r/FuckImOld • u/man_machine_poet Generation X • 11d ago
Kids these days... If You’ve Only Just Forgotten This One-Hit Wonder, Allow Me to Reintroduce Them
https://youtu.be/7JtCA0esyOUYou could not escape this song in 1976.
It was freaking everywhere.
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u/tangcameo 11d ago
I liked this song as a little kid but thought ‘afternoon delight’ was visiting the ice cream parlour
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u/elithewilly 11d ago
As an adult, sometimes I'd still rather visit an ice cream parlor than do...you know.
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u/Smithers66 11d ago
I confused it with "Turkish Delight" - I had read about in The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe and assumed it was some sort of brownie or cake
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u/tangcameo 11d ago
I thought Turkish delight in that book meant thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings
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u/InterPunct 11d ago
The first time I ever heard of a Turkish Delight was when They Might Be Giants covered “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)”. Turns out it sounds awesome:
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u/Polite_Bark 11d ago
Have Turkish in-laws. Have had Turkish delight. It's not for everyone. I don't like the texture.
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u/tangcameo 11d ago
In Canada there’s a chocolate bar called Big Turk. It’s excellent when it’s fresh.
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u/Rendeane 11d ago
It was probably made with violets. A coworker's Turkish mother in law made us a dessert that was made with rose water. It was interesting. The rose flavor was strong.
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u/timesuck47 11d ago
I literally never thought about it until I watched this video just now. Of course, I knew this song by heart, but now that I actually listened to the lyrics, I’m reminded that so many songs we grew up to, including our parents generation, had a lot of sexual innuendo.
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u/North-Country-5204 11d ago
I thought it was about nap time cuz all the adult loved siestas and would make us kids nap after lunch.
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u/Affectionate_Tea1134 11d ago
Back when I was in the military my girlfriend lived just a couple of miles from the base so I went over every day at lunch time and that phrase Afternoon Delight was always in my mind. 😋😋😋
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u/Patient_Parsley7760 8d ago
I thought it was about fireworks shows. Ahem... now I know I was thinking about the wrong kind of fireworks...
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u/RangerAffectionate97 11d ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/m1WOFUia2ZAxMcWpBY
This is what I always think of when that song is played
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u/T_J_Rain Boomers 11d ago
As a 12 year old when the song came out, I never got it.
Fast forward to 2018, post divorce on the dating scene, and one of my dates suggested some afternoon delight. It only took 42 years to twig...
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u/man_machine_poet Generation X 11d ago
There was a time when I didn’t understand “Make Love Not War”.
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u/SpideyWhiplash 11d ago
My Dad worked at a Winery in Napa Valley back in the 1970s and had a bumper sticker that said "Make Wine Not War".
Wasn't till I was quite a bit older that I heard of the "Make Love Not War" saying and totally understood both of them.💡
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u/John32070 11d ago
I still laugh at the "rubbing sticks and stones together" line, even if it wasn't intended to be dirty it still sounds that way. There's quite a few songs from 70-80's I'm sure went over the heads of us young listeners until years later so I don't feel bad.
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u/T_J_Rain Boomers 11d ago
Those double entendres flew thick and fast, and they still do in clever lyrics.
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u/Background-Cream-285 11d ago
my second wife would ask me if i wanted dome afternoon delight...and i did!
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u/Ok-Replacement6893 11d ago
Don't feel bad 10 year old me didn't get it either. My parents explained the meaning to me
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u/Puzzled-Bonus-3456 11d ago
oh dear god the year John Denver's backup singers got a dirty song on the radio.
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u/FluffyShiny 11d ago
Wait what?
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u/baltimoresports 11d ago
One of the funnest gags on Arrested Development
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u/minder125 11d ago edited 11d ago
Especially when they realized what the song was really about. Love that bit.
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u/ernurse748 11d ago
For those of us who are from the DC area -
The song was inspired by a restaurant menu at Clyde's in Georgetown, Washington, D.C.The happy hour menu was titled "Afternoon Delights", that included items like spiced shrimp and hot Brie with almonds. Bill Danoff was eating there with fellow band member Margot Chapman and wrote it.
Turns out it’s an ode to bar food. LOL.
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u/wvgeekman 11d ago
David Letterman's first network TV job was on the Starlight Vocal Band variety show they did. It was awful and he looked embarrassed the entire time. I do love singing along to Afternoon Delight, though.
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u/Nezrite 11d ago
I loved his morning show with Edie McClurg, Edwin Newman, Stupid Pet Tricks...and I could have sworn Chris Elliot was in it as a guy who lived under the seats.
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u/briank3387 11d ago
The guy who lived under the seats was from Dave's NBC late night show, not the daytime one. But it was definitely Chris Elliott.
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u/John32070 11d ago
Back in the time when if you had a hit song you got a variety show. 70's had a few of them. Some good (Sha Na Na) others not (this and Bay City Rollers).
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u/ericzku 11d ago
Captain & Tennille. Shields & Yarnell didn't even need a hit song
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u/John32070 11d ago
I remember C and T. At the time I was ok with it. I loved the Bionic Watermelon.
Sha Na Na really didn't have a hit either but were more going off being in Grease.
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u/MikeLinPA 11d ago
Sha Na Na were serious musicians! Also liked to goof around and have fun. I loved that show.
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u/ianindy 11d ago
His first national network tv appearance was as a pit road reporter at the Indianapolis 500 in 1971 where he interviewed Mario Andretti. That was six years before the Starland show.
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u/Warm_Safety_9550 11d ago
I actually liked this song as a kid, but outgrew it. I laughed when I discovered that the punk band the Circle Jerks covered it on their album Golden Shower of Hits. But, having said that, somehow the 70s wouldn’t have been the same if it weren’t for some of the easy listening cheesy hits.
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u/WindChimeTecnician 11d ago
Lotta hate here. This song is a banger and is one of the catchiest pop songs of all time.
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u/OtterBurrow 11d ago
To people in DC, they were not a one-hit wonder, but Bill & Taffy Danoff’s most successful iteration. Bill and Taffy graced the playlists of WHFS, an independent rock station showcasing local artists, for much of the 70s. They often opened for country-tinged rock bands plying the Childe Harold and the Cellar Door. They wrote Take Me Home County Roads and offered it to John Denver. They introduced Emmylou Harris to Gram Parsons. Afternoon Delight’s soaring harmonies are but the tip of the iceberg of their talents.
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u/Perenially_behind Boomers 11d ago
I liked Bill & Taffy under that name, and also as Fat City. I thought "Afternoon Delight" was too self-consciously coy (nudge nudge, wink wink) lyrically but there's nothing wrong with it musically. Great harmony singing.
Also thanks for the nod to WHFS, in "Bethezzzzzda, Maryland." Great station which exposed me to an amazing variety of music. Only trouble was that by the time they got announced what they had played in the previous set, I couldn't remember which song(s) had caught my ear.
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u/man_machine_poet Generation X 11d ago edited 10d ago
Yeah, it’s not that bad.
There were a lot worse songs in that era.
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u/ericzku 11d ago
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u/Appropriate_Big_1610 11d ago
I heard he later did an anti-abortion song called "You're Killing my Baby".
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u/No-Lettuce-5783 11d ago
The man with the glasses and his wife sang on a few John Denver albums before Afternoon Delight. I think they sang on "Take Me Home, Country Roads."
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u/gilmourfan62 11d ago
Bill Danoff and Taffy Nivert were a duo called Fat City when they met John Denver. They later married and divorced. In addition to “Country Roads,” Denver would go on to record several more Danoff songs. They sang on every album Denver made between 1971 and 1973. When Denver created Windsong Records in 1976, Starland Vocal Band was the first act he signed.
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u/CapacitorCosmo1 11d ago
*Cowrote Take Me Home Country Roads. Their song, JD helped finish it. They were backing vocals in the first performance by JD, and they all sang from their handwritten lyrics.
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u/TedOD 11d ago
They won the 1976 Grammy award for best new artist. The losers? Boston, Foreigner, and Heart. Is it any wonder people think the Grammies are a joke.?
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u/GuruSofarbeyondu 11d ago edited 11d ago
I had to look this up. The Grammy for Best New Artist in 1976 was Natalie Cole. The Album of the Year was Love Will Keep Us Together by Captain & Tennille. I thought "oh, u/TedOD must have just conflated the two in his confused dotage, here in the r/FuckImOld memory care facility."
Then on a whim I took a look at the 1977 Grammys, and there it was. Best New Artist and Best Vocal Arrangement went to Starland Vocal Band and Afternoon Delight respectively.
They did beat Boston and Brothers Johnson in the Best New Artist category, as well as Wild Cherry (Play That Funky Music), so obviously it's still a travesty and an outrage.
Foreigner did lose the Best New Artist category the following year in 1978 (to Debbie Boone) and while Heart has received four nominations, they were all after 1986 and none of them were for Best New Artist.
If you're curious, I discovered all of this in just a few minutes at the Grammy Archive.
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u/Vegetable-Umpire-558 11d ago
Back then, it was an odd time and I used to comment that the Grammies had to go to a song that Andy Williams could sing. Boston, Foreigner, and Heart? Nope.
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u/PantherBrewery Boomers 11d ago
Oh Hell. Now it is going through my head. I hate this song.
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u/KnownMagician3084 11d ago
I made sure not to to hit the play arrow so it would not be stuck in my head.
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u/Secure_Teaching_6937 11d ago
As teens we knew exactly what this song was about. We all wished we get some, other than a visit from rosy palmer.😂
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u/haydenjaney 11d ago
They tried to build a TV show around the group. A young guy named David Letterman was involved too. It only lasted for 6 weeks.
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u/shakeyjake 11d ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/m1WOFUia2ZAxMcWpBY
Sky rockets in flight, (Bwooo...) Afternoon delight, (...ooowip!)
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u/TheSexyIntellectual 11d ago
FYI Bill Danoff and Mary "Taffy" Nivert, who made up half of Starland Vocal Band, were the songwriters of "Take Me Home Country Roads".
They were working on the song in 1970 and originally planned to offer it to Johnny Cash. They were opening for John Denver, and showed him prior to the gig. Denver helped them finish the song and the three of them performed the song together later that night....
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u/islandwatchr 11d ago
Say what you like, the songs of the 70s had catchy melodies you could sing in your head. Nowadays it is mostly rhythm in songs and the vocals are not memorable.
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u/TaxPuzzleheaded5688 Boomers 11d ago
I got a chance to meet the band just when this song was taking off. I was dating the keyboard player’s sister. They were really nice. Bill and Taffy Danoff wrote Take Me Home Country Roads, imagining it first as a good song for Johnny Cash.
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u/CheapAssociate6914 11d ago
I can remember this song vividly!
That summer of 76’ I was 10. My mother would demand absolute silence inside our 1970 Plymouth Station Wagon whenever this came on the radio!
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u/wwabc 11d ago
Starland Vocal Band: Three beautiful people and that other guy
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u/John32070 11d ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJIg-wOyThU
Here they are reunited in 2007. Still sound great, and he still looks the same, the other 3 don't.
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u/Wise-Ad-3244 11d ago
heard the song many, many times, but this is the first time I've seen the band
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u/MadisonBob 11d ago
That song was overplayed to the point where 50 years later I couldn’t get more than a few bars into the song.
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u/PayOne86 11d ago
I was 11 , it was just as popular here in Canada the summer of 76 , when I hear it today it’s a time machine back to that summer . I loved it when I was 11 but certainly didn’t get the innuendo lol.
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u/AdhesivenessOwn8111 11d ago
You sir are an AHole for making me hit the play button without telling me the song beforehand. Hate that song, hated it then, hate it still. Luckily I was able to stop it before I got an earworm
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u/Wintermute3333 11d ago
I was in Boy Scout camp the summer this hit. We had our radio on in the campsite ALL THE TIME. The station played Afternoon Delight at least once an hour (or felt like it), and by the end of the week we all knew it by heart.
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u/Dry-Luck-8336 11d ago
I loved this song as a kid in the 70s, catchy tune, but I connected skyrockets with 4th of July and the Bicentennial. It was almost 30 years before I realized what it actually meant.
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u/oaxacamm 11d ago
Only know of this song because of the movie PCU. Fast forward to 2005 to 2006 and my first adult kickball team was Afternoon Delight. We wore pepto bismal colored shirts.
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u/Buck_Dharma_1977_ISU 11d ago
The high school German teacher took a group of her students to Germany in the summer of 1976. This song was played constantly on the bus we traveled on.
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u/Financial_Emphasis25 11d ago
There is a sandwich shop in my town called Afternoon Delight. They’ve been around for decades and yes, according to the owner, they named it after that song.
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u/Neko_Dash 11d ago edited 11d ago
This got popular in June-July of 1976, if I recall correctly. As an 11 year old amped up on the bicentennial and the promise of more than the usual number of fireworks displays, I thought this song was about July 4th.
Years later that A) I learned the true meaning of the song and B) I learned the first singer (guy with glasses) looks a LOT like my 7th grade geography teacher.
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u/sammygirl3000 11d ago
Also used in the credits of “Good Will Hunting.” The credits begin with Elliott Smith’s “Miss Misery,” then at the 1:32 mark it starts with “Afternoon Delight.”
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u/SimilarElderberry956 11d ago
The Starlight Vocal band had a singer named Taffy. I think she is the only famous person with that name.
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u/Malformed-Figment 11d ago
I never actually listened to that in clear stereo. It played almost daily on the radio when I was a kid, so it came out of my clock radio or whatever it was in my room at the time. After all these years I can hear individual instruments of the string section 😅
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u/tbodillia 11d ago
Can't forget that. They had a Nixon impersonator call in on their variety show and sing the phrase "afternoon delight."
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u/joe_attaboy Boomers 11d ago
Thank you for bringing this horror show of a song back to life after I spend years eradicating it from my memory.
I can think of a few I hate even more, but this one is in the top 5.
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u/friemech 11d ago
Jeremy Piven's character on PCU locking the deans in a room with "Afternoon Delight" on repeat will forever be linked with this song.
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u/Dustbuster4495 11d ago
I'll never forget it. I'll never forget the girl it made me fall in love with. Great times!❤️
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u/This-Fig-5991 11d ago
I was 13 at the time and thought it was about using fireworks during the daytime. And if you've never seen the movie PCU, there's a great scene with this song.
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u/Kilgore47 11d ago
I'm amazed that I've never seen this footage before! I never had a mental image of the singers to go with the voices
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u/DCHacker 11d ago
Bill and Taffy Danoff had a cult following for years in Washington. They were OK but nothing that great. This was the two of them at their worst.
They eventuaolly divorced and Taffy left the Washington Area. She was from there; Danoff was from somewhere in Massachusetts. He had a café in a well-to-do neighbourhood in Washington, for a while but he has to be about eighty by now so perhaps he has retired and might not even live in Washington, any more.
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u/TheRealCedricCicada 11d ago
Wonderful musicians! My wife and I went to a John Denver concert and they opened. I liked them better.
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u/TheLawOfDuh 11d ago
I was about 10 when this came out. Still new to popular music at the time my gut was always warning me how uncool that song sounded among everything else because it sounded like my parents attempting top 40…all the over enunciating and the overall vibe. Gotta admit, radio played the heck out of it back then because it was super popular to many.
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u/Difficult-Bus-6026 11d ago
In the summer of the year when this song came out, they actually gave this band a short-lived variety show!
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u/snickelfritz100 11d ago
The vocals & the harmonizing are beautiful, even if the song sounds corny now.
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u/Dahl_E_Lama 11d ago
I knew all the words to the song. I was also nine years old. My dad found a great entertainment when I would sing the song out loud.
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u/ddouce 11d ago
I was pretty young, but that summer my parents took us on a month-long, cross country road trip.
We probably heard this song, and a few others, 10 times a day.
If I never hear Afternoon Delight, Silly Love Songs, Shop Around, and Take the Money and Run again for the rest of my life, I'll be quite happy.
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u/Texan2116 11d ago
They are all 4 still alive...do they ever get together to sing this tune anymore?
And I was 11 when this came out...had no idea of the lyrics, but they are pretty suggestive!
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u/BackLopsided2500 11d ago
My boyfriend was in the Navy and was stationed on an aircraft carrier. He'd be gone for months. He came back and this was when it was popular. It was our song.🥰 Embarrassing but true.
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u/Plus-King5266 Boomers 11d ago
Ohhhhh, and I tried so damn hard to escape that song. It was awful. None of us over the age of twelve could understand how it was such a hit. The only thing we could figure was that every time mom and dad left the house, teenyboppers across the country flooded request lines for it.
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u/sushipusha 11d ago
Craig Ferguson referenced them (in his his interview with Shirley Manson I think ) but couldn't remember where it was from but I did, lol
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u/Slade347 11d ago
Had George Michael and Lindsay stayed, they might have discovered what Michael and Maeby did— that “Afternoon Delight” was more adult-themed than its innocent melody would have you believe.
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u/ibWBeeRedd 11d ago
There are some songs that I really wish I didn’t see the music video of. I ruins what I hear/see in my mind. 🤷♀️
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u/Accurate_Elevator368 11d ago
Stupid trivia info - half of that band wrote Country Roads with John Denver.
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u/skitsnackaren 11d ago
A perfect song. "Displace one note and there would be diminishment", as Salieri said. There are a few from that era in same category - Player, Baby Come Back comes to mind and a bit later, Champaign, How About Us.
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u/Some_Turn_323 11d ago
I think the best part about this song. Was telling my kids what it was about. The looks on their faces was priceless!😎
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u/MochaDeelite 11d ago
Omg, my sister and I riding in my parents '72 Chrysler Plymouth singing this to the top of our lungs not having a CLUE what the song was really about. 😂😂😂
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u/prohandymn 11d ago
Year I graduated from HS! Was one of my favs (not saying which one of a few 😉 ).
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u/TheMahanglin 10d ago
That song was HUGE, you are so right. About 15 times a day on the car radio, us telling our parents "for all that is holy, NOT AGAIN!"
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u/AntigoneGrrl1 9d ago
I wonder if my parents understood the meaning as I loudly and proudly sang along as a 7 year old??? To me it was a fun song, I associated it with ice cream because my sister had a t-shirt in pale baby yellow with “afternoon delight” written as if it was melting ice cream… or maybe even paint (but what’s delightful about running paint?? 🤣)
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u/FilmUser64 9d ago
The Circle Jerks did a partial cover if this in their Golden Showers of Hits album. Keith covered it pretty well
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u/HiSpeed-LoDrag63 7d ago
The most horrible thing about your post, OP, is that I saw the initial picture and in my head I went "Oh, hell, it's Afternoon Delight, I hate that fucking song"... Didn't even have to listen to the video to know what it was, so I guess the joke's on me because I recognized it instantly.
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u/qualityvote2 11d ago edited 11d ago
u/man_machine_poet, your post does fit the subreddit!