My parents embarrass me in several ways.  Particularly my father.

My dad has made me ashamed to be his son on several topics involving the seventies.  He loves Colombo.  He loves “Brandy (You’re A Fine Girl)” (yes, that song sucks, don’t @ me).  He loves Barry Manilow.  And most of all, he loves “Thunder Island” by Jay Ferguson.

“Thunder Island” is, simply put, the cheesiest song the seventies ever cranked out.  It was like Ferguson took every single element of cheesy songs and put it into his only hit.  The wordless “Do-do-do-doot” chorus.  The ridiculously cheesy love story.  The generic seventies instrumentation.  The notoriously hokey piano.  Every element of this song was tailor-made so it would contain more corn in three minutes than there is in all of Iowa.  My Dad embarrassed me with this song, or so I thought.

Then I started listening through the year-end list to one of the songs, and my Mom started singing along and reminiscing about this song.  And I owe my Dad a great big apology, because this is way worse than “Thunder Island.”  

“Ariel” – Dean Friedman

#26 peak (June 25, 1977)
#69 year-end, 22 weeks on chart

Dean Friedman was a singer-songwriter from Paramus, New Jersey, who generally made a name for himself writing and singing commercial jingles throughout the seventies.  And “Ariel” was his only song of note, making the top seventy of the year end despite failing to hit the Top 20 of the weekly charts.  Let’s dig into why this song fails.

First off, the music and composition.  To speed through the first problem, Dean isn’t the best singer.  To be fair, he’s a better singer than I am hands down, but he’s got an awkward inflection he uses at the beginning of many lines in the verse.  Instead of just singing “I did this” or “I did that,” Dean starts with an “Ah-II” before going into his lines.  It’s off-putting, and prepares you for the awkward experience you’re going to face for the next four minutes.  A bigger problem resides in the chorus.  The chorus consists of Dean singing “Ariel” in a descending tone in his normal register, only to be interrupted by a “Aaaa-A-A-A-Ariel” falsetto at the end of the chorus.  These vocals do not match up well, as they give the impression that they were trying to sing the chorus to two different songs at the same time. They are in the same key, but one sounds so reserved and the other so impassioned, that it was as if they were given two different pitches about what this was supposed to sound like.

Then we get to the lyrics.  Let me just say it… “Ariel” is a mess.  The song is about a date with the titular Ariel that turns into true love.  That may be sweet on paper, but there are so many random stories told within the primary story that it becomes hard to care for the two.  This song should have been called “The Unnecessary Detail Song,” because oh boy, there was so much filler stuffed into this song it would cause a Twinkie to overflow.

Here’s the opening line of the song:

Way on the other side of the Hudson
Deep in the bosom of suburbia

Just… why?  Why are you comparing the suburban town of Paramus, New Jersey to a woman’s bust?  Like, does Delta Township, MI remind you of cleavage?  Okay, I’ll stop being tasteless.  But there’s no reason for this metaphor, especially when it could have easily been fixed.  It could have been “Deep in the heart of suburbia,” which is way more generic, sure, but it would have been a heck of a lot better as a fit for the lyric, and would have given the melody line some much needed syncopation.  Or if it had to follow the rhythm, maybe “Deep in the center of suburbia.”  Let’s keep moving.

She was a Jewish girl, I fell in love with her
She wrote her number on the back of my hand

Unless you’re Borat, do you care about the fact that she’s Jewish?  What does this have to do with the rest of the song?  Also, for her phone number, you didn’t have something called paper?  Thank God we now have cellphones so we don’t have to go through this ritual again.

She wore a peasant blouse with nothing underneath

I thought this was a cute, innocent love song, not a song about a scandalous girl who goes commando.

We went to Dairy Queen for something to eat
She had some onion rings, she had a pickle
She forgot to tell me that she didn’t eat meat

Why go to Dairy Queen when they haven’t invented the Blizzard yet?  Ok, maybe I’m nitpicking on this one, but…

I started fooling around with the vertical hold
We got the munchies and I made some spaghetti

You two had dinner twice?  Why?  What’s the point of making this song about having dinner twice?  Also, I thought this song was about a love story, not purposefully eating way too much food.  Speaking of which…

We made love, the bombs bursting in air

(snaps fingers)

“Afternoon Delight,” Starland Vocal Band (1976)
Skyrockets in flight, afternoon delight

Nice to know that the trend of fireworks going off while two lovers are making love didn’t end in 1977.  And just like “Afternoon Delight,” this song doesn’t have the punch to establish a love scene involving an emphatic fireworks display.  Yes, I am aware that the “fireworks” in this song relate to the end of a TV broadcast day, rather than an actual fireworks display. But the imagery is still there, which is why I have to make a point of it. You see what happens when you give number one hits and TV shows to atrocious songs about mid-day sex, America?  

To be fair, “Ariel” isn’t as bad as “Afternoon Delight” (if you top it, you deserve a medal for awfulness).  But it isn’t good either.  I can tell Friedman did put effort into this song when writing the lyrical content, but when it goes in six different directions when we’re trying to hear a pop single with a more streamlined format, the hard work didn’t pay off.  Going back to my intro, while “Thunder Island” is not great, it isn’t baffling.  There aren’t any individual parts that make you shake your head like this song does, it’s primarily bad because of the sum of its parts.  That is not the case with “Ariel.”  Maybe Friedman should have stuck with commercials.

UP NEXT: The biggest song of the year, and one of the most successful hits of the entire decade, at #9.

SOURCES

Moser, John J. “One-Hit Wonder? That Was So 1977 For Dean Friedman.” The Morning Call 4 April 2009. Web. 20 June 2022 https://www.mcall.com/news/mc-xpm-2009-04-04-4345727-story.html.

IMAGE SOURCES

Dean Friedman album cover from Spotify

Thunder Island album cover from Rate Your Music

Afternoon Delight album cover from Amazon