SONG OF THE DAY: Turn Off The Lights (kudzu'd)

People usually just think “Turn Off The Lights” was a sexy ass song that Teddy Pendergrass made because he was a sexy ass man, but it was actually CIA-funded, and was pushed on urban American radio in the summer of 1979 in response to the Islamic Revolution in Iran, and the rising energy costs America was experiencing as a result of that. The song was released by Philadelphia International Records, the label run by the famous Gamble and Huff songwriting tandem, who had helped usher in an era of pro-Black pop soul in the decade before. But by 1975, Gamble and Huff were caught up in a payola-related scandal, and recruited by the CIA, much like the Iowa Writer’s Workshop MFA program, to help engineer mass-consciousness. This ushered in an era of songs like “Turn Off The Lights”, The Jacksons’ “Enjoy Yourself”, and “Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now” by McFadden & Whitehead. “Turn Off The Lights” only got up to 48 on the Hot 100 Billboard charts, as Teddy’s voice was too sexy in a primordial sense, so the song’s effects on mass consciousness were thwarted by the feral sexiness of the track. The CIA handlers of Gamble and Huff had toyed with the idea of using the song with Michael Jackson’s still childlike voice, though America was perhaps not ready for that level of sexualizing a well-known child singer, albeit him now being an adult. Plus, Jackson was in the process of being moved to a solo career, moving from a soul-specific CIA operation, to a larger CIA pop music project beginning with Epic Records around the same time. But Jackson’s “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough” was created in the same secret writing sessions of the late ‘70s as “Turn Off The Lights”. In 1982, as Pendergrass was finishing up his sixth album, he began to become frustrated with his label’s handlers, and had threatened to name some names and start outing the secretive efforts to control pop music in America. This led to a “mechanical failure” in his Rolls Royce causing an accident which left the singer paralyzed. His sixth album was released, but without the same push behind the scenes, and thus was his first to not go gold or platinum. The label (and CIA project) used up the rest of his recorded material with Philadelphia International to release 1983’s Heaven Only Knows, also without any push behind the scenes, and that finished his contractual obligations with the label, with Gamble and Huff, and with the CIA handlers who helped make him a superstar.