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Crowded House
If you wanted to know just what was missing from ‘80s rock that made it seem less vital or less fun to listen to than the hit songs of the ‘60s, you need look no further than this song. I don't know exactly what they all are, but the ingredients are on this record. With an instantly contagious melody and mysterious lyrics that say almost nothing, "Don't Dream It's Over" floats on a breeze. Just like some of the best singles from the ‘60s, it sounds vital, and the sound is all that matters. Who cares if you don't know what they're talking about? I can't tell if Neil Finn is depressed out of his mind or having the time of his life, but it doesn't matter. All that matters is that it can make you feel so good.
A melody like this is as rare as a gemstone, perhaps even more so, since it is intangible. It exists on a separate plain from logical thought, and here the lyrics (hence the logic) are totally subservient to the purpose of the melody, providing little more than appropriate syllabics to hold the construction together. I'd be hard-pressed to think of anything more purely aesthetic than a melody, and Neil Finn must have one of the most well defined and unlabored senses of melody I've ever heard.
Finn's older brother, Tim, must have been a substantial inspiration for him. Tim Finn’s band, Split Enz, sneaked onto the international scene during the latter part of the glitter years. Since they were from New Zealand, the band seemed unlikely to attain its lofty goals. Their desperation for stardom was so intense, though, that they created an image that looked like what might happen if the Elephant Man met with the main character of David Lynch's Eraserhead while vacationing at Disneyland. The result was so absurdly amusing that people started to pay attention, discovering a band with a very talented songwriter (Tim Finn) among its ranks. After a couple of years the image softened, and they brought in a new songwriter who gave Tim a run for his money. The upstart was none other than Tim's little brother, Neil. Their last album together as Split Enz, True Colors, besides being a great pop album, amounted to nothing so much as a duel between the songwriting talents of the two siblings.
When the duel ended, the band was the only victim. Tim went on to a commercially sporadic but artistically brilliant solo career. Neil grabbed Split Enz's drummer, Paul Hester, and a bass player named Nicholas Seymour and formed Crowded House. Moving to a small bungalow in Hollywood (the house that provided the band's name), they recorded the material for their first album, including "Don't Dream It's Over". Working with producer Mitchell Froom - who has had the distinction of producing some of the most notable artists of the past ten years, including Elvis Costello, Richard Thompson, Peter Case, Los Lobos and the American Music Club - they recorded a sporadically brilliant collection of songs that refused to sell. It took eight months of steady promotion for the record to break, but when it finally did, it broke big. "Don't Dream It's Over" rose to #2 and the second single, "Something So Strong", reached #7. Their second album, Temple Of Low Men, was at least the artistic equal of their debut album, but for some reason it met with a resistance that this time never relented. For a change of pace, the Finn brothers began writing together, and it wasn't long before they realized that Tim would make a good addition to the trio. The band's third album, Woodface, featured Tim as a fourth member, but he found the atmosphere a bit too crowded and left soon afterward. He was replaced with guitarist Mark Hart and the band continued to record their melodic wonders as a foursome.
The mid-eighties' trend for retrospection and revival caused many bands to re-record songs from the sixties that didn't need to be redone and would have been better if left alone. All out-performed the original recordings on the charts while adding next to nothing to the integrity of the originals. The list is endless: "Venus" by Bananarama (#1 in 1986), "La Bamba" by Los Lobos (#1 in 1987), "I Think We're Alone Now" by Tiffany (#1 in 1987), "Lean On Me" by Club Nouveau (#1 in 1987), "You Keep Me Hangin' On" by Kim Wilde (#1 in 1987), "Mony Mony" by Billy Idol (#1 in 1987), "Groovy Kind Of Love" by Phil Collins (#1 in 1988), "Baby I Love Your Way/Freebird Medley" by Will To Power (#1 in 1988- this was the last straw) and those are only the number one's! I also counted another twenty-some-odd within the same time frame that hid themselves among the top ten: "Always Something There To Remind Me" by Naked Eyes, "You Can't Hurry Love" by Phil Collins, "Sea Of Love" by the Honeydrippers, "California Girls" by David Lee Roth, "Dancing In The Street" by David Bowie and Mick Jagger, "Harlem Shuffle" by the Rolling Stones, "Crimson and Clover" by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, ""Tainted Love" by Soft Cell (oh, please, make me stop) and it didn't end there. There was also the deliberately retro “original” writing of Billy Joel ("Uptown Girl"), the Stray Cats ("Stray Cat Strut"), ABC ("When Smokey Sings") and the Beach Boys ("Kokomo"). Something was lacking and nothing made it so obvious as did the trend to reinvent our past. While everybody else was digging through the past in search of a perfect melody, however, Neil Finn continued to pull them out of the air. "Don't Dream It's Over" would have sounded great in any year, but among this serious bane of originality, it sounded positively brilliant.
 
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