In 1985, Eddie Murphy could do no wrong. 48 Hrs., Trading Places and Beverly Hills Cop were all hits. (Beverly Hills Cop was the highest grossing movie of 1984.) He had recently completed a four-year run on SNL that people believe kept the show from dying. Delirious was the biggest standup special of the decade. So he decided to go into music.
That’s right. Eddie Murphy made an album. That album produced what became a notorious song, “Party All the Time.” Written and produced by Rick James, Eddie Murphy’s first single actually reached #2 because, again, he could do no wrong. But the album was pilloried by the critics and the song became a joke. It didn’t kill his career – he actually recorded a few more albums – but, despite its commercial success, the song was viewed in the alternative-dominated ’90s as a relic from a decade when people had collectively lost their musical minds. (Or, this could just have been the result of a bet with Richard Pryor.)
Of course, the song was written by Rick James, a man who has written his share of classic songs. So maybe the song isn’t so bad.
And Sturgill Simpson is here to show us the way. Simpson has been playing the song live at shows for over a year. He then recorded it for a special iTunes-only download version of his latest album under his Johnny Blue Skies moniker, Mutiny After Midnight. And now it’s widely available.
Simpson and his band add a reggae beat and play it a bit like a jam band doing a hybrid of reggae and funk. Simpson takes the lyrics entirely seriously, singing with a fair amount of soul. There’s funky guitar, keyboards and horns and they keep the backing vocals from the original. There’s a guitar solo and the band vamps for the coda as a replacement for the Murphy-James duet in the original.
It’s great to hear a major artist take this song seriously and do a good job with it.
