My Top 1000 Songs #800: Steal My Sunshine

[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.]

One of the fun things about first discovering music as a kid in the 70s was that the radio was littered with silly, embarrassing one-hit wonders, cheesy little tunes perfect for a 9-year-old with no musical context and not quite ready to experience the broader spectrum of what rock & roll had to offer. (Readers of Jittery White Guy Music--the book--are familiar with how CB-radio-themed novelty song "Convoy" first lured me to the AM radio.) (And, hey, if you want a playlist of the great-bad songs of my youth, be sure to check out Best Of The Worst Of The 70s.)

I kinda missed out on that sort of guilty pleasure after the 70s. Once I started getting serious about music, pivoting from singles to albums, appreciating the difference between great music and... well, music less-than-great--I just wasn't picking up on the latest in silly one-hit-wonders. Oh, sure, they'd still be out there in the MTV era, the brief flirtations with, say, Men At Hats' "Safety Dance" and the like--but they were an occasional diversion, not a big part of my musical appetite.

Yet for some reason, the 90s seemed to bring back the pleasures of the silly radio hit. It was a short-lived sensation; by the end of the decade, with the Internet gradually replacing the radio, and MTV no longer a source of actual music, I was decreasingly aware of popular hits. But for a brief shining moment, songs like Len's "Steal My Sunshine," which closed out the decade, seemed to be in vogue.

And this one's definitely a silly trifle plucked straight out of the Guilty Pleasures file. The track (from 1999's You Can't Stop The Bum Rush) is one of those 90s rap-rock crossovers I typically hate, but the looped sample from my 70s disco days, and Sharon Costanzo's sugary-sweet vocals, are undeniable. Can't say I've heard another note from the band--I guess they had a few albums?--but that's fine, as this one is probably all I really need. Still ridiculously fun, with an endlessly-rewatchable video I still enjoy pulling up on YouTube for a feel-good kick. And I guess it's still culturally relevant--was watching Season Four of The Boys last week, and there it was, popping up (ironically or whatever) in an episode.

The spoken word interludes in the video differ from the original single, which I prefer:

Cover from Bikini Trill (no, I don't have any context for this):

And I imagine there are loads of these all over YouTube?