It’s no secret. When I wrote the lyrics to “Innocent Night” only one person was in my mind, guiding me with beautiful musical inspiration: Benny “The Voice” Mardones.

Benny’s epic “Into The Night”  had recently been brought to my attention by soft-rock afficionado and Flute Squad lead guitarist Father Ryan O’Graham. I later realized this very song that began with the line “She’s just 16 years old, leave her alone, they say…” had tortured me time and time again during the seven years I spent stocking shelves in my neighborhood grocery store. I mean, who was this dude? Why was he singing about a 16 year old chick? Why is he not listening to everyone around him who tells him to leave her alone? How could everyone in America not see through what I saw as a blatant admission of pedophiliac date rape?! I absolutely could not stand it.

Alas, I wanted to write a hit, so I begrudgingly looked to Benny for guidance. He’s the man that should know, right? The album featuring “Into The Night” ironically entitled Never Run, Never Hide is virtually unknown. In fact, Mardones is widely considered to be a one-hit wonder. But his one-hit topped charts TWICE (once in 1980, and again in 1989). Future songs of this chart-topping caliber became known as being “Bennyized” or having “The Mardones Touch”

I wanted that kind of power. I wanted “The Mardones Touch”. Wikipedia (which never ever lies) sums up what I am in interested in quite nicely:

“[Mardones] still lives quite well on the royalties received from this song… ”

So, I grabbed my pen and paper and locked myself in my bedroom with a song I absolutely hated playing on repeat. I swore I wouldn’t come out until the evil elixir of this song had seeped into my subconscious and forced me to write lyrics that could top the charts at least twice. 

But I had to figure out the “it” factor that led to “Into The Night”’s great success. Was it the moody bassline, the infectious groove? Could be. But then again, so many other songs have these elements but never even break through the top 100. In fact, I’m not even sure Benny knows, otherwise he’d write another hit (he’s still making albums you know).

After two long weeks of eating crumbs off the same floor I had been defecating on, I figured that sooner or later I had to let myself out of my bedroom or I was going to die! Then it hit me:

AMERICA LOVES PEDOPHILIA!

I quickly scribbled down a nasty little story. It was about having to confront a friend on his annoying habit of being a child molester. I mailed the song to the Kashgrab Records hit factory, and a new Benny-ized epic was born.

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Up Next: Email strategies to get famous people to recognize you, even if they ultimately reject you. No for real, we actually approached Benny Mardones about singing on Boneslinky!