from the LP Nightclubbing Island Records, 1981Only someone as obstinate, adventurous & flat-out narcissistic as Grace Jones could make a song like this both entirely enjoyable and relevant, baring no resemblance to anything else inside the pop cosmos and released at a time when other cresting trends would seemingly make a mash-up of this nature (foreboding tango meets spacey dub) obsolete; and yet, I find myself returning to this track time & time again throughout my journey, it’s filthy feel being a perfect antidote to life’s doldrums. It was flawlessly scored into a number of scenes throughout the Polanski film Frantic, one of my all-time favorite Harrison Ford flicks (you get to see his ass), also featuring the alluringly irresistible Emmanuelle Seigner (see: Satan incarnate in The Ninth Gate). Frankly, if one had only heard this song and had never actually seen Grace Jones in person before, they could be forgiven for presuming she was some delicate petal, as opposed to the fierce genderless warrior-of-an-artist that she is. Maybe that was always Ms. Jones’s magic in the first place, an unpredictable and irrepressible ability to shape-shift at will, and in so doing, destroy everyone’s expectations.
