X/Z Song Trader: "We Got The Beat"
A Gen X Rocker Discusses Music With His Gen Z Daughter
About X/Z Song Trader: Steve is a music journalist, author and musician. Lucy is a diehard music fan and college student. They have always enjoyed a father/daughter bond over music. Each week one of them picks a song and they both share their perspectives. These are casual conversations based on musical connections. Opinions are their own. Keeping it positive.
After the first four weekly installments, we’re posting the next four every other week.
Steve’s Song Choice: “We Got The Beat”
I’ve loved this song since the first time I heard it on early ‘80s LA radio.
It’s no secret that I’m a sucker for driving backbeats and this one from drummer Gina Schock is an all-time classic. My elementary school friend Anthony was the first person I knew who owned The Go-Go’s debut album Beauty and the Beat. We used to play it over and over whenever I hung out at his mom's apartment. "Our Lips Are Sealed," "Skidmarks On My Heart," and "This Town" were other instant favorites.
At the time, I was still a little too young to know about the LA punk scene The Go-Go's emerged from, but bands like The Runaways, X, Redd Kross, The Gun Club and The Dickies would become favorites a few years later. So, in that way, I think The Go-Go's really helped expand my musical tastes at an early age, beyond the hard rock and heavy metal I'd mostly been listening to and into new wave pop hits and punk.
I recently read Lisa Whittington-Hill's excellent 33 1/3 book about Beauty and the Beat and it was really eye-opening.
The book looks beyond the band's polished MTV image to explore the groundbreaking artists they were. Despite all the well-deserved commercial success The Go-Go's enjoyed, they were still snotty punks at heart—a chart-topping, all-female band who wrote their own songs and played their own instruments. It's hard to imagine now, but that was a rarity back then.
Here's a great quote from the introduction to the book: "Despite their success, The Go-Go’s were manufactured and marketed by the press and the music industry as good girls to sell their records. Their accomplishments and talent were often ignored at the expense of a focus on their looks and love lives. They were treated as a novelty act and had their story rewritten to sell records."
"We Got The Beat" is a song I never get tired of hearing.
So, I always loved it when this track popped up on the playlists you and your friends made, when it came on at your school events, and when we heard it between acts at some of the concerts we saw together. It has become a timeless classic, but in many ways that's exactly what it already was the first time I heard it.
I know you are very familiar with this song, but did you know anything about the band's backstory? I'd also be curious to know if this is still a song you listen to, and if it reminds you of any modern bands.
Lucy’s Perspective
“We Got the Beat” is one of the first songs I can think of when it comes to listening to music in the car with you and mom. This song is the ultimate ‘driving down the PCH listening to music on full blast with your friends’ vibe and I am always here for it.
Songs like this one understand the need for good music that fills a room at any given moment. Though I am a sucker for complex storylines in songs, I also love simple, straightforward lyrics about dancing and singing.
The style of this song reminds me a lot of No Doubt and Gwen Stefani’s solo stuff as well. In part because I think Gwen Stefani’s voice is similar to Belinda Carlisle’s in an interesting way.
It’s funny to hear you reference The Go-Go’s as a part of the LA punk scene considering how poppy they sound to me as compared to modern pop vs. punk songs. Realistically though, I think they easily fit into the pop punk genre.
The Go-Go’s have a special place in my heart from hearing them played on the Toyota’s car radio or dancing through our old living room to your Beauty and the Beat vinyl. They were a surprisingly integral part of my childhood which I still hold onto and cherish to this day.
It is interesting to hear how overlooked this talented band was, despite their raging commercial success, though it isn’t surprising considering the history of female celebrities and the press. Women, especially pop stars, are often treated as a fabrication rather than the creators of their own successes, asked questions mainly about their looks and not about the motivation behind their art.
Though it is a disappointing fact, it is one that I find in the history of almost every female celebrity to this day.
I loved getting to re-listen to this song through a new lens.
I think that the band’s history is both heartbreaking and fascinating and something I will keep in mind and probably delve into even deeper.
I will always come back to this song as I drive down scenic routes with music on blast.
I love reading you two together!
All-female bands have not been getting real respect since the first ones came to be...