Eddie Murphy: Party All The Time

This sucks... 



Eddie Murphy, “Party All The Time”

Oh my. Murphy's "singing" voice. How gruesome. In fact Murphy's 1985 album had only two good songs, Stevie Wonder's big gift "Everything's Coming Up Roses" and the title song. "Party All the Time" was the hit. That doesn't add up to a great song or even one that's lampoonable due to its utter uselessness. But "Party All the Time" does provide proof of why the funnyman Murphy's singing career went haywire. He couldn't sing...

It’s not like the world expected Murphy to sound like Teddy Pendergrass, but we expected him to sound, well, better. Fans of James’s work certainly know his musical deal of the time. At this point, James was especially proficient in passive-aggressive lyrical wallops like 1983’s “You Blew My Mind (69 Times)." Despite Murphy’s oddly cutesy delivery, this track isn’t that divorced from the style. Production wise this is standard mid ‘80s fare for James. With his minimalist synths straightforward, open chords “Party All the Time” was the most popular of the songs Rick did in this style. And yeah, if Rick did this himself, would it have been as big? Nope. Thankfully James did appear near the end of the song doing his great, trademark vocals while Eddie just went, “Ooh, ooh” and maybe “Woo.” That was enough.

This near catastrophe was also captured in a video. This is where we saw how truly ungainly Murphy was in his singing incarnation. Looking like a buffoon as he pantomimed and danced around like a geeky kid, Murphy’s cool points dissolved by the second and we all felt a hurl coming on. Who came to the rescue again? Burl Ives, I mean Rick James. Now he was the real deal. Taking it to that punk funk level we all love with his Glow period blonde hair, the leather and a whole lot of attitude, little Eddie faded away on tape and on phono. But despite James's best efforts, this is song played out as fast as Max Headroom. What’s best about this? It’s just plain wrong.