History Music / Sparks

Sparks are an American band who formed in 1970 in Los Angeles and are notably still active today. The band officially consists of only brothers Ron (keyboards, songwriting, questionable mustache) and Russell Mael (vocals), but over the years they have accumulated a large amount of ex-members and session musicians. The duo's style is characterized by their whimsically over-the-top songwriting, their funny, witty lyrics, and a quirky stage presence which plays with the contrast between Russell's hyperactive FaceOfTheBand attitude and Ron's [[TheQuietOne deliberately stiff and taciturn]] stage persona.

* PowerPop: Coincides with their Music/GlamRock and Music/NewWave albums.

* PowerPop: Coincides with their Music/NewWave albums.

* IntercourseWithYou: A ''lot'': "Amateur Hour", "Under the Table with Her", "Sextown U.S.A.", "All You Ever Think About is Sex".

* RefugeInAudacity: They take it all the time.
** "White Women" from ''Big Beat'' gets special mention. As internet music critic MarkPrindle put it:
---> "''Never in my 160 pounds on this Earth have I come across a track that seems so blatantly racist while actually being just unbelievably stupid. You can almost smell the NAACP hearing it, going, "Hey! Wait a minute!!!," grabbing the lyric sheet in disbelief, reading through it three or four times and finally concluding, "Umm.... Huh?"''"

* {{Fanservice}}: The sleeves for ''Big Beat'' and ''Plagiarism''.

After releasing two albums that were largely ignored in their homeland, the duo decided to try their luck on the other side of the Atlantic and relocated to England. It was there that they reached their popular (and arguably most creative) peak in 1974 with third album ''Kimono My House'', a fusion of glam-rock and dance-pop sensibilities with wry and clever stories, which spawned a surprise number two hit single with their SignatureSong "This Town Ain't Big Enough For the Both Of Us". They followed it up with ''Propaganda'' the same year and ''Indiscreet'' the next, which were essentially a continuation of the ''Kimono'' sound (to continued success), after which they returned to the United States and fell into obscurity starting with ''Big Beat''. During the next few decades they would go on to make over a dozen albums in which they would flirt with many different genres, including disco with ''No. 1 In Heaven'' (produced by GiorgioMoroder) and an uninspired NewWave/synthpop period in the '80s which is generally agreed upon as awful (''Angst In My Pants, Pulling Rabbits Out of a Hat, Interior Design'').

* RecordProducer: Have '''DIY'''-produced the majority of their records starting with ''In Outer Space''. Prior, they made use of Music/ToddRundgren (''Sparks'', ''A Woofer in Tweeter's Clothing''), Muff Winwood (''Kimono My House'', ''Propaganda''), [[Music/DavidBowie Tony Visconti]] (''Indiscreet''), Rupert Holmes and Jeffrey Lesser (''Big Beat''), Terry Powell (''Introducing Sparks''), [[Music/DonnaSummer Giorgio Moroder]] (''No. 1 In Heaven'', ''Terminal Jive''[[note]]along with Harold Faltermeyer[[/note]]), and Moroder associate Mack (''Whomp That Sucker'', ''Angst in My Pants'').

* RecordProducer: Have '''DIY'''-produced the majority of their records starting with ''In Outer Space''. Prior, they made use of Music/ToddRundgren (''Sparks'', ''A Woofer in Tweeter's Clothing''), Muff Winwood (''Kimono My House'', ''Propaganda''), [[Music/DavidBowie Tony Visconti]] (''Indiscreet''), Rupert Holmes abd Jeffrey Lesser (''Big Beat''), Terry Powell (''Introducing Sparks''), [[Music/DonnaSummer Giorgio Moroder]] (''No. 1 In Heaven'', ''Terminal Jive''[[note]]along with Harold Faltermeyer[[/note]]), and Moroder associate Mack (''Whomp That Sucker'', ''Angst in My Pants'').

* MinimalisticCoverArt: ''Kimono My House'' is a picture of two Geisha Girls against a green background. The cover also didn't have text in its first pressing.

* RecordProducer: Have '''DIY'''-produced the majority of their records starting with ''In Outer Space''. Prior, they made use of Music/ToddRundgren, Muff Winwood, [[Music/DavidBowie Tony Visconti]], [[Music/DonnaSummer Giorgio Moroder]], and Moroder associate Mack.

* KubrickStare: Ron loves to do this.

After releasing two albums that were largely ignored in their homeland, the duo decided to try their luck on the other side of the Atlantic and relocated to England. It was there that they reached their popular (and arguably most creative) peak in 1974 with third album ''Kimono My House'', a fusion of glam-rock and dance-pop sensibilities with wry and clever stories, which spawned a surprise number two hit single with their SignatureSong "This Town Ain't Big Enough For the Both Of Us". They followed it up with ''Propaganda'' the same year and ''Indiscreet'' the next, which were essentially a continuation of the ''Kimono'' sound (to continued success), after which they returned to the United States and fell into obscurity starting with ''Big Beat''. During the next few decades they would go on to make over a dozen albums in which they would flirt with many different genres, including disco with ''No. 1 In Heaven'' and an uninspired NewWave/synthpop period in the '80s which is generally agreed upon as awful (''Angst In My Pants, Pulling Rabbits Out of a Hat, Interior Design'').

** UpToEleven with ''Lil' Beethoven''

* StageMom: "Talent Is An Asset".

* RichesToRags: The protagonist of "Dick Around" goes through this after his partner leaves him.

* BrokenRecord: The majority of ''Lil' Beethoven'' is built around stock phrases and repetition, but arguably the crowning example of this would have to be "My Baby's Taking Me Home", which consists of the title repeated approximately 104 times with the only other lyrics being a spoken monologue delivered by Russell.

* EpicRocking: ''Hello Young Lovers'' is practically an album full of this.

* EverythingsBetterWithBob: "Here Comes Bob", about a man who initiates car crashes in order to meet new people.

* SignatureSong: "This Town Ain't Big Enough for the Both of Us", and to a lesser extent "Beat the Clock". Every one of their style phases may also have its own signature tune.

* YouCanLeaveYourHatOn: The video for "I Predict", courtesy of [[MrFanservice Ron]].

* TheCameo: [[{{The Go-Gos}} Jane Wiedlin]] duets with Russell on two songs in ''In Outer Space''.

** "What Are All These Bands So Angry About?" is thought to be a swip at the mainstream popularity of NuMetal bands in the late '90s-early 2000s.