In Honor of Amy Winehouse: Top Five Rock & Roll Beehive Anthems
They tried to make her tame her beehive, but she said, no, no, no! Amy Winehouse‘s honey of a hive is the summer’s most influential rock & roll hairdo — check out your favorite sleazy punk rock bar, and you’ll find a half-dozen plain Janes who learned from Amy they can quadruple their starability by ratting their hair into something fierce. (And the Winehousian 1940s party dress seems to be this summer’s gym shorts/cowboy boots combo, although we’ll see when the weather heats up.) You can’t beat the beehive for glam punkette attitude. So in honor of Amy, here are the top five rock & roll beehive anthems. Yes, yes, yes!
• The Ronettes, “Be My Baby” — Amy learned it all from these New York dolls. In 1964, Ronnie Spector’s hair was taller and meaner and scarier than all four Shangri-La’s combined, plus the drummer from the Honeycombs. You just know her rat-tail comb was a switchblade.
• Prince, “Sexuality” — Have you listened to “Sexuality” today? If not, you are wasting your summer and it isn’t even June yet. “Stand up! Organize!,” the Joe Strummer of orgasms commands his army of hair-hoppers. Revolution hair style now!
• The B-52’s, “52 Girls” — Kate and Cindy, glamorous girls of the U-S-A, rise out of the South to give the world a bouffant headbutt.
• Dusty Springfield, “I Only Wanna Be With You” — Born Mary Margaret O’Brien (same as my grandmother, just switch the first two names), the Dust Sister proved Irish girls knew the score: if the hair is big enough, you can hide a lot of sin under it.
• Mari Wilson, “Just What I Always Wanted” — Beloved by new wavers for her fab 1983 album Showpeople, Mari was an MTV cocktail princess who sang sticky Aqua-Net ballads like “Glamourpuss” and “Cry Me A River.” Better than Tracey Ullman, not as good as Alison Moyet, about even with Voice Of The Beehive. Finally, respect to Priscilla Presley — she never made her own music, but her barely-legal teen hive was hot enough to rekindle Elvis’ sex drive years after it seemed dead, inspiring the King to rise for the raging-boner blues of The ’68 Comeback, Tiger Man and From Elvis In Memphis. As Amy Winehouse knows, one taste of honey makes you want the whole beehive.<.p>