GUEST LIST: Sally Burtnick

"a beautiful, sad 80’s ballad about a girl or drugs or (most likely) actual horses"

Here’s a regular feature where I talk about someone I like and then they give the songs they like! Check out more of these Guest Lists here, including picks from John Vanderslice, Shalewa Sharpe, Mike Krol and more.

Oh, where to begin with Sally Burtnick? First, Sally is one of my longtime best friends, is a very interesting person and also someone I like very much (those three things aren’t always mutually exclusive). A terrific, kind, and enormously talented human being who has had the most hairstyles I’ve ever seen a single person have.

You’ve maybe seen us absolutely goofing on The Special or as co-hosts of the erroneously titled, long-running live comedy showcase The Macaulay Culkin Show, which we did for the better part of a decade and ended when we finally got Macaulay to show up.

We have so many things in common and then we have so many things not in common, which makes for a fascinating friendship. I have a wide, esoteric taste but trying to figure out Sally’s opinion on literally any given thing is like taking a compass into a magnet store. I’m constantly surprised and trying to predict what constitutes “Sally’s delight” has been a fun game for me for many years.

I have more in common taste-wise with Sally than most people. But then we’ll be talking about music in total agreement and all of a sudden, I’ll hear “Lin Manuel Miranda is a sexy genius” and things will go into a tailspin.

*That’s not a quote, I made it up as an example—but then I got curious:

We met through music: Sally was in a band called We Are The Seahorses, an in-your-face performance art group—imagine if Dan Deacon had more menace than whimsy. We met over cans of Sparks at a show in New Brunswick, where I learned of a deeper family connection to music.

Every burgeoning taste in music is inspired by and simultaneously rejects what you grew up around. Having a legit rockstar for a dad gives one a unique polarity. Glen Burtnik, Sally’s dad, has one of the most interesting resumes in music: a successful songwriter and solo musician, one-time lead singer of Styx, and toured with ELO, Beatlemania, even Labamba from the Max Weinberg Seven. For his big annual Christmas show, the Burtnick kids (Sally’s sister Darla is also a very talented musician) would sing onstage and showed off incredible voices, the kind you’d take to an American Idol audtion or something.

Throw in years of being in punk scenes, art scenes, alt-comedy scenes, fairy-themed folk duos, working as a Vice reporter, and a recent turn to live theatre, it leads to a taste that is anything but boring.

I wrote all of this before reading these but I think they follow a similar thread and features one of my faves getting grinded by Freddy Kreuger. Here are Sally’s picks:

Nik Kershaw “Wouldn’t It Be Nice”

Often, I think music should be a little shitty. It’s so easy to enjoy pretty melodies and 4/4 time. It’s ALSO easy to be like “this recording of a sheet pan going around in a clothes dryer softly layered over ‘Johnny Johnny Yes Papa’ is the pinnacle of modern art”. Like both of those things have their place, and are often beautiful, but I have a sort of kink for music that SHOULD be good but goes into shitty territory, usually by virtue of the 1980’s, although this phenomenon exists throughout time.

See “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” (not the good one). It’s a challenge to appreciate, and the fact that I *can* enjoy it makes me better than anyone who can’t, as well as in a secret league with the fucked up geniuses of the world who can.

Alaska y Dinarama “Mi Novio Es Un Zombi”

If you are a Freak Like Me, who actually can’t graduate from the 1980s and was, up until one month ago, asking “who is this” every other time a Taylor Swift song came on, you may be delighted to discover (or already know this and I’m a fuckin idiot, huh?) that some of the best synthpop/ gothy punk in our world comes from Madrid during “La Movida”.

After the death of conservative and ugly guy dictator (are there any like sexy leftist dictators let’s look into that) Francisco Franco that functioned like the falling of the Berlin Wall, all of a sudden there were sooooo many sexy and weird electronic freaks ready to make the horny music that had previously been off-limits. I heard this song at a taco place in Rockaway beach where the waitress was so hot I couldn’t tell if I was threatened or in love.

Improvement Movement “Bill”

I saw this band at my friend’s venue which he converted from an abandoned Laundromat and filled with strange and beautiful things. A 10-foot illuminated People Magazine marquee, a similarly sized dekapidates clown head with a very wide mouth, astroturf carpet and flowered 70’d couches.

Me singing in front of the clown st Laundromat

It is one of my very favorite places in the world, but if you are Not Always Sound of Mind, as I am, it can overflow with people and feel a little like hell. I, like, was having a panic attack basically and wasn’t sure if I could handle seeing live music without judging it intensely (I famously hate jazz and that can happen all too easily) and then feel trapped because you can’t walk out without physically moving many people out of your way, and everyone will think you are a fucking bitch (this may only apply to me).

But then these boys started playing the most beautiful comfy intelligent 70’s dream songs. All of them harmonize and it sounds like if Dirty Work by Steely Dan got a little sexier (I know, right?) and weirder and then was an entire band’s catalog. I rarely find current bands that I can fully get behind, but this is impossible not to endorse. The one who sings this song specifically has got an insane voice. He can do all these trills and runs but chooses to use it for good not evil. Everyone I show this band to is floored, so perhaps you, dear reader, will follow suit.

Don Henley “The Heart of the Matter”

My dad holds a grudge against Don Henley. He doesn’t say this outright, but it’s pretty clear that he thinks Don kinda stole his career. My dad wrote this duet ballad with Patty Smyth (of Scandal, not the Horses one) and she released it as a single, singing it with Don Henley. I don’t know the intricacies of the relationship, but I assume my dad agreed to that (ultimately The Eagles Guy guaranteed the song success) but still thinks “ahh, but only if it were me…”. Also, my dads solo stuff from the same era sounds *exactly* like Don Henley, in voice as well as vibe.

So I’m not sure if it’s because I’m subconsciously trying to undermine my father, or rather because Don’s stuff fondly reminds me of him, but I fuckin love the guy. I listened to this song 28 times in one day according to Spotify wrapped. I also try to do it at karaoke every time I get drunk but apparently it’s not a big enough hit to *have* a karaoke on YouTube, which I believe is a crime on par with grand theft auto. How can you take someone’s whip, man? How can’t you have a karaoke of Heart of the Matter?

Prefab Sprout “Wild Horses”

When I was 21, I think, I discovered a band that really solidified my love of music that kinda sucks. I consumed their catalogue voraciously, which, given the quality of some of it, was not a simple feat.

By now, most people are familiar with this incredible and strange 80’s avant-grade Made for Radio outfit that never quite Made it on the Radio, but the second and third full length records (Two Wheels Good/ Steve McQueen and From Langley Park to Memphis, respectively) get all the love. This haunting sex ballad is from their fifth, and imho, oft overlooked, installment entitled Jordan: The Comeback.

One thing about this band is it seems like Paddy McAloon, the guy who’s band it is, is trying too hard to be cool all the time. But that turns out to be a good thing, because on Jordan’s successor Andromeda Heights, it appears he kinda stops trying, and that record and the following ones sound like if the Hallmark corporation tried to commission a pop rock album in 1997.

Don’t get me wrong—the first song, an ode to electric guitars entitled Electric Guitars, scratches that “this music kinda sucks” kink that I have, but I would feel like I had to explain a lot if I put this on at a party or whatever.

But this one- Wild Horses- requires no explanation. Just a beautiful, sad 80’s ballad about a girl or drugs or (most likely) actual horses sung by a really weird voiced guy.