Freedom Of Choice

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In one of the most unexpected pop coups of all time, a gaggle of herky-jerky performance punks who looked like robots and sounded like sexual frustration set to synthesizers managed to score both a platinum record <i>and</i> a chart-climbing pop hit in the age of Air Supply. Inspired by Prince, Stevie Wonder, and the sound of the Moog ba, the postmodern mechanical men in Devo attempted to stretch their R&B and soul muscles on the group’s third album—without sacrificing their twitchy energy and satirical eye. “It’s ridiculous to think about, but we thought <i>Freedom of Choice</i> was our funk album,” Devo vocalist Mark Mothersbaugh would later recall. “That’s as funky as Devo get, I gue.” Teaming with Wonder producer and electronics whiz Robert Margouleff, the band came up with a dozen fractured, synthed-out pop songs that would be released in the spring of 1980—just as a strange new decade was getting underway. Devo’s label, Warner Bro., had hopes that the unambiguously poppy “Girl U Want” would become a hit; instead, it was the oddball “Whip It” that would end up as one of the defining songs of the 1980. Inspired by sardonic passages of Thomas Pynchon’s landmark head-scratcher <i>Gravity’s Rainbow</i>, and intended as a motivational talk to then-president Jimmy Carter, “Whip It” took on a life of its own. A racy video for the song was played repeatedly during MTV’s first year, and made Devo’s plastic ziggurat “energy dome” headgear synonymous with the very concept of the 1980. The song remained inescapable for decades afterward: The Chipmunks covered the tune, Martin Scorsese dropped it into the soundtrack for his crime saga <i>Casino</i>, and Swiffer repurposed it for a commercial. .

via Apple Music

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