Let's revisit Teena Marie. It has been about 6 months since this first ran on Daily Boom!
Are you guys all staying dry this weekend? If you're on the east coast like I am then you're probably in the midst of some seriously lousy weather. Hurricane Joaquin is technically missing us but the Nor'Easter ahead of it has caused coastal flooding here that started Thursday afternoon.
Every time the high tide rolls in this resort town ends up under water again. I feel like an official coastal resident now that we have officially ridden out a bad storm and I sound like one when I say that I'm actually sad to see the erosion on our favorite beach and it's only going to get worse here.
Thankfully, the post office has that thing about delivering no matter what the weather and I found this piece of vinyl in my box yesterday.
Yep, Teena Marie's Starchild from 1984. I have been on a real Tee kick lately, thanks to THIS GUY over here & his radio show, The Power Hour. It all started with my accidentally stumbling onto this clip of Jeanette Jurado's cover of "Portuguese Love" which just blew me away,
and then realizing that it was originally Teena Marie's song. It made me go back through Lady Tee's catalog of music and I had forgotten just how much of her stuff I actually love. I remember when Starchild first came out because her song "Lovergirl" was a huge hit. Like, it was played every 3.5 hours on the radio like clockwork and the video was constantly popping up on MTV. Not that I was supposed to know that because at that point in time my mom had banned MTV from our house. I remember sneaking it while upstairs and going to my grandmother's to freely watch videos.
The only problem there was that in 1984 my grandmother didn't have MTV so I was at the mercy of America's Top Ten countdown which had video clips and of course, Friday Night Videos. You remember that right? It came on at midnight and everyone tried to stay awake long enough to watch even if they had MTV, just because.
So anyway, I knew that the video for "Lovergirl" was in heavy MTV rotation but I never caught a glimpse while at home. I had to finally see it late at night while at my grandmother's and I remember it being sandwiched between Madonna and Phil Collins. I was stunned that such a big, soulful voice came out of such a tiny pale chick. I knew Teena was tough though because she ran with Rick James and even though I was only 12-ish I totally understood what being his (sometimes) other half had to entail.
While Starchild made me happy as a kid, as a grown woman I totally appreciate the unbelievable range of talent that Lady Tee had. It's a damn shame she left us so soon.