{"id":23246,"date":"2026-05-14T12:16:29","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T20:16:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/?p=23246"},"modified":"2026-05-14T12:16:29","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T20:16:29","slug":"youre-gonna-get-whats-coming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2026\/05\/14\/youre-gonna-get-whats-coming\/","title":{"rendered":"You&#8217;re Gonna Get What&#8217;s Coming"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe title=\"Spotify Embed: You&amp;apos;re Gonna Get What&amp;apos;s Coming\" style=\"border-radius: 12px\" width=\"100%\" height=\"352\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/playlist\/4BK5xZ7rY5tCQEN0dRkySz?si=faa0c3c7925f4648&amp;utm_source=oembed\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>1<\/p>\n<p>Every day I wake up with a song in my head.<\/p>\n<p>And I never know what it&#8217;s going to be.<\/p>\n<p>And I&#8217;m inspired to write about it, and I know if I don&#8217;t write about it just then, I&#8217;ll lose the mojo. But do people want to read about old songs?<\/p>\n<p>And it is usually old songs. But the sting from &#8220;Tehran,&#8221; the main soundtrack element, watch a few episodes and it gets baked in your brain. And when someone e-mailed me about it&#8230;I felt the connection, the commonality, and that&#8217;s what we&#8217;re all searching for.<\/p>\n<p>And the song in my head a few days back was Robert Palmer&#8217;s &#8220;You&#8217;re Gonna Get What&#8217;s Coming.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Now Robert Palmer became a star with &#8220;Addicted to Love,&#8221; a very good song with an iconic video, but he had a career before that.<\/p>\n<p>Palmer was in Vinegar Joe, but that didn&#8217;t mean much in America, not really anything. But then he put out a solo album, &#8220;Sneakin&#8217; Sally Through the Alley&#8221; in 1974 with an opening three song medley that was absolutely killer, starting off with the relatively unknown, but not by me, Little Feat classic &#8220;Sailin&#8217; Shoes,&#8221; segueing into the Palmer original &#8220;Hey Julia&#8221; and ending up with Allen Toussaint\u2019s &#8220;Sneakin&#8217; Sally Through the Alley.&#8221; It&#8217;s the best thing Palmer ever did.<\/p>\n<p>But I think I bought the second album first, &#8220;Pressure Drop,&#8221; whose title song I knew in its original Toots and the Maytals version, but it was the opening cut I bought the album in the promotional bin for, &#8220;Give Me an Inch.&#8221; Although I did hear it on the radio, I don&#8217;t think many people did, because no one has ever mentioned it to me, and it&#8217;s one of he best thing Robert ever did.<\/p>\n<p>Now Palmer kept making albums, but he wasn&#8217;t making much headway commercially. &#8220;Some People Can Do What They Like had his version of &#8220;Man Smart (Woman Smarter),&#8221; which got some airplay, but only on FM, not Top 40.<\/p>\n<p>1978&#8217;s &#8220;Double Fun&#8221; had &#8220;Every Kinda People,&#8221; written by Free&#8217;s Andy Fraser, which got less airplay than &#8220;Man Smart (Woman Smarter),&#8221; but was heard and then&#8230; Came the fifth solo LP, which opened with Moon Martin&#8217;s &#8220;Bad Case of Loving You (Doctor Doctor)&#8221; which was all over the airwaves. Moon ultimately launched a solo career on Capitol as a result of this, and those records were quite good, but to illustrate their impact, not one of them has its own Wikipedia page.<\/p>\n<p>And Moon Martin is gone now. As is Palmer himself. Despite the debonair look, he ingested copious amounts of substances, and ultimately they caught up with him, Robert died at 54, which is too young in anybody&#8217;s book.<\/p>\n<p>But that previous album, the fourth, &#8220;Double Fun,&#8221; ended with the Palmer original &#8220;You&#8217;re Gonna Get What&#8217;s Coming.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Now to establish a timeline, it was not until almost eight years later that Palmer broke through with &#8220;Addicted to Love,&#8221; a hit in 1986. But it was &#8220;You&#8217;re Gonna Get What&#8217;s Coming&#8221; that put him on the map. Because it fit the format. Was Robert Palmer an R&amp;B crooner? A disguised rocker? In the heyday of corporate rock he lived in a no-man&#8217;s land, cool, but all by himself. But &#8220;You&#8217;re Gonna Get What&#8217;s Coming&#8221; finally fit right alongside the rest of the tunes on the AOR format.<\/p>\n<p>2<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;You came upon me like a landslide<\/p>\n<p>Once in a while I get taken like that<\/p>\n<p>And I like it&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Now ultimately almost ten years later, in 1996, Oasis prominently employed the word &#8220;landslide&#8221; in my favorite song of theirs, &#8220;Champagne Supernova,&#8221; but at this point in the eighties, when we thought of &#8220;Landslide,&#8221; we thought of the Fleetwood Mac song. And the image Robert&#8217;s song conjured was completely different.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve got a Thunderbird parked right outside<\/p>\n<p>Give me a minute to finish this thing<\/p>\n<p>And we&#8217;ll light it&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>This is why I&#8217;m writing. Because I woke up with &#8220;You&#8217;re Gonna Get What&#8217;s Coming&#8221; in my brain this morning for the second time this week, which is a rare occurrence, double fun, and it&#8217;s this line that stuck out.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m walking around the house thinking they no longer write songs about cars anymore. Whereas that was a staple for DECADES! Even before Jan and Dean and the Beach Boys opined about the machines.<\/p>\n<p>But not anymore. Cars have been superseded. The only horsepower that seems to matter anymore is the speed of AI chips by the likes of Nvidia. No one even cares about the power of the chip in their computer, like in the late nineties, and certainly no one cares about the speed of their smartphone. And not every kid salivates about getting their license the day of their sixteenth birthday and you don&#8217;t even need one, Uber will take you around town very nicely. And it won&#8217;t be long before Waymo, et al, make it so you neither own nor drive an automobile, talk about the end of an era.<\/p>\n<p>But the truth was the Thunderbird was already pass\u00e9 by 1978, a bloated machine. Palmer was referencing the legendary fifties models, some with a porthole, that a shop in Culver City specialized in selling back in that era.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re gonna get what&#8217;s coming<\/p>\n<p>You&#8217;ve been asking for it two days running<\/p>\n<p>You&#8217;re gonna get what&#8217;s coming<\/p>\n<p>You&#8217;re gonna get what&#8217;s coming to you&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Now what exactly is she asking for?<\/p>\n<p>Taken alone the chorus implies male dominance, revenge, an attitude that is frowned upon today, almost fifty years later. You&#8217;ve got to respect women. But is that what he&#8217;s really singing about?<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I hope that you&#8217;re half as intrepid<\/p>\n<p>As you make out&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Now everybody back in the sixties knew the word &#8220;intrepid,&#8221; for that was name of the aircraft carrier that picked up the astronauts. Did anybody know what the word meant back then, does anybody know what it means right now?<\/p>\n<p>Well, the Oxford dictionary tells us:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;fearless; adventurous&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s what men fantasize about.<\/p>\n<p>Well, I guess there are men who want their significant other to be close to mute and cook and raise babies, but certainly in the seventies many men wanted an adventure partner, someone who not only would go along for the ride, but would LEAD!<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d never heard a song use the word &#8220;intrepid&#8221; before and I can&#8217;t think of one since. This usage fit with Robert&#8217;s upscale image.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;More often that not, I&#8217;ll bet<\/p>\n<p>You never got what you asked for&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Can I have some more? That&#8217;s what Oliver asked for, never before has a boy asked for more. But the image of a powerful, desirous woman grew and then exploded in the seventies. She wants it, will she get it?<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Keep on pouring until you hear me shout<\/p>\n<p>And turn up the sound<\/p>\n<p>If you want me to drive any faster&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Life in the fast lane&#8230; But now no one hits the highway. Driving cross-country used to be a rite of passage, now why bother, just fly, if you leave home at all.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Caution went out when you walked in the room<\/p>\n<p>If it never came back it would be too soon.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>No limits, baby. Never mind no judgment. This was the freedom we fought for in the sixties and were reveling in in the seventies. And that freedom was emblematized by the automobile.<\/p>\n<p>3<\/p>\n<p>Now Bonnie Raitt had the opposite problem of Robert Palmer. She, unlike him, was known, had a place in the firmament, but had a hard time capitalizing on it.<\/p>\n<p>She began with two earthy albums, a feel that didn&#8217;t break through big commercially that she could never recapture.<\/p>\n<p>From there she went smoother with John Hall and then slicker with Jerry Ragavoy, she&#8217;d left where she came from and had not found an equally strong place for her career to reside.<\/p>\n<p>So then Bonnie worked with Paul Rothchild, who&#8217;d started out producing folkies for Elektra, but made his name as the producer of the Doors. The first LP the two worked together on, &#8220;Home Plate,&#8221; had incredible song choices, but no single, when that was becoming a thing. But the follow-up, &#8220;Sweet Forgiveness,&#8221; which contained the exquisite but now forgotten &#8220;Two Lives,&#8221; had a cover of Del Shannon&#8217;s &#8220;Runaway&#8221; that broke bigger than anything Bonnie had done before&#8230;then again, it was a cover of a well-known number that was due for a renaissance.<\/p>\n<p>So Bonnie decided to shake it up once again. To work with those who dominated her homeland, Peter Asher and his Southern California troupe. Peter had worked his magic not only on Jame Taylor and Linda Ronstadt records, he&#8217;d made J.D. Souther&#8217;s &#8220;Black Rose&#8221; and&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The Glow&#8221; opened with Bonnie&#8217;s cover of &#8220;I Thank You,&#8221; a year before ZZ Top did their version, a rock radio staple. Bonnie&#8217;s got history, she cut &#8220;Love Has No Pride&#8221; on her second album, 1972&#8217;s &#8220;Give It Up,&#8221; a year before Linda Ronstadt did her more famous cover of the Eric Kaz\/Libby Titus classic.<\/p>\n<p>However, the song selections on &#8220;The Glow&#8221; were not as good as the ones on the two Rothchild-produced albums, but on the second side, in the next to last position, was a cover of Robert Palmer&#8217;s &#8220;You&#8217;re Gonna Get What&#8217;s Coming.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>4<\/p>\n<p>Now when I pulled up Spotify to listen to &#8220;You&#8217;re Gonna Get What&#8217;s Coming&#8221; earlier in the week I went for the Robert Palmer version, that was the one I thought I was singing in my head. But when it started to play, the chunky guitar, the rhythmic riff, was not what I had in my mind. The high points were there, &#8220;landslide&#8221; and &#8220;intrepid&#8221; and the chorus, but&#8230;could it be that what had become embedded in my brain was Bonnie Raitt&#8217;s more streamlined cover? I mean usually the writer does the better take, but&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Bonnie&#8217;s version starts off with an explosive guitar by either Danny Kortchmar or Waddy Wachtel, they&#8217;re both credited, I&#8217;ll let you decide. And then&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;You came upon me like a landslide<\/p>\n<p>Once in a while I get taken like that<\/p>\n<p>And I like it&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Whoa, Robert&#8217;s singing with attitude, it&#8217;s a come on, verging on a sneer, he&#8217;s trying to entice her, but Bonnie is ALREADY SOLD! She&#8217;s leading the man.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Once in a while I get taken like that<\/p>\n<p>And I like it&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Inherently a woman is the receiver in sex, but who is the initiator here, who is in control?<\/p>\n<p>Then again, when I asked Bonnie about being the lone female in a group of males, all the guys being after her, she responded WHO SAID I WASN&#8217;T GOING AFTER THEM!<\/p>\n<p><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>1 Every day I wake up with a song in my head. And I never know what it&#8217;s going to be. And I&#8217;m inspired to write about it, and I know if I don&#8217;t write about it just then, I&#8217;ll lose the mojo. But do people want to read about old songs? And it is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-62W","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23246"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23246\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23247,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23246\/revisions\/23247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}