Song 6:
“Abracadabra” by The Steve Miller Band
Peak: 1
Year: 1982
Year end position: 9
Alphabetical Songs by Artist: 1/7
Chronological Songs by Artist: 7/7
Video?: Yes
Spotify?: Yes
I mentioned back in the “ABC” post that
the most common peak position for songs in this blog is #1, and we aren’t even
a week into it and we’ve already come upon our second song to top the
charts. This song came around at a real tipping point in the music
industry, as well as my own personal experience with it, which we will get to.
First off, this is the second
consecutive song with a one-word title. So far, it is also the longest
one-word title we have come across (11 letters). That ties it for 28th
longest in the blog. It’s hard to imagine there are 27 longer one-word
titles to come, but apparently there are. Another fun fact is that this
song isn’t the only song we will get to that invokes words said by
magicians. There is a song called “Hocus Pocus” that will come up again
later. Alas, there was no “Alakazam” or “Presto”, so this is as good as
we get.
This song marks the 7th and
last song by the Steve Miller Band to hit the top 20. That makes them one
of only 26 acts that have had more than 5 songs hit the top 20, where the last
song they had to hit the top 20 hit #1. That’s a good way to go
out. Some of the people on that list had a similar pattern to the Steve
Miller Band in that they had a period of productivity, and then an extended
layoff before hitting #1 one last time. The Four Seasons, Cher and the
Beach Boys follow this pattern. I can remember discussing the Steve
Miller Band with friends in college wondering what caused that hiatus and then
what had happened to them. As far as I can tell, there really is no great
story to explain the drop in production, followed by the spike of popularity
around “Abracadabra”.
If anyone remembers the lyrics to
“Abracadabra” it is because of the mildly creepy, mildly strange couplet in the
chorus: “Abra-Abracadabra / I wanna reach out and grab ya”.
Granted, it’s probably not too easy to find anything to rhyme with
“Abracadabra”, so I give Steve Miller some credit here for creativity.
The rest of the song is essentially a tribute to how some woman makes the
singer feel. Apparently, the singer feels a lot of different things when
he sees the woman in the song (hot, dizzy, happy, sad, resigned). In the
last verse, the singer has almost become overwhelmed and wants to remove
himself from the situation, but then she says “Abracadabra” and he’s right back
under her spell. The song also featured some strange instrumentation in
the bridge. I assume that these sounds were supposed to make you think of
a magic show. This song also seems to me to be a bit of a bridge song
between the straight forward rock songs in the 70s and the synth-driven new
wave sound of the 80s.
There is a video for this song, and
1982 was right around when videos were becoming produced more often. Back
then, music videos were more of a novelty than a necessity, so the production
value in them was not nearly as high is it nowadays. I don’t think that
Steve Miller actually appears in person in the video. There’s part of the
video where he appears, but it almost looks like cardboard cutout of him.
However, the video is great to watch if you want to see just how far we’ve
come. I’m sure that 11-year old me loved this video.
Speaking of 11-year old me, this song
is very memorable for me because it’s right around the time that this song was
at peak popularity that I started listening the top 40 countdown shows on the
radio. I’m sure there are binders somewhere that have my handwritten
transcriptions of the top 40 that feature “Abracadabra”. For all the
sentimental reasons, as well as the great chorus and strange bridge, this song
almost always makes me smile. This also seems like a great song to sing
in the car. I can’t be alone in thinking that.
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