all about the Premier League by dropping a few names: Messi? Isn't he with Man United?
Not to mention that it was an ignominous start for a career that would blossom and hit the very highest echelons for Sarah Brightman, later to marry musical composer supremo Andrew Lloyd-Webber and herself sing opera and classical music, star in films and shows, and go on to win hundreds of awards. I guess everyone has to start somewhere, but I wonder if she ever looks back at this single --- which got into the top ten --- and inwardly cringes?
Oh, and the song's crap, too, in case you were wondering.
Well, till next week, live long and, you know...