This 1983 One-Hit Wonder Wasn’t Even Supposed To Be a Song: “We Were Trying To Make Our Friends Laugh”

Generally speaking, mainstream pop music favors the lowest common denominator of musical trends. That’s not to say these characteristics are lesser than more abstract concepts. The very nature of pop music requires it to be as universal as possible so that it can become, well, popular, which is what makes this initial songwriting request for the 1983 one-hit wonder “Maniac” so odd.

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Before that strange request even came to be, though, the initial seed of the song had to come from somewhere. For lyricist Dennis Matkosky, that turned out to be a harrowing news feature on John Wayne Gacy. In the late 1970s, law enforcement officials exhumed the remains of eight men beneath Gacy’s home in a suburb of Chicago. Matkosky was listening to the reporters describe the gruesome scene, doodling on a piece of notebook paper.

When he presented his song idea, “Maniac”, to his wife, the lyricist remembered, “So, I go out to the living room and say to my wife, Leslie, ‘What do you think of this title?’ She goes, ‘Go get some help. Like, go talk to somebody. I think there are some anger problems there.’”

Sembello had a much different response.

How the 1983 One-Hit Wonder “Maniac” Came To Be

Dennis Matkosky might have gotten a less-than-enthusiastic response from his wife, but considering his first lyrical draft, it’s easy to see why. Before “Maniac” turned into the 1983 one-hit wonder we know it to be today, Matkosky’s lyrics were much darker. “He’s a maniac / he just moved in next door / He’ll kill your cat and nail it to the floor.” To his wife’s credit, we might’ve had the same reaction. Songwriter Michael Sembello, however, saw a diamond in the rough.

Matkosky recalled, “His eyes get real wide. He goes, ‘Alright. Hit the weirdest chord you know.’ We thought it was a joke, because we weren’t trying to write a song. We were trying to make our friends laugh. I hit that chord, and Michael started singing what I thought was ‘Bali Ha’i’ [from South Pacific]. But it wasn’t talked about. He just came out with this melody.” The B-section, Matkosky added, was inspired by a song called “D.O.A.”, or “Dead On Arrival”, which featured the tritone chime of an English ambulance.

“Before we knew it, we were done,” Matkosky said. “That was really the genesis of it. Now came the work.” And Phil Ramone, who was working as the music supervisor for an upcoming movie called Flashdance. Ramone was interested in “Maniac”, but he told the songwriting duo that they would never be able to include it in the movie with its original lyrics. With a few rewrites and lyrical tweaks, the final version of the song came to fruition.

The record, which Michael Sembello sang, hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, buoyed by the success of its Flashdance-themed music video. Not bad for a song that started out about nailing cats to the floor.

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