Perfect Love - The Residents (1980)
Everybody’s favorite eyeball buddies have a kind of hate/hate relationship with pop music. In 1976, they released what could possibly be deemed the first punk record, a mangled and distorted version of (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction. Also in ‘76, they released The Third Reich N’ Roll, an album as devious and hellish as its title suggests. More pop songs from the 50s, 60s and 70s warped and twisted until nearly unintelligible — yet fascinating to listen to.
So time marches on and the Rez form some very compelling theories about pop music. They posited that essentially every pop song, when distilled of all its unnecessary baggage, such as repeated choruses and bridges, has about one minute of actual content to its name.
With that in mind, they set about writing and recording the wondrous Commercial Album. With help from avant-pop luminaries such as Andy Partridge, Lene Lovich and Fred Frith, they formed their very own Top 40 of one minute compositions.
Uncle Willie’s Highly Opinionated Guide To The Residents had this to say of the tunes:
Due to the self-imposed time limitations, the lyrics for each song usually consist of no more than two to three sentences and last about thirty seconds. In spite of this economy of words, bright, bizarre, disturbing, languid, sad, ethereal, and silly images abound. The ability to create such complete and compelling images with so few words is an extraordinary talent indeed.
Another innovation that accompanied the release of the album was the creation of One Minute Movies. The collaboration with filmmaker Graeme Whifler was some of the earliest programming on a fledgling MTV and is now part of the film/video collection at the MoMA in New York City.
