You Light Up My Life

You Light Up My Life
Date Aired	November 27th, 2013
Running Time	15:21
Previous review	Wrecking Ball
Next review	TBA
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Todd plays "You Light Up My Life" on the piano

DEBBY BOONE - YOU LIGHT UP MY LIFE
A pop song review

Todd: Welcome back to One Hit Wonderland, where we take a look at the careers of bands and artists known for only one song. And today, we are going to look at one of the BIGGEST...HITS...OF ALL...TIME! Yes, you heard me. One of the all-time biggest chart-smashing mega-hits ever! Yes, today we are looking at...

Video for "You Light Up My Life

Debby Boone: You light up my life

You give me hope to carry on

Todd: Uh...yeah, guess it's not that impressive when you start actually playing it. But yes, one of the biggest hits of all time. In fact, Billboard listed it as the [shot of Billboard Hot 100 55th Anniversary: The All-Time Top 100 Songs, Top Ten page] 9th biggest hit in the entire history of the Hot 100, [single cover] and the single biggest hit of the entire 1970s.

Todd (VO): Yeah, not "Stayin' Alive", not "Dancing Queen" or "I Will Survive". Nope, "You Light Up My Freaking Life".

Debby: So many nights I'd sit...

Todd (VO): Yeah, see, adult alternative effectively killed the easy-listening format by the end of the 90s. But for a good, solid three decades, it was an incredibly successful chart-topping format, especially in the 70s, when your Barbra Streisands and your Barry Manilows and your Olivia Newton-Johns were the thundering gods of the music world.

Todd: So you might be thinking it was all [pictures of Studio 54, still from Soul Train, and Led Zeppelin] cocaine disco orgies, Afro-tastic funk and groupie-banging classic rock. But what the people really wanted was sappy love ballads from Stepford Wivey young women like [album covers of the Carpenters - Voice of the Heart] Karen Carpenter, [...and The Captain & Tennille - Love Will Keep Us Together] Toni Tennille,...

Todd (VO): ...and the woman you see before you, the divine Miss Debby Boone.

Debby: And you...

Todd (VO): Who lucked into the song of a lifetime in 1977. And to the world at large, she is basically known for that one single hit. But did you know that she has quite a long career of recorded output?

Todd: Did you wanna know? Well, too damn bad!

Todd (VO): We're gonna look at the one stunning hit of the most softacular, milquetoast, blank, Good Housekeeping balladeer of all time, and then we're just gonna keep digging further.

Todd: Look, I just need to wash the taste of Miley out of my brain, alright? So, Debby Boone - "You Light Up My Life". Light up...you light up my life. Let's go.

Debby: And fill my life with song

Before the hit

Todd: Back in the 1950s, there was this guy.

Clip of performance of...

Pat Boone: Ain't that a shame

Todd (VO): His name is Pat Boone. Nowadays, people only really remember him for covering a bunch of [clip of Boone shaking Alice Cooper's hand at 1997 American Music Awards] metal songs a decade ago and getting himself in trouble. [Clip of performance in infomercial] But my dad tells me that, for many decades, he was the most loathable man in America.

Performance of "April Love"

Pat: April love

Todd (VO): He's been kinda written out of the history books, but he was there at the dawn of rock 'n roll. [Clip of "A Wonderful Time Up There"] He was a contemporary of Roy Orbison, Buddy Holly, and the Everly Brothers. He was one of the original teen idols, and, in terms of chart success, he rivaled the [clip of Elvis] King himself. In fact, he and Elvis have a lot in common. They were both instrumental in bringing black music to white America. Uh, the difference between him and Elvis was...

Todd: ...Pat Boone did it by making it suck.

Clip from Don't Knock the Rock (The original)

Little Richard: Tutti Frutti, oh Rudy

Tutti Frutti, oh Rudy

Woo! Tutti Frutti

Clip of Pat Boone performance from 1957

Pat: A-bop-bop, a-loo-mop, a-lop-bop-bop

Tutti Frutti, aw Rudy

Tutti Frutti, aw Rudy

Todd (VO): In other words, for decades, Pat Boone would've been the whitest kid you know. [Clip of performance] And unusually for a teen idol, he also got married super-young and starting popping out kids immediately, [Picture of the Boones. Debby is in front row, second from left] including his third child Debby, who he had in 1956, when he was just 22.

Todd: Now, on her mother's side, Debby is also the granddaughter of [clip of...] Red Foley, a country music legend from the 40s and 50s. And as a weird kind of parallel, Pat Boone and Red Foley both eventually turned to making gospel records. It should also be noted that, if you didn't know already...

Clips of Pat Boone

Todd (VO): ...Pat Boone is extremely religious and has been a major figure in the Christian subculture for a long, long time, so that's the environment Debby grew up in. I read she actually went through a rebellious phase in high school, which...I can only imagine what that was like. Maybe she didn't finish her peas once.

Todd: But she outgrew that by the time she reached adulthood and instead decided she wanted to continue the family tradition of crap.

Single cover of The Pat Boone Family - "Please, Mr. Postman"

Boones: Mr. Postman, look and see

Todd (VO): The Boone girls formed in the mid-70s, making gospel albums. [Album cover of The Pat Boone Family] They weren't particularly successful, but I've heard some sources say that they basically started the entire contemporary Christian genre we know and love today, so, uh...thank them for that.

But anyway, [picture of Debby] their manager apparently pegged Debby as the breakout star of the group, so...

Todd: ...when one day, he caught some terrible movie with a promising song on the soundtrack, he got Debby to sing it solo. The result?

The big hit

(TO BE CONTINUED)