Glenn Frey – "The Allnighter" (1984)

He’s so bad, he’s so good

He makes it feel just the way it should

Nobody else can take her there

The late Glenn Frey’s second solo album – The Allnighter – included “Smuggler’s Blues,” a pretty good song that inspired a Miami Vice episode of the same name.  Frey made his acting debut in that episode, which I vividly remember watching when it aired in 1985.  (I loved Miami Vice, but I’m afraid to watch it now – I have a feeling I’d break out in douche chills if I did.)

Don Johnson and Glenn Frey on Miami Vice

The title track of The Allnighter – which I don’t think I ever heard before it popped up on the Sirius/XM “Deep Tracks” channel earlier today – is most definitely not a pretty good song.  

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“The Allnighter” – which may not have sounded all that creepy when it was first released in 1984, but certainly sounds creepy today – is about a woman who has a late-night itch that only the song’s title character is able to scratch:

She needs someone to treat her right

There’s plenty of men she could call

But she wants him most of all

“Oh God, I hope he’s home tonight!”

She needs a love from a real exciter

She needs the allnighter!

The lyrics of “The Allnighter” go from bad to worse as the song progresses:

He's the one, the one she calls

When she gets that feeling

Some nights she just can’t stop herself

He’s tough and tender, a soul bender

Ain’t no service he can’t render

He touches her like nobody else . . .

He’s the allnighter!

I assume you’ve gotten the point of the song by now, but Frey and his songwriting partner, Jack Tempchin, aren’t taking any chances:

Other guys come and go

They may try but they don’t know

Every girl needs special care

Oh, he’s so bad, he’s so good

He makes it feel just the way it should

Nobody else can take her there

He's the real thing, the pure delighter

He’s the allnighter!

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Today there would be no need for Mr. Allnighter – our heroine would simply open her bedside-table drawer, grab her vibrator, and take care of business sans homme.

No fuss, very little muss – and no need to worry that your dude’s Uber will have a flat tire . . . or that he’ll forget to bring his little blue pills . . . or that some other damsel in distress has already booked him for the evening.

Click here to listen to “The Allnighter,” which esteemed rock critic Robert Christgau called a “smarmy piece of sexist pseudosoul.”  (What he said!)

Click here to buy that recording from Amazon.