Friday 5 February 2010

Ray Parker Jr 'Ghostbusters (Searchin For The Spirit)'

Chart Peak: 2

YouTube

A song that now recharts so regularly in October that it almost feels like cheating to listen to it in February. But listen I did, and for the purposes of this post I actually had to look up 'I Want A New Drug' by Huey Lewis and the News, who sued Parker over this. There are three minutes I won't get back. It's not my place to comment on the (confidential) outcome of the case; suffice it to say that there is some resemblance (though a few people have also mentioned M's 'Pop Muzik' which predates both records) but there's no real comparison.

Parker apparently struggled for inspiration in time for his deadline (which explains a lot I guess) before he came up with the mock-ad-jingle idea. The lyrics he wrote to it have some air of first-draft silliness about them but that's no bad thing in this context; what really sells it is his deadpan delivery. It was enough for the single to come near the top of the UK chart in late summer, months before the film was actually released here. I don't know how he feels about the fact that this has overshadowed the rest of his career, but he'll have to live with it.

Oh, and I've never seen that 'Searchin For The Spirit' subtitle anywhere but this album.

Available on: Greatest Hits

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