Song #591: "Sara" by Starship

Date: Mar 15, 1986
Weeks: 1

As I review more and more songs, I'm finding every era contains at least one recurring trope that really bugs me. In the 80s, it's the style of drum that gets used here. It's loud, it fills the space between beats with reverb, and it's inappropriately placed in otherwise soft songs. What is it with that drum? Is there a name for it? I always think of it as the "Born in the U.S.A." drum (mostly because of this old Conan O'Brien bit). It works in Springsteen's song, but it doesn't work nearly as well in a softer song like this.

This song's music is so cheesily sincere that it's hard to take it seriously. Soft, gentle keyboards provide most of the music, there's an occasional muted sax, and then there's an electric guitar. Much like the drums, the electric guitar seems like the result of an inability to commit to a gentle soft song, resulting in something that tries to be soft and hard at the same time and fails to successfully be either. This song might work better acoustically. (Yep. Thanks, Youtube cover artists)

The vocals have the same cheesy sincerity problem. Most of it isn't too bad, but the bridge gets pretty painful when they add in the lead singer backing himself up with a squeaky breaking voice. I guess they're trying to make him sound emotional, but the self-backup effect sounds far too fake. This track is simply overproduced.

The lyrics are also pretty goofy. The message is that even when you know a relationship needs to end, you're not necessarily happy about it. But this is communicated in the most overdramatic way possible. "We're fire and ice, the dream won't come true." You mean you're too different to get along? There's poetic license, and then there's a metaphorical fantasy epic.

Then there's "storms are brewing in your eyes." I've never really understood that line, until I finally watched the video a couple times. In the video, the titular Sara leaves the singer, and for some reason he flashes back to when a tornado destroyed his childhood home. It took me a couple views before I caught on to the metaphor of a breakup devastating him the way a tornado devastates a house. It's definitely not a point in the song's favor that you need to see the video to interpret the lyrics of the song.

My verdict: Don't like it. I liked this song when I was younger. I guess I thought it was deep. But I think I've matured too much to see depth in this song, and time has not been kind to the instrumental choices.