Whirly whirly whirly whirly girl
One of my guilty pleasures from the 80s was a throwaway pop song called "Whirly Girl" by the band OXO (pronounced Ox-Oh), which peaked on the Billboard charts at #28 around the time of my 18th birthday. It is often ranked among the top #10 worst songs of the 1980s by whoever bothers compiling these sorts of lists, but I refuse to apologize for the silly lyrics or the high school prom band bass line or the senseless "whomp whomp" welcome to the next verse. I especially enjoy the giddy "calliope on crack" synth keyboard settings, but enough background - You have to turn your brain off to enjoy "Whirly Girl", and the less you know about Ish Ledesma (except for the fact that he is Cuban, which may explain the frenetic propulsion driving the beat, whose coda may be a car crashing into a telephone pole, for all I know) or the fact that the bass player's son later filmed a documentary about his step-father, forced to live in their basement after his groupie mom tired of not enjoying the life of perpetual stardom she envisioned when she latched on to OXO at the height of their Solid Gold and American Bandstand appearances, the better. (Another bit of leftover trivia is that the whirling girl muse behind the song was Ish Ledesma's wife, although the woman appearing in the video was supposedly a Solid Gold dancer.)
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think OXO (or the variant "XOXO") is derived from Spanish, but rather serves as ancient code for "hugs and kisses". This was certainly not the response I got in a cowboy bar in Thedford, Nebraska, one summer later, when I discovered and then naturally inserted enough quarters to play the song back to back to back on a jukebox, just for the sheer dada-ness of "Whirly Girl" even being offered as a potential selection on a rural Nebraska jukebox.
The "Whirly Girl" video is dated now, and fairly stupid (not that it broke new ground at the time of its release) so here instead is a link to what appears to be a Filipino social club/flash mob dance version, filmed as if it was bootlegged out of a Chilean torture camp during Pinochet's brutal reign.
This is equally execrable, and you are having a hard time understanding why I loved the song so much at the time, but go to a dog park and watch a puppy work off excess energy for absolutely no reason, turn the speed up to 11 and drop the needle down on the "come on in" welcome wave of "Let me tell you 'bout the girl I know". Life at 18 was full of immensely exciting possibilities.
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| The highlighted "OXO" letters on the album cover also came in green, yellow, and blue. Most of the band members were from Florida, and, although I'm sure there is no connection, "Miami Vice" became popular shortly thereafter. |
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think OXO (or the variant "XOXO") is derived from Spanish, but rather serves as ancient code for "hugs and kisses". This was certainly not the response I got in a cowboy bar in Thedford, Nebraska, one summer later, when I discovered and then naturally inserted enough quarters to play the song back to back to back on a jukebox, just for the sheer dada-ness of "Whirly Girl" even being offered as a potential selection on a rural Nebraska jukebox.
The "Whirly Girl" video is dated now, and fairly stupid (not that it broke new ground at the time of its release) so here instead is a link to what appears to be a Filipino social club/flash mob dance version, filmed as if it was bootlegged out of a Chilean torture camp during Pinochet's brutal reign.
This is equally execrable, and you are having a hard time understanding why I loved the song so much at the time, but go to a dog park and watch a puppy work off excess energy for absolutely no reason, turn the speed up to 11 and drop the needle down on the "come on in" welcome wave of "Let me tell you 'bout the girl I know". Life at 18 was full of immensely exciting possibilities.
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