“Adventures in Success” (1983) – Will Powers * Written by Lynn Goldstein and Sting * Produced by Lynn Goldstein * 12″ single: “Adventures in Success” / “Adventures in Success (Dub Copy)” * Album: Dancing for Mental Health * Label: Drag City/Palace
Pseudonymous and hypnotic, “Adventures in Success” cleared some space in alternative radio playlists with its New Thought messages of self-affirmation and slinky, stealthy beats. Although most listeners probably recognized it as a spoof, positive mind exercises have a way of prevailing over problematic origins and changing lives anyway.
It was rock photographer Lynn Goldstein who hatched the idea of Will Powers, whose full album Dancing for Mental Health didn’t quite mesmerize the way the leadoff single did (and who had no connection to the late ’80s Will to Power duo). She sent her voice through a down-pitched vocoder and got famous friends such as Sting and Robert Palmer (who helped with side B’s dub version) to give it musical palatability. Video director Rebecca Allen devised the 3D talking faces video that upped the track’s trance factors even further.
Certain questions undermined the record’s premise: Can an ultra-mechanized piece of mass culture really help to enhance a human being’s uniqueness? If one’s singular existence is the first law of success, why should the endeavor to become something different from that serve as laws two and three? But there again… all roads do lead to Rome.