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| How I like to see them after this. Ready, man. |
The Hit
Before starting, I want to acknowledge and celebrate my long-standing fondness for the Mamas & the Papas. As one member of the Starland Vocal Band told Songfacts, “People love to hear people singing in harmony - there's no two ways about it.” Guilty.
And that brings the story to Starland Vocal Band’s famous and storied single, “Afternoon Delight.” You know it, hell, you’ve probably laughed at, even if from that scene in Anchorman. (They even made a bonus video for it.)
After 12 second or so of a 12-string guitar dueling with a six-string, an languid rhythm combination kicks in, just enough to give the tune a bottom, but the vocals carry and raise it. I have to confess that I didn’t remember any of that (thanks, Anchorman), but it’s quite pretty, honestly, but giving a close listen to the lyrics…well, it complicates the experience.
The interviewee for that Songfacts interview (which, for the record, contains some fun notes on the song-writing process) was Jon Carroll, and whatever anyone feels about “Afternoon Delight” doesn’t hold a candle within a goddamn mile of what he’s got going on his in his head. From loving the song to never getting tired of performing it to worrying about what Morris Day (of Morris Day and the Time) thought of it to forever fretting about winding up as a punchline in 70s revival events, it’s possible Carroll has felt everything that it is possible to feel about Starland’s (yes) one hit. Before summing up all that - and it’s a pretty fun read - he summed it all up with this:
“I'm very proud of the song but I really had to live it down.”
Due to the numerous times “Afternoon Delight” has been treated as a punchline - e.g., Good Will Hunting mocked it, a Rolling Stone article about the shooting of a Tom Petty video somehow found a way to crap on it as “the top of the heap of wimp rock,” and so on - Carroll earned all of that sensitivity. And it does get strong reactions. While hunting for material for this post, I stumbled across a personal reflection on a site called Perfect Sound Forever that, apart from solid notes on consent, has some truly wonderful things to say about the song’s unsubtle sexual allusions:
“Even me, the gormless innocent, got it. First time. Here were the angelic voices of some apple-pie lovelies not just singing about rumpy-pumpy but celebrating it, rejoicing in the anticipation of a round of hide-the-sausage.”
The same author also passed on this truly eloquent note:
