The Flashback Music Review Anew Again

Track Three: “Too Shy” by Kajagoogoo

Like an adult trying to describe an episode of Scooby Doo 35 years after the fact--“The Mystery Machine drove by some trees…then the gang came upon a haunted hotel…I think someone was shot, although that might have been in McMillan and Wife …and then Phyllis Diller showed up…man, we five-year-olds loved us some Phyllis Diller in the 70's…”--it’s almost impossible to recount the sheer enjoyment that was “Too Shy.”

Maybe it’s the song’s sheer simplicity, with lyrics that read like a come-hither Dr. Seuss Beginner Book and feature a mere 41 different words, nine less than The Cat in the Hat. Or that a full fifty percent of the song is taken up by a chorus so catchy that hundreds of years from now when the planet has fallen into the hands of apes Dr. Zaius will be sitting at his desk, poring over some scientific scrolls, when out of the blue he’ll find himself muttering “hush hush, eye to eye.” Or that the video for the song stars a woman wearing more make-up than Tim Curry in Legend serving drinks at the only 1940’s U.S.O. show to prominently feature a Casio synthesizer. Or perhaps it’s that the song contains the line “modern medicine falls short of your complaints,” bringing up the possibility that the woman in question is emotionally unstable or at the very least a stalker and thus adding a level of dramatic tension one does not expect to find in a single penned by someone named “Limahl.”

Or maybe, just maybe, the answer is that it’s a simple pop song, and simple pop songs—like poorly animated Saturday morning cartoons, sitcoms built around three-hour boat tours gone horribly awry and candy that actually detonates in your mouth—are pleasures that defy description. They don’t imbue your life with any great significance. They won’t enhance your CV or impress people who foolishly believe it’s their role in life to be impressed. They just are, end of story. Which is great, because otherwise I’d have to spend the rest of this article saying something like, “You see, there’s this woman who likes this guy…but she’s shy…perhaps too shy, if you will…plus she thinks love is to pray…although that might have been ‘Tainted Love’…”