103: Sparks - Music That You Can Dance To (1986) - Let's Get Funky

“Let’s Get Funky” closes Music That You Can Dance To with one of those very Sparks moments where the title, the lyrics, and the actual sound all seem to be having different conversations. On paper, it promises one thing. In practice, it turns into something much stranger: part groove experiment, part arrangement misfire, part genuinely funny Sparks vignette.We spend a lot of time here on the gap between the song’s ideas and its execution. The opening suggests there might be a great track hidden inside it, and the lyrics are full of exactly the kind of odd, quotable detail Ron Mael does so well. But the arrangement — especially those huge, repetitive orchestral hits — ends up overwhelming everything else. It’s one of those songs where you can hear the better version trapped inside the one that actually got recorded.That makes it a frustrating ending, but not an uninteresting one. In fact, that’s part of the album’s story as a whole: even when Sparks misfire, they tend to do it in a way that is at least memorable. “Let’s Get Funky” may not be funky, and it may not be good in the usual sense, but it definitely leaves an impression.It also sends us out with a broader feeling about Music That You Can Dance To: a more solid, more inventive album than its reputation sometimes suggests, even if it still has its rough edges. There are real highlights here, some tracks that have grown in stature over time, and one or two choices that make you wonder what might have been with a different arrangement or tracklist.