My Top 1000 Songs #611: Clones

[I've been writing up my Top 1000 songs on a daily basis--you can see them all in descending order by hitting the All My Favorite Songs tag.]

I'm probably plucking this one from the guilty pleasures file, but Alice Cooper's 1980 single "Clones (We're All)" is an absolute hoot which I've never tired of. Cooper's odd, brief dip into new wave territory came out at the tail end of middle school, and I wasn't exactly a fan of the hard rock for which he was best known (though I've since come to appreciate a lot of the campy glam/prog/pop from the Alice Cooper Group's early 70s albums). But the song--written by little-known pop songwriter David Carron--got some play on local radio and I found it immediately attention-grabbing. 

Yeah, it's dopey, but it's got that wicked synth hook, a balance of guitars & keyboards that straddled hard rock & new wave, those silly voices ("please don't put me on the shelf!"), and a fun storyline. Cloning was kind of a hot ticket at the moment (I have dim memories of a mediocre made-for-tv movie called The Clone Master that somehow captured my imagination), making for some entertaining lyrics. But more than anything, it's just a ridiculously catchy track, however silly and instantly dated it sounds today.

I've watched the live versions from the 2011 tour countless times, and they're just insanely wonderful!

Smashing Pumpkins cover: