Winamp Wednesday is our continuing feature spotlighting MP3 favorites from the wild-west days of the early internet: the B-Sides, live shows, off-air recordings, classics, and today’s track…
Hoku, “Another Dumb Blonde”
We’re a long way from “Tiny Bubbles”.
Teen pop is a weird thing. There’s a disconnect between what you’re supposed to like at twelve versus fourteen versus sixteen. The term “Tween” wouldn’t enter the common vernacular for a few years, but it was easy to feel the difference at the end of the Millennium. One minute you’re doing your best Johnny Bravo and having lunchroom discussions about PlayStation versus Nintendo64, the next you’re a hormonal mess with anger issues and loud mixtapes.
For my cohort it feels like the appearance of Britney Spears was the starting line for this transformation. She was the first of the new wave, and your reaction as a teenager, whether it was one of total acceptance or one of revulsion, would determine whether you liked what you were supposed to like or if you were about to throw yourself headlong into some various subculture. No, I don’t like Britney/Christina/Samantha/Jessica, I just discovered a noise-rock band from twenty years ago and I’m going to make it my entire personality. This phenomenon caused me to go deep into the reissues of Elvis Costello’s early albums, a hobby that certainly made me relatable and popular. But it was better than liking what we were supposed to like. That stuff was for babies, for kids who were generations away in being all of two years younger than us. We were different.
Okay, but we all secretly kind of liked most of these songs from jump street, right? We just couldn’t admit it to each other until years later when “Toxic” blew the doors off the place. Oh, Britney is good now. Maybe Britney was always good for a portion of our hearts that hadn’t calcified over like the love of three good women. There was space enough for all kinds of sound in this giant wonderful world of ours. You could like Dan Bejar and still not change the station when “(You Drive Me) Crazy” came on.
But what of the also-Britneys? What was their ecological niche? Christina was the Pepsi to Brit Brit’s Coke, Billie Piper was the British equivalent, but where did Hoku fit? The answer would be determined by a screenplay that had been sitting in turnaround for years. “Another Dumb Blonde” was the single off the soundtrack of Nickelodeon Films’ Snow Day, a minor early-2000 release that was at one point going to be an Adventures of Pete and Pete movie. As it is it’s a minor trifle, meant for middle-grade kids then and for Chris Elliot (or Pam Grier or Iggy Pop or Chevy Chase) completists now. Josh Peck plays a fat kid who has farts dubbed in over his every move. It’s almost exactly what you expect from a kid comedy at the turn of the century, right down to the soundtrack that includes two different album tracks off of Smash Mouth’s Astro Lounge as well as the side-one-track-one from Mighty Mighty Bosstones’ Let’s Face It. This is a 90s hangover trapped in amber, so no wonder they recruited another possible teen dream to craft a hit for the project. Right besides 98 Degrees and Boyzone was the brand-new Hoku. She was a recruit for the younger crowd, for those just getting a handle on their own tastes but not yet in the full throes of adolescence. Nickelodeon and Disney were her beat.
But she had been around longer than appearances would suggest. Hoku Ho is one of the ten kids who called Don Ho dad. Yes, the “Tiny Bubbles” singer, he of the many appearances as the character of Don Ho on damn near every TV show in the seventies, the same guy who real ones know as the bad guy in Joe’s Apartment. Here was a guy who had weathered decades in the entertainment industry, and you could be damn sure anyone who could show up as themselves and get a standing ovation anywhere and everywhere had thoughts about the games record executives play. Hoku said as much about the abuse and coercion that she suffered in an excellent 2020 interview with Billboard:
That was a big reason why I ultimately walked away. Honestly, it just stopped being fun. There was so much pressure from my label executive, and he obviously wanted to do things with me and was very vocal about it. And even though it was all verbal — he never touched me — it got to the point where I was scared to go to the label. I always wanted people with me so I wouldn’t be alone with him.
If someone thinks they can get away with that sort of behavior with Don Ho’s kid, imagine what they did to starlets who were less connected. And that’s part of what makes “Another Dumb Blonde” striking. When most songs from this era were veiled come-ons or standard oh-baby-baby yearning love songs or strangely lecherous old-dude-penned odes to barely-legalism, this song did something unique in declaring the singer’s unapologetic independence. This is a breakup song, and it’s an empowering breakup song. There’s no tears shed by Hoku; she’s even going to meet this boyfriend in person to tell him what a jackass he was. (“I think it’s about time that I let you go, so I’ll tell it to your face instead of tell it to you on the phone.”) She wants someone to see her as a person, not just a trophy or the prize to be won. “Another Dumb Blonde” is a strong and lovely testament to self-respect and individuality in a genre and a time that praised young women for fitting in and flaunting their sexuality.
(The writers of “Another Dumb Blonde” would go on to co-write Aly & AJ’s “Potential Breakup Song”, which is certainly a way to say they were being way too nice the first time. There’s an escalation over a decade that goes from “this isn’t working out and I need to be with someone who respects me” to “I will burn down your whole fucking life” that accurately shows the escalation from Y2K to the end of the Bush 43 presidency. Everybody’s sick of this shit and even pop meant for middle schoolers is going to go harder.)
Hoku is maybe the first demonstrably quaint of the Millennial Pop Stars. She got married at eighteen, got uncomfortable with the sexualization of her peers, went off and got involved in her church and faded away from the mainstream. Honestly, good for her. She probably knew from having a show-business dad that show business will eat you alive without hesitation, and if you’d rather live a life then nobody could fault you. That is to say, if you didn’t want to be considered Another Dumb Blonde to be chewed up and spit out by the system, then you got out when the getting was good. She’s apparently still married to that same guy, has a few kids, lives a quiet life where she’s occasionally recognized for her pop stardom. I honestly wish the best for her, and I wish more of the starlets could have had a similar graceful exit.
Because it’s not like we’re talking about a blip here. This was a Top 40 hit! In fact it was her only Top 40 charting single, despite being her lesser-known film theme song. You’ve heard “Perfect Day” many more times, because how many times have you caught Legally Blonde on cable? Hoku went gold, but the label was expecting a platinum record. Blame Napster. “Another Dumb Blonde” falls into the same category as “Upside Down” by A*Teens or “C’est La Vie” by B*Witched, two be-asterisked bands that will make appearances in this column. It’s obviously targeted to younger listeners, but there’s enough of it that’s kind of interesting and irresistible that it became a sneaky addition to many MP3 libraries. Nobody my age was going to risk their peers seeing them buy this record at HMV or Goody or Tower or wherever, not when we were all supposed to be into…apparently the new Montell Jordan single, according to that week’s Billboard Hot 100?
A damn good pop song is a damn good pop song, and if it’s got a good beat and you can dance to it then who am I to deny its power? Even back then, twenty-five years ago nearly to the day, I could tell that this one had a bit more assurance about it. “That’s all right, that’s okay: I never loved you anyway” is a heavy statement to pitch to the viewership of Disney Channel. Relentlessly upbeat and steadfast in morals and pitching a message of self-reliance isn’t something that a record label can easily control; we saw that with Robyn a few entries back.
Maybe there’s still space for a Robyn-esque comeback for Hoku Ho. Teen pop was a funny thing, but we’ve come a long way. What would her next “Perfect Day” sound like?
Next Time: I bleed and I bruise. What’s it to you?