My boyfriend and I have taken the whole “not leaving the house” thing as far as we can, as things are really starting to ramp up here in Tokyo. Did you know that you can buy junk food in bulk on Amazon? Guess who has a cupboard full of potato chips, fried squid, beef jerky, and Oreos?

Yo.

We also bought a shitton of puzzles on Amazon. They’re a great way to kill the time, and we can listen to music at the same time. Right now, we’ve been burning through the massive 33 CD Encore Donna Summer box set. That thing is a monster. So many remixes and single edits. It came at just the right time for me to ingest a massive amount of music too, so at least I got that going for me, which is nice.

All that disco has certainly put me in a dance mood lately, and in the rare hours where we’re not shaking our jigsaw-solving butts to extended remixes of “Hot Stuff,” we’ve been rocking out to this album.

That’s Eurobeat Non-Stop Megamix
Michael Fortunati Mega Mix
Stock, Aitken & Waterman Mega Mix
Eurobeat is so fucking stupid I love it so much. Ironic music is for assholes, give me something that is base-level designed for mindless brain dead stupid motherfucker gay ass bullshit any day of the week, especially right now. World in shambles, society collapsing, pump these beats directly into my cerebral cortex so hard and so loud that they jackhammer all the bullshit out of my head and replace it with four on the floor beats until my brain is mush and I can’t think of anything at all. Give me shit that makes Abba seem deep. Give me shit that makes Erasure seem low-key. I want the musical equivalent of Richard Gere in American Gigolo, dumb as rocks, hot as hell, and with gay subext.

This LP of two non-stop Hi-NRGH mega-mixes certainly fits that bill. One mix for each side, on side A we got a mix of tracks by Italo Disco superstar Michael Fortunati, and on the B-side a selection of lesser-known tracks by uber-hitmaker dance music factory Stock, Aitken & Waterman, the people who brought you “You Spin Me Round,” “I Should Be So Lucky,” “Never Gonna Give You Up,” and “I Don’t Wanna Get Hurt.” Sure, most of those songs sound the same, but who cares. SAW are the Motorhead of dance music. They basically write two or three songs over and over and over again, but they’re such bangers no one complains.

I’m not that familiar with Michael Fortunati, but if this mix is any indication as to the quality or style of his work, sign me the fuck up. Great shit. “Into the Night (Slip and Slide)” is a fantastic amazing opener to this mix, and the (high) energy keeps going throughout the entirety of it. His side is actually more upbeat than the SAW side which start out with a medley of slightly more downbeat tracks by Princess. I know that she was rather popular in the UK for a bit, but I had never heard of her, and didn’t recognize any of the songs that make an appearance in the mix.

Their mix really picks up after the Princess tracks though, as it segues in Hazell Dean’s absolutely lovely “Whatever I Do (Wherever I Go).” I only recently discovered Dean’s music (this type of stuff never broke through in the states) and damn it’s good. No wonder she’s called the queen of Hi-NRG, she’s like a white Donna Summer on ecstasy.

From Dean the mix shifts hard into “I’m So Beautiful” by Divine. Yes, that Divine. Divine was a fantastic drag queen and a wonderful actor. She could not sing. Like, not even a little bit. But she owned it. And her horrible raspy, driveway gravel of a voice ends up somehow working in the end. Maybe just by sheer willpower or a complete lack of anything even remotely resembling shame. Gotta respect that level of not giving a fuck.

Fellow drag artist Lana Pellay closes things out with her single “Pistol In My Pocket.” I’m not 100% sure I’m using the right pronouns with Lana, who also goes by the name of Al from what I’ve read? Please forgive me if I’m fucking up here, it’s not out of disrespect. This song slaps. She can certainly sing better than Divine, but I think I like the message of Divine’s “I’m So Beautiful” more than this track. There’s something about a morbidly obese drag queen screaming violently at me to tell me that she, and I, are beautiful that I just get with on a deep, philosophical level.

Although I do love “Pistol In My Pocket.” It’s basically a prolonged dick joke and I can get behind that.

When this whole thing ends let’s gay dance party outside, okay?

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