Global sporting events and music rarely work on any artistic level but that doesn't stop the organisers from trying, lured by advertising dollars and viewing figures, and it doesn't stop me from watching, lured by performance-inhibiting temperatures and the possibility that anything can go wrong when broadcast live, especially when wet and cold.
After this week's deeply disappointing Superbowl halftime show, in which The Who were
upstaged by the stage itself, my hopes now rest on the
Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics which, this year, plays host to Medal Ceremony performances by
Devo,
Deadmau5,
Feist,
The Roots,
Usher, and, on what looks to be an Australian-themed evening on the 24th,
INXS and
Jet.
Somewhere in between the biazarro opening and closing ceremonies there will be a musical highlight to come out of these Games. And if there is a God, some never-to-forget lowlights. And so, without further ado, here are some previous winners and losers from the slippery musical slope that is the Winter Olympics...
Houston, she had a problem...
Whitney Houston reached a new low in 2006 when she performed at a Medal Ceremony in Turin. At one point she asked the audience, "Why did they choose to do this outdoors? I don't sing in the cold. It makes my voice funny." The best/worst moment came when she attempted her own Olympic anthem "One Moment in Time" from the '88 Summer games and had to breathlessly talk most of the lyrics. The footage quickly spread over the internet but has since been systematically erased, as if
Clive Davis Harvey Keitel was sent in to clean up any evidence that she'd murdered her own song.
This clip was obviously deemed a success and remains, but it can't hold a candle to the now infamous "One Moment" debacle.
Sponsored by Tron...
One upside of the rampant commercialization of the Olympic ideal is that we get advertising such as this Gold-worthy 1983 spot from official sponsor Levi's, featuring early CG and futuristic synths...
Dancing in snowboots...
The Winter Olympics opening and closing ceremonies are worth watching if only to see how the dancers fare in snow boots and ski suits. Producer,composer, and the guilty party behind Michael Bublé
and Josh Grobin
and Celine Dion, David Foster summed it up at the closing of the '88 Calgary games with his song "Can You Feel It?"
Americans do it bigger...
They impressively bust out
jet-packs in Los Angeles in '84, but in Salt Lake City in 2002 the Americans managed to reanimate a couple of dinosaurs. (Are Mormons creationists?) Only in America...
White Rock...
Yes prog rocker
Rick Wakeman provided the soundtrack to 1977 documentary "White Rock" (is this what Whitney and Bobby went looking for in Turin?), about the 1976 Winter Olympics held in Innsbruck, Austria. The track-listing was of a bronze standard, featuring titles such as "Ice Run", "Loser", and in this clip, "Searching for Gold"...
"My name is Eetu"...
He famously came last, but ski-jumper Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards used Calgary '88 to launch a brief singing career... in Finland. Before you mock, is this really any worse than Michael Bublé?
The Muse: Tonya Harding...
The first American woman to pull off a triple axel jump in competition is better known for her ex-husband's hit job on competitor Nancy Kerrigan. Even less well known is her role as muse - inspiring
Loudon Wainwright III to pen "Tonya's Twirls"...
Unofficial house band...
The Winter Olympics are a London band with a suitably Olympian video. No doubt they'll be hoping for some stray Google searches to go their way next week. Good luck, boys...
Today's
Winter Olympics opening ceremony features Nelly Furtado, KD Lang and Sarah McLachlan, but remember, anything can go wrong, and there are always the commercials.