This week, pop songwriter and producer Evan “Kidd” Bogart revealed a secret hiding in plain sight on Rihanna’s 2006 hit “SOS”: “The whole second verse of that song is ’80s song titles strung together as sentences,” he said in a viral interview snippet that mapped out the references line by line. Mk.gee’s new single “Rockman” is sort of like that, except Michael Gordon has his sights set on classic rock’s great, flamboyant entertainers. Over a loping riff with more than a whisper of Blue Öyster Cult, he evokes Bruce Springsteen (“I want it on fire”), Michael Hutchence (“I need you tonight”), and, in the song title, Sir Elton John.
Alongside these lyrical subliminals, you might catch some other sly jokes—like the gun pointed at an overstuffed modular synthesizer in the single artwork, or the eagle screech perched atop the mix. How does all this irony and interpolation manage to sound so totally sincere? Gordon’s angelic, layered harmonies certainly help, but really, this man just seems to adore the idea of being a rock star. Show him a genre with a history of macho self-indulgence, and he’ll close his show by playing the same song 12 times in a row. He’s poking fun at his rock’n’roll idols as only someone who loves them can.
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that the “Rockman” single artwork features a pedalboard. The artwork depicts a modular synthesizer.
