Songoftheday 1/27/22 - Shoobie-do-wop and scooby snacks, I met a fly girl and I can't relax...

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"Girl On TV" - LFO (Lyte Funky Ones)

from the album LFO (1999)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #10 (two weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 11

 

Today's song comes from the American "boy-band" trio LFO, or "Lyte Funky Ones", who scored a top ten hit with the second single from their debut album, "Summer Girls", in the summer of 1999.  Pin-up hunks Rich Cronin, Brad Fischetti, and Devin Lima followed that success up with "Girl On TV", written by Cronin with co-producers Dow Brain and Brad Young. Supposedly inspired by Cronin's then-girlfriend  Jennifer Love Hewitt, the track had him speak-singing stream of conscious lyrics over clunky or non-existent rhymes, much like "Summer Girls", culminating in the hilarious chorus line of "Shoobie-do-wop and scooby snacks, I met a fly girl and I can't relax". Oofdah. But the girls loved it (I can't imagine any straight or gay guys falling for this), and it racing the trio back up the charts. MTV helped out of course, thanks for Hewitt being in the music video...

"Girl On TV" became LFO's second top ten pop hit in December of 1999. It would be their last to make the top-40 in America. Internationally, the single went to #6 in the UK, and was also a top-40 hit in Ireland (#20) and Canada (#39).

A fourth single from the debut album, "I Don't Wanna Kiss You Goodnight", was co-written by Steve Kipner (of Olivia Newton-John's "Physical" fame). The ballad stopped at #61 on Billboard magazine's Hot 100. That was followed by "West Side Story", another Cronin/Brain/Young song that sounds totally 1999, which went to #84 on the Hot 100.

The trio returned in 2001 with their sophomore effort Life Is Good. With their lead single "Every Other Time", it sounded like they were trying to update their sound (with new producers), but by them MTV and the fanbase had pretty much left them in the dust for newer hunks to drool over, and the single stopped short of the pop top-40 at #44. It didn't help that the lyrics included the cringeworthy "When we broke up before the prom and you told everyone that I was gay". It did do somewhat better overseas, reaching the top-40 in New Zealand (#18) and the UK (#24). The album, their last, went to #75 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, which is actually better than it should have. LFO split for separate careers after that.

 

Since then, it's been a pretty down hill story. Cronin died from leukemia in 2010, and Lima succumbed to cancer in 2018. As for Fischetti, he's become an anti-choice nutjob activist on the abortion issue. In 2017, before Lima's death, he and Fischetti released a one-off single "Perfect 10".

(4/10)

Up tomorrow: Shrek's favorite band stays up until the breakadawn.