I’m a sucker for a song with a “weird” structure. You know the type. Something like Journey’s Don’t Stop Believing. All hook, interesting verse structure. Cameo’s career has sadly been summarised by that stupid SNL skit with Word Up!, a song that is actually great, but now reduced to a meme.

Candy is the superior song in Cameo’s second act, saxophone included. A band that made cool funk music (Shake your pants is a banger), Cameo took a turn in the 80s to a peppier branch, mixing R&B with electrofunk. Word up!, their 1986 classic is an album of 7 songs with 4 singles. That tells you the quality of it.

Zbigniew Rybczynski’s video plays with composite layers. With a busy Times Square, the band dances, cavorts and ogles at dancers of changing sizes. It’s impressive for its era and keeping with their easy going demeanour pays well. The codpiece joke is sure chuckle. Whether the aforementioned candy is simply a sweet or the other type of popular candy on the 80s is left for the viewer to decide.

-Sam J. Valdés López