http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=le5aIqn_MfE

 

While California Love will always be my default song because of my culture and my generation, in truth there’s only one song that’s the theme song for this city, the song that you will hear whenever one of the city’s teams pulls off the big win at home.  It’s unbelievably cheesy and corny, and God bless Randy Newman, but he’d probably be the first to say he’s not the top vocalist of his generation.  Throw in the fact it was the 80s, and the camp appeal of the song “I Love L.A.” makes it one of the city’s (more innocent) guilty pleasures.

And look at that video!  It was the early age of music videos, so you can’t fault it technically.  But it’s funny to see how some of those landmarks (and styles) have aged in the past 30 years.  No doubt that’s part of the appeal too: the ‘good old’ 1980s: everyone was coked up and no one was scared of dying from a sexually transmitted disease yet.  Yeah, those were the days…