You Light Up My Life

Definitely dreck. Although I remembered it seemed to spawn its own industry, it was so popular.

Where is Debbie today?

Bump

Standard issue pop ballad. Not terrible, but no masterpiece.

I thought it was pretty bad, and I loved Pop music back then.

My other big memory of Spring 1977 was being devastated when ABC cancelled WONDER WOMAN and THE BIONIC WOMAN, because the network wanted to move away from super-heroes.

At least WONDER WOMAN moved to CBS and had two more terrific seasons!

Joe Brooks, the guy who wrote it, had boundary issues.

It’s got a certain haunting quality to it and has that relistening cache that creates a huge hit. I was 10 when it came out. You couldn’t get away from it on the radio.

All four of the other songs nominated for the Best Original Song Academy Award that year were better than this stinking piece of garbage.

LeAnn Rimes’ cover from the late 90s is vastly superior to Boone’s original. At least LeAnn can genuinely sing.

Why OP? This triggers PTSD. I'll be having 70s nightmares all weekend.

R9 Boone can sing. It wouldn’t have been a massive hit based on the instrumental track alone.

R6, my mom and her friend met him in a bar in Mexico in the early 80’s. They had drinks, and he bragged about his music career. I had no idea that he was a rapist, or dead.

Debby Boone recorded an Oscar-losing song the following year:

It was a treacly piece of shit.

Even for the 1970s, it was a saccharine piece of cringe. And how about the Oscar performance with those deaf kids whose hand movements turned out to be meaningless gibberish?

Oh my god R13, I may have BOUGHT that 45.

The movie it came from, [italic]The Magic of Lassie[/italic], is largely forgotten today, and it probably is not what Pernell Roberts had in mind when he left [italic]Bonanza[/italic] for a movie career.

It's about Jesus, right?

R18 Debby sang it as a love song to God, but it probably wasn’t meant to be. Quite the contrast between one of the biggest pop singles ever and the guy who wrote it who was a real piece of work and committed suicide.

Cringier than Debbie Boone's craptastic hit, is typing the words "what sayeth"....

70s "pure" pop--ie. not disco related pop--was the absolute worst of the second half of the twentieth century. But the other genres like rock, metal, funk, soul, R&B, etc. made up for it. Debby was the absolute worst thing to hit number one in the 70s. And her father? Ewwww.

r21 could you give some more examples of pure pop?

R22, I'm thinking of the ballad type crap that seemed popular at the time (all of it by bland-as-fuck white people who probably never listend to R&B or soul in their life). That stuff sounds so horrible today. Meanwhile, I think most of the other music from that time (for instance, Earth, Wind & Fire) has held up very well.

This one, Tie a Yellow Ribbon, Torn Between Two Lovers , and everything Helen Reddy recorded rank high as most mediocre music ever produced-

Thanks r24. Now I understand the "pure pop" meaning and yes it was garbage.

her and her dad are gay hating Xtians.....who gives a flying fuck -

This song made me weep as a young gayling.

R20 thank you. I typed that to rile only you up.

Whitney Houston covered this.

I hate when she goes freeform towards the end of the song.

R24 should be locked up for comparing this crap to anything by Helen Reddy. Typical male misogyny.

Adult contemporary is for people who hate that awful fucking schlock rock but still wanted something current to listen to. Rock “music” sucks and never should’ve been invented. If I had been alive in the 70s, I would’ve actively tried to avoid it at all costs. For every Brian Wilson, it created about 27 Sonny Bonos. This song is bad but then again so was and is all that meandering go-nowhere jam band crap, heavy metal, and rap.

See also: Barry Manilow, Anne Murray, pre-[italic]Grease[/italic] Olivia Newton-John, Melissa Manchester.

It's one of the sappiest love songs to come out of the '70s. Not the worst, though. That dubious honor should go to "Feelings".

Barry Manilow and Anne Murray were fabulous.

“Feelings” at least gave us a very funny rendition by Eunice Harper Higgins:

This is also the same era when Cher recorded Dark Lady, Gypsies Tramps & Thieves, and Half-Breed.

This was No. 1 for like 10 or 12 weeks. It’s because it took on a spiritual dimension so I’m sure all the fundies bought it - y’know, just before they were lured into the GOP by Ronald Reagan.

At least DL isn’t suggesting that we actually watch the movie (I’ve had my fill of DL’s taste in movies lately with Angel Heart, Cruising and Logan’s Run). I saw it when it was first released - even as a 11 year old gayling, I knew it was shite. The moment when the great Didi Conn - who talks like a Loony Tunes cartoon character - opens her mouth and sings like, erm, Debby Boone, is actually NOT the funniest scene in the movie (though in the movie it was sung by a session singer named Kasey Cisyk who declined to release it as a single - one assumes she still places high value on her good taste every time she looks at her bank statement).

The 70s hadn't settled in yet when "Gypsies Tramps & Thieves" was released.

[quote]This is also the same era when Cher recorded Dark Lady, Gypsies Tramps & Thieves, and Half-Breed.

No, R36, that was the Early 1970s.

This was 1977, part of the Late Seventies, much closer to Cher's 1979 hit, "Take Me Home."

Here it is. They should’ve dubbed all her dialogue too.

I was an extra on Sins of the Past. I was in the audience for Debby's performance scenes...

I would not put Melissa Manchester in with Debby Boone or Anne Murray. She has many good album tracks that are heavily influenced by R and B.

Clive was the one who pushed for the bombastic ballads like Don't Cry out loud and wanted to market her as a pop artist.

Debbie or Anne could never pull off something like this.

I remember the cringey commercials with Didi Conn lip-synching... >shudder<

[quote] The 70s hadn't settled in yet when "Gypsies Tramps & Thieves" was released.

The aesthetic was a holdover of the mid to late 60s where several songs still used strings and horns in their arrangements. That ended with the 1980s, MTV, and Madonna. They forced synthesizers on us to justify firing session musicians.

I remember when Anne Murray said she could have had Linda Ronstadt's career but didn't want to be "Freaky". I'm like, with your closeted ass!

They tried glamming Anne up in the 80's even making her a femme fatale in one video. It was about as believable as Ellen Degeneres in Mr. Wrong.

She’s married to Rosemary Clooney and Jose Ferrer’s son, and is related to George Clooney by marriage.

This song still makes my ears bleed.

You can get a rock band to play it and it would still suck. It’s a nothing song that makes me question whether payola was ever truly banned.

Carole King had written a better song with the same title several years before:

Glam Anne Murray with 1986's "Who's Leaving Who!"

Fellow lesbian Hazell Dean would release her own version in 1988.

[quote]Debbie or Anne could never pull off something like this.

It's not fair to put Anne Murray in with the other two. Murray was more like a crooner. She was closer to a Joni Mitchell type. Wasn't Anne considered country when she first started?

You couldn't get away from it back then - I'm with the poster above, it gives me PTSD to even remember it. One of culture's extreme nadirs.

R51.

This is why disco was necessary: to drown it out.

Debby's a friend of lesbionic Stephanie Miller, who vouches for Debby's liberal politics. Debby is also married to an Episcopal priest.

Anne Murray, remarkably, had several pop hits around the same time. Like Top 5 and Top 10. Unbelievable. You Needed Me was about as awful as YLUML. Then came The Monkees cover…

Yeah, really. Steve Dahl should’ve burned this shit instead of disco records.

Anne Murray was not a rock or pop singer, she was more of a crooner, like the above poster said. She had a fabulous voice and it suited the songs she sang. She doesn't belong in the same category as Helen Reddy or Debby Boone. Anne was more in the Karen Carpenter genre.

Don’t forget moi

Anne Murray was NOT Karen Carpenter. She was the Canadian Helen Reddy, who herself was the Australian Rex Harrison.

Maudlin. Screechy.

r58 damn I just can't with how beautiful Whitney was. Even in the end she aged into a beautiful older woman. But she just had it.

No, she almost had it all.

Now, she has nothing. Nothing.

r59 Anne Murray had a much better voice than Helen Reddy, it was a rich contralto. She was a genuine talent.

[quote]No, she almost had it all. Now, she has nothing. Nothing.

The closet kills.

The writer/producer was a Harvey Weinstein type.

Six feet under

Op, it could have been so much worse. See this bullshit anthem from the 80s. Like what the fuck?

Carly looks gorgeous!

No she and that hairstyle look ridiculous, like a bad wig that Sia would wear.

R54 yes she's been on Stephanie Miller's radio show. She's talked about how she lost her dad, Pat Boone, to FOX News.

Stephanie also said that Debby once told her that her father forbid her to wear thongs because they were immoral so Debbie had to shoplift them to get her hands on them.

Steve Dahl was just another fat boomer POS.

This crap song was played on the "MOR" radio stations you were hijacked having to listen to piped through your dentist office's exam rooms in the late 1970s...when they weren't otherwise playing Roberta Flack, Peabo Bryson, Anne Murray or Helen Reddy. Ugghhh.

Every litter has its runt and this was it.

Pat and Debby Boone's relationship has been discussed for decades. I remember her talking about it on The Phil Donahue Show in the 1970s, where by the way, she "sang" a song (not YLUML) where the song started before she was ready and she missed lip synching the first few words of the song.

I call it "soap opera music."

I remember that they always played it at the kiddie roller skating rink we went to and my mother hated it so much she would duck out of the building for the duration.

I don't remember having an opinion about music at that age - we listened to what our parents listened to. But I do think that was the first song I thought was actually bad. I didn't know terms like treacly or saccharine or kitsch. But when I learned them, this was one of the things I would have described with them.

I love her version & I love her.

She was talking about marriage equality more than some of the "gay icons" we keep hearing about.

Roberta Flack was amazing.

Yes, R79, yet it's kind of sad she spent the 1980s doing Kentucky Fried Chicken commercials and sitcom theme songs.

R79 Roberta Flack stays attached to Rat Robertson's ass.

I'll pass.

Roberta is not a fundie.

[quote] Roberta is not a fundie.

Maybe not, R82, but she is not above doing things like this for money:

R82 I used to like her until I saw her pop up on The 700 Club & TBN (both numerous times) while channel surfing so I give her some flack whenever I can over it.

Rpberta chose her latest audience & it doesn't sound like it's you.

r83 that's a North Carolina tourism commercial.

Even if she is religious, her 70s and 80s music was exquisite. You have to separate the art from the artist.

I hate Michael Jackson as a person, but Off the Wall and Thriller were fantastic albums.

Then you'll have to cancel everybody in this commercial including and especially professional mansplainer Jason Bateman:

WTF r83? That's a commercial for a local North Carolina tv station. Flack is a NC native.

[quote]I used to like her until I saw her pop up on The 700 Club & TBN

A girl's gotta eat.

R85 It's not that Roberta's "religious".

It's that she lends her name, image & songs (& probably the $$$ but they would never open the celebrity donor books to the press) to a known anti gay bigot who has never apologized for anything he has said or done to us. Flack has also never pressured him to apologize or even distanced herself from his words/actions in the decade plus that she has appeared on his shows (& TBN's).

If you have to separate the "art from the artist" to enjoy "the "exquisite", I guess you have some artwork done by serial killers on the walls where you live?

Then she should eat Pat Robertson in one bite a la Nibbler from [italic]Futurama[/italic]. That I would gladly watch.

[quote]You have to separate the art from the artist.

That's what that yutz of a son said to me when he bought me [italic]The Artwork of Adolf Hitler[/italic]. White man, white man, where have you gone to?

Give Roberta a break. Even Barbra Streisand recorded a Contemporary Christian song.

r89 lots of artists are personally problematic but if you're an educated, intelligent person you should know to separate the art from the artist. Pablo Picasso is a classic example of this.

And whether or not Flack appeared on the 700 Club 40 years ago is hardly noteworthy.

Streisand did a whole fucking album of Christmas songs.

Strike that, she did TWO.

Patti Sith's version is the best

R92 It's not about "religious".

It's about ANTI-GAY BIGOTRY.

Dolly Parton is religious but she's never supported a known bigot in her career.

We actually have an ant-Roberta Flack loon. DL never ceases to amaze me.

Provide quotes of Roberta Flack being anti-gay.

40 years ago? Try 20.

And now Ellen's name is mud.

Proof r99?

DL loons support bigots who support other bigots &

never have to answer for their words or misdeeds.

Roberta Flack got her start playing in gay bars.

Like I said, you can't back up your shitty claims so you blame a Black woman for a white man's prejudices.

I don't have anything to do with Flack or the religious right.

If you're on Twitter, ask her if she's ever done The 700 Club or TBN live & how often.

R103 Dr. Laura was once pro gay.

Roseanne was once pro black.

Frank Sinatra was once pro democrat.

Sinatra didn't start campaigning for right-wingers until after the Vietnam War.

R104 This isn't a racial issue.

It's a LGBT issue versus anti-LGBT groups which she has supported by name, image & songs for over a decade & could still be doing today (I haven't seen or heard from her in over a decade).

THE BOTTOM LINE IS THAT SINATRA CHANGED HIS VIEWS & FLACK DID AS WELL OR SHE WOULDN"T HAVE INSULTED HER GAY FANS WITH THOSE ASS KISSING BIGOT APPEARANCES.

Roger Thorpe was in You Light Up My Life.

I can't believe we have a Roberta Flack Troll! The most random celebs inspire trolls on DL.

She did have some great songs, though.

I’ll take that crap song over anything by Babyface or Toni Braxton.

I just checked & found out that R. Flack is on twitter so someone on the DL should ask her about her public appearances on The 700 Club & TBN.

Tell her you are a fan of those shows & you want to know how many times she has done each of them in her career.

R108 is a stealth homophobe. Say gay or say nothing.

Using that acronym instead of just saying gay is a way of saying you endorse the buckbreaking of Gay Black Men.

R113 / R114

I included the 4 letters because The 700 Club & TBN has gone after all 4 letters over the past several decades.

They were against all 4 letters having adoption rights, military jobs, marriage rights, job protections, hate crime protections & they also want medical staffs to have the right not to treat all four letters due to their "religious beliefs".

I see that you both have no problem whatsoever with Flack supporting these bigots. It's all about T ( & maybe the B).

Except that's not true, R115. Pat Robertson is pro-T.

R114 You only care about black gay men? Racist much?

The same gay black men Roberta has thrown under the bus every time she does those shows?

Was this her only other hit ?

Tr*ns is buckbreaking and you know it.

R116 That's news to me & might be more of his dementia showing. His long history proves otherwise.

He has never endorsed any trans rights of any kind so while he doesn't see a sex change as a sin, he certainly thinks they deserved 2md or 3rd class treatment here & abroad.

R119 Buckbreaking?

Does that involve Uncle Buck getting his butt kicked?

R40 has it right. It wasn't from some Lassie movie like claimed above - it was from a film with Didi Conn (before she played Frenchie in Grease) called - you guessed it - You Light Up My LIfe.

I remember seeing the film on HBO in the late 70's, but don't remember much of it.

I do recall all the Christians claiming it was about God - and with Boone singing, then it seemed true. But it wasn't about that at all.

There is a nice build-up in the song - it's catchy. But the success is just head scratching.

Kasey Cisyx, ladies and gentlemen:

Odd how YLUML was such a monster hit. It was AWFUL. Just complete garbage. Yet it was so popular. The song was before my time but I've heard it was played incessantly, as other posters have mentioned. You apparently couldn't get away from it back then.

Sorry, here's a superior copy of the above. Apparently her story is even sadder since she died young.

R122 - R40 is referring to Boone’s follow up, the year after, which was from The Magic of Lassie.

Do keep up.

Debby and kasey cisyk both had fallings out with Joseph brooks in a very short period of time.

Sins of the past the TV movie debby did with Kim cattrall and Kirstie alley is campy fun.

r126 - SORRY, what page are we on again?

Mea culpa.

Wait. Debby Boone is a liberal who performs magic tricks with Lassie on the 700 Club while hanging out with lesbian Roberta Flack?

Is Roberta a lezzie?

Queen Aretha doing her soulful version

Pat Robertson is a charlatan………anyone who kisses his ring is disillusioned. ……And last of all , You Light Up My Life is just elevator music ……..I don’t care who’s covered it…..it’s just background noise.

I have heard better songs than this in elevators.

Whitney's is a disappointment. She should have sung it in a higher register she can't sustain the low notes.

Whitney recorded this near the end, when her voice was shot from all the drugs.

R28 I sayeth well played to you, sir!

xox R20

Can we talk about how Didi Conn should have had a bigger career?

Was there oscar buzz for her performance in this? Between this and Grease, she should have been catapulted into the stratosphere.

Cheese's Crust!

R137 the film YLUML is completely forgotten, but the songs not because it was a massive hit and multiple award winner. And Stockard probably came the closest to an Oscar nom for Grease, not Didi.

"Also nominated for Best Supporting Actresss, Stockard Channing, for her nuanced portrayal of a menopausal teenager. . ."

Stockard Channing looked old as shit in Grease. Weird that they cast her as a teenager.

I was talking about Didi getting nominated for Best Actress in You Light Up my life.

And did anyone catch the movie that the composer of this song made afterwards.

It co-stars Shelley Hack and has Roberta Flack singing the theme song.

^What theme song ?

If I Ever See you again.

[quote] Stockard Channing looked old as shit in Grease. Weird that they cast her as a teenager.

They wanted someone who had actually been to high school in the 1950s.

You have to appreciate some things for what they are. For what this is, it’s a masterpiece. I actually enjoy it now.

The best way to appreciate a piece of shit is to flush it down the toilet.

R142? Have you ever seen You Light Up My Life? It was in theatres for about 3 weeks. Tops.

Though I still think Didi Conn trying to convince people that was her actual singing voice is hilarious. I remember suggesting to my friend’s mother who took us to see it that she was dubbed - just by virtue of the contrast between her “baby girl” speaking voice and the singing voice - and she said, “I think she’s known for her singing.” This was pre-Grease, mind you, when she wasn’t even known. I should’ve kicked that frau in the cunt. I was 11 years old.

How many Oscar voters who voted for the song actually saw the movie?

I’m shocked that Wikipedia says the box office gross was $8.5M. That seems like a lot for those days.

That's chump change for the same year [italic]Star Wars[/italic] first came out.

Yeah but in the ‘70s even dud movies used to stay in theatres for weeks at a time, waiting to see if an audience would show up. And like a film that grossed $30M - $40M were considered big hits. It wasn’t until the mid-80s that films were regularly making over $100M and those that did were considered huge hits.

I would’ve expected this to top out at $3M - $4M at most - people bought the record, they didn’t go see the film. I don’t remember it being “held over” for weeks at a time.

Inflation is part of that, R153.

LITTLE KNOWN FACT, that according to the biography of the carpenters, by ron coleman, allegedly the carpenters originally were given "you light up my life" first and turned it down for whatever reasons..

Probably because of the key changes.

R150 very few, (you couldn’t escape the song that fall of 1977) but it’s always been that way. I remember the story about 12 Years A Slave winning best pic and a lot of voters that hadn’t seen it voted for it because it was the noble thing to do they thought.

More like Karen Carpenter was a good judge of Joseph Brooks' lack of character.

Let’s be honest, this was practically a Barry Manilow song.

Barry Manilow farts better songs than this, R159.

Well, I did say “practically”.

I was nine years old when this song became an enormous hit. I loved it as a young gayling. My mother bought me the 45 and lived to regret it. I played that song constantly. When I got older, she confessed she many times thought about using it as a frisbee against a brick wall. I also loved the B side of the single, which was called Hasta Mañana (link below). I played the 45 so much the YLUML side got a skip in it. My mother thought that would do it. However, I figured out just when to put my finger on the needle so it wouldn't skip.

Poor Mom. She had a rough summer listening to both songs. As an adult, I don't think they're very good, but YLUML still has sentimental value for me.

R162 Hasta Mañana is an ABBA song. Much superior to You Light Up My Life.

I know that, R163, but I still don't think it's that great of a song.

"You Light Up My Life" appealed to the masses initially. It was so different for the time, and Debby Boone kind of came out of nowhere. However, after a couple of weeks of listening to the song since it went crazy popular on AM pop radio, it became nauseating, sickening, syrupy, cringeworthy and just plain gross. The song became the biggest hit of the 1970s lasting 10 consecutive weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 – longer than any other song in Hot 100 history to that point. (In 2008, Billboard ranked the song No. 7 among all songs that charted in the 50-year history of the Hot 100.) The song earned Boone a Grammy Award for Best New Artist and an American Music Award for Favorite Pop Single of 1977.

"You Light Up My Life" ranks right up there with "Feelings" as the worst piece of crap to ever become a hit. But even with Feelings (1975 peaking at #6 on U.S. Billboard), singer Morris Albert didn't have a slow, glacier-paced, dredge-like tune with a brain-piercing, irritating voice.

You Light Up My Life (song)

The song sucks beyond description. Debby Boone's version is like fingernails on a blackboard. I'm a big LeAnn Rimes fan, but even she couldn't breathe life into such dreck.

Never saw the movie of the same name. Was that as much of a piece of crap as the song?

It can't be wrong, when it feels so right.

I remember channel-flipping many years ago and landing on the movie. I watched a few minutes of it and turned the channel. It was awful.

[quote] I'm a big LeAnn Rimes fan, but even she couldn't breathe life into such dreck.

Maybe her brother Busta should have covered it instead.

Same year, equally soppy

I never miss a Didi Conn movie!

Except this one.

I saw the movie on hbo as a kid, it’s not good but I thought the ending where you saw the song going to number one was kind of sweet.

It’s one of those songs that by the time it’s 10 week run was over at number one it dropped like a rock because no one wanted to hear it anymore. It didn’t turn up on the soft rock/ac stations that were big in the 80s/90s like some of the other lite/yacht rock of the time did.

I didn’t know Dan hill was biracial until years after that song was a hit.

I always conflate YLUML with You Take My Breath Away by Rex Smith which was also a treacly ballad, came out around the same time and had a movie (albeit a tv movie) with its name.

The Boone's were sort of proto-Kardashians, between Debby's hit song and then another sister's coming out about her battle with anorexia which included admitting she ate dog food once she was so hungry.

Rex Smith was no Didi Conn, let ME tell YOU!