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| They inspired this guy. Who cares what I think? |
Loathe as I am to essentially re-write a Wikipedia post, I simply couldn’t find a lot about this band. I also spent a week listening to music I did not care for and I can’t let that be for nothing. At least the song has a decent back-story.
The Hit
I have no memory of Jigsaw’s “Sky High.” I like the tense opening - e.g., pure 70s action movie gold with horns swelling above; sets a good mood - and then that clears to make way for the first verse. A bar or two passes before the song hits a 70s-pop trot for the rest of the first verse…and into the chorus. Apart from the semi-nude beginning, all of that repeats into a second verse/chorus. Without further investigation, all that counts as an odd choice for what amounts to a break-up song. Boy meets girl, boy falls for girl, girl “blows it all sky high” by telling boy a lie. Seems awful standard…and yet…
As it happens, Jigsaw wrote the song for a 1975 “martial-arts action movie” starring George Lazenby - this was after his one-film spin as Bond, James Bond - which makes more sense of the musical choices (e.g., maybe the woman was a femme fatale). I don’t know that movie either (and neither does Netflix, as it happens), which makes all this seem extremely “period” - as in, a pure, perhaps wild animal of the mid-1970s.
And yet the song hit a solid No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100, outperforming the single in Jigsaw’s native UK - though not in Australia (maybe the attachment to Lazenby goosed it?). It did even better in Japan, achieving the odd and notable feat of being a hit in consecutive years…
…but the undeniably coolest thing about “Sky High” is the fact that a lucha libre legend named Mil Mascaras used it as his theme music. I’d kill for that claim to fame. As would you…
The Hit
I have no memory of Jigsaw’s “Sky High.” I like the tense opening - e.g., pure 70s action movie gold with horns swelling above; sets a good mood - and then that clears to make way for the first verse. A bar or two passes before the song hits a 70s-pop trot for the rest of the first verse…and into the chorus. Apart from the semi-nude beginning, all of that repeats into a second verse/chorus. Without further investigation, all that counts as an odd choice for what amounts to a break-up song. Boy meets girl, boy falls for girl, girl “blows it all sky high” by telling boy a lie. Seems awful standard…and yet…
As it happens, Jigsaw wrote the song for a 1975 “martial-arts action movie” starring George Lazenby - this was after his one-film spin as Bond, James Bond - which makes more sense of the musical choices (e.g., maybe the woman was a femme fatale). I don’t know that movie either (and neither does Netflix, as it happens), which makes all this seem extremely “period” - as in, a pure, perhaps wild animal of the mid-1970s.
And yet the song hit a solid No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100, outperforming the single in Jigsaw’s native UK - though not in Australia (maybe the attachment to Lazenby goosed it?). It did even better in Japan, achieving the odd and notable feat of being a hit in consecutive years…
…but the undeniably coolest thing about “Sky High” is the fact that a lucha libre legend named Mil Mascaras used it as his theme music. I’d kill for that claim to fame. As would you…
