When a band has released 23 albums since 1971, where do you start? That question is especially pertinent when the band is Sparks, a cult duo known for singing about 75 percent of their material in a camp operatic style, composing bizarre narratives about topics like blackmail and funeral speeches, and cramming improbable numbers of notes and words in every hyper-melodic line. But fear not because, despite existing outside of any dominant musical precedent of the last 50 years, Sparks are still indisputably pop and a lot of fun.
I’ve been listening to a ton of Sparks lately, so I decided to pull together a very short list of the songs I like the most, spanning their entire career. I’ve by no means heard every Sparks song, and I haven’t even listened to most of their albums all the way through. But honestly, with so many songs, Sparks can be a little uneven, and they’re a band best heard by cherry-picking the best bits across the years. If you know nothing about Sparks and listen to these songs, you should walk away with a decent sense of what the band is about and whether you might like them.
“This Town Ain’t Big Enough for Both of Us” (1974)
If you only listen to one Sparks song, this should be it. It’s one of their best and most well-known, typifying what their classic period was all about. Keyboardist and main songwriter Ron Mael delivers an arc that starts slow and ponderous, but quickly builds to a frantic pace, the aural equivalent of when the cartoon Roadrunner’s legs start going so fast they become a circular blur. Brother Russell’s falsetto is so indefinable that my husband had to ask me if the singer was a man or a woman. Lyrically, Sparks’ main obsession tends to be sexual politics, and this track fits that mold, albeit obliquely, presumably caricaturing some kind of male preening behavior. “This Town” comes from the album Kimono My House, probably Sparks’ best album and one that’s worth a full listen. Lots of famous people love this album, including Morrissey, and it’s widely accepted that Sparks basically created the prototype for Queen’s sound with their early work.
“High C” (1971)
Sparks’ debut album is not that consistently Sparks-like, but “High C,” one of my favorites, was an early step toward their signature sound. Despite being a story about seducing an opera singer on the decline, it actually doesn’t use Russell’s higher register, opting instead for a kind of sleazy, music hall tone. I love the way Russell unnecessarily rolls his Rs and pronounces “Vienna” as “Vie-enna,” resulting an a kind of fake, dramatized accent. Pretty much every line is a hook, and the best of them all is when the song slips into the jauntiest little “whoo-hoo-hoo” that I’ve ever heard. Seriously, if I could whistle, I’d whistle that part non-stop until my friends and family decided to band together and murder me.
“Over the Summer” (1976)
After Kimono My House, Sparks slipped into a short down period that was less critically acclaimed. I don’t have a real solid grasp on this era, but I know there’s at least one great song: “Over the Summer” from the 1978’s ironically-titled Introducing Sparks. A Beach Boys pastiche, it’s not actually that representative of Sparks, and the lyrics — celebrating a mousy girl’s transformation into a bombshell — represent the bands occasional turns toward the sophomoric. But melody conquers all, as do Russell’s captivatingly odd vocals. “July, you were the plainest of Janes” stands out as the best line to me, with its suitably weird pronunciation of “Jew-lye.”
“When Do I Get to Sing ‘My Way?’” (1994)
Sparks restored their reputation in the late ‘70s when they teamed up with Giorgio Moroder on No. 1 in Heaven and a few other albums. Their embrace of an electronic, danceable, disco sound was surprisingly successful. They continued in this vein for quite a while, up through 1994’s Gratuitous Sax and Senseless Violins, which features the excellent “When Do I Get to Sing ‘My Way?’” What I like about this song is that it’s lightly mocking of its subject, who dreams of making it big with his rendition of the titular song, but at the same time it still works as a ballad itself. When Russell sings, “When do I get to sing ‘My Way?” / When do I get to feel like Sinatra felt?” I feel the hunger and longing of this character more than I want to laugh at him. It might be something of a first for Sparks, and they continue to build on that shift in later years. The Sinatra/Sid Vicious dichotomy is brilliant as well. It seems so obvious, but did you think of it?
“Dick Around” (2006)
Jumping forward to the 2000s, Sparks shapeshifted once again to a more symphonic sound. To my entirely untrained ear, “Dick Around” is one of the more credible attempts to combine rock and classical music. Rather than the typical verse-chorus of a pop song, it flows through a series of movements that mirror the ambitious narrator’s moods as he breaks up with his girlfriend and descends into a life of slackerdom. Ominous, jaunty, angry, sad, triumphant — a full range of emotions is on display. The balance of classical instruments with some borderline heavy metal guitar is particularly effective during the angry sections. The experimental nature of the composition doesn’t mean a lack of hooks either.
“Edith Piaf Said it Better Than Me” (2017)
Possibly the most astounding thing about Sparks’ 2017 LP Hippopotamus is the fact that, at the time of its release, Ron Mael was 72 and Russell Mael 69, thus proving that one can make a great pop record at any age. It helps that Sparks’ music is so unusual that they never sound like they’re trying to recapture a bygone era or cash in on trends that aren’t rightly theirs. The writing here reaches a kind of literary height, with many of the songs telling full, subtle stories in a relatively economical space. Another benefit of age is that we get lots of interesting reflections about topics like decline, regret, and death — elements of the human experience that are generally underrepresented in pop music. “Edith Piaf Said It Better Than Me” is a perfect example, telling the story of man who has lived a boring, risk-free life. He repurposes Piaf’s line “Je ne regrette rien,” regretting nothing in a literal sense, because he’s never done anything to regret. There’s some great one-liners in here too, like “There’s no poem, just prose” and “Few amours, feu or not.” Musically, the record is a synthesis of previous Sparks sounds — some opera, some classical, some rock, some pop — but the pace has become a bit more reflective and the emotions more real.
Further listening
I have a personal Spotify playlist of my favorite Sparks tracks, which includes all of the songs above.
Sparks have an official “Essential Sparks” playlist on Spotify that features 101 songs and is six hours long. I find this works well for shuffling and discovering new songs.
Sparks appeared on Brian Turner’s show on WFMU in October 2017. They played live and Brian played a good array of Sparks tracks, as well as some crazy vintage commercials.