I'd like to completely ruin four songs for you. May I? The next time you hear them, an image (you didn't want or ask for) will appear in your head. It will burrow into your brain like a earwig -- it may drive you crazy. Or at least make you think.

 

I started thinking of this when a friend of mine, Priv. now known as Curry Spice after her rocking version of the Spice Girl's "Wannabe" at work today;

"Yo, I'll tell you what I want, what I really really want. I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna really really really wanna zigazig ha."

Oh, it was far better than the video! I'm sorry you missed it. Well, an out of breath Curry Spice, said that her 3 year old daughter loves "Feeling Groovy" which the child calls  "Feeling Goofy". (As opposed to groping Mickey?)

"That's a song about suicide," Curry Spice announced in her typical playfulness.

"WHAT?" I asked.

"Yep."

And then I recalled its real title is "the 57th Street Bridge Song". A bridge notorious for all the people who have jumped off it;

"I've got no deeds to do, no promises to keep
I'm dappled and drowsy and ready to sleep
Let the morning time drop all its petals on me..."

Ewww! Curry Spice might be right. Then again she might not. Too late. I will never listen to the song again with out picturing some one doing a perfect swan dive off the bridge and into oblivion. Yet somehow it is so...so much better. I mean, the song is just so sugary sweet. A tiny drop of blood on a chipper smile does make it more bearable. Okay, it kind of rocks now. Thanks, Curry Spice, for making me laugh at death again. Yo -- zigazig ha. I wanna, I wanna, I wanna...

 
Well, I just had to ruin her day, so I mentioned the Monkees' "Last Train to Clarksville" is an anti-Vietnam war song. (By the way -- they aren't REAL monkeys. You're thinking of Don Kirshner.) Clarksville, Tennessee is just a jumping off point. From Clarksville victims, I mean soldiers, were shipped off to kill or be killed. That is hidden under the bouncy melody and in the run of the mill daily things; "We'll have time for coffee flavored kisses -- and a bit of conversation."

It sounds like such a happy song. I have heard that song all my life and loved it so. I've always thought it was about a businessman going on a trip and saying bye to his sweetie. I never asked why he might not be coming home. I never asked, "What's the big deal about Clarksville?"

Lesser songwriters than Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart would have been flat footed. They would have started with the boy in Vietnam full of fear that he is about to die. That is obvious, and would have been hardly a feel good sixties pop hit. Besides, did the writers ever really feel what that was like? And could kids listening to the song with their Count Chocula, Saturday morning, dance along to that a guy being shot down in Nam?

No. So Boyce and Hart backed up a month or two and wrote about something they had certainly felt; the anxiety of making a phone call to a loved one when you need them so badly. Perhaps their lover has got things to do. Maybe later. The caller's worst fears are coming true. Yet they don't want to break down on the phone. The songwriters have the self control to drop the emotional bomb only at the very end, "I don't know if I'm ever coming home." Once you know what's really going on in the song, that is a chilling moment.

Instead of a disposable protest song, it is a song about everyday longing that we can all understand; someone we trust won't be their for us in our moment of greatest need. That can be a loved one -- or your country.

"I'll Be Watching You" is the favorite of many love smitten fools. Written about the collapse of Sting's marriage to Frances Tomelty; the lyrics are about her harassment -- her maniacal watching of "every breath you take, every move you make". Fatal Attraction, the musical.

People have come up to Sting, excited as kittens, to tell him how they played that song at their wedding.

"Oh, really?" he smiles, "Good luck, kids."

I've save the best for last. Randy Newman has called "I Honestly Love You" a pointless song, "boring even" he said in an interview in Playboy. (I bought that issue just for that interview. Ahh hmm.)

Well, if you stop and look at it as this little four minute play and then think about why the songwriter wrote it -- it becomes a rather deep -- and troubling movie.

It was written by Peter Allen, a gay man. Great writers write about their own emotional experiences. Imagine him falling in love with someone, unsure if he should really let his feelings be known. One day he does. He blurts it out. Or gave the right look;

"Maybe I hang around here
A little more than I should
We both know I got somewhere else to go
But I got something to tell you
That I never thought I would
But I believe you really ought to know...
I love you
I honestly love you..."

But then he sees his worst fears coming true;

"You don't have to answer
I see it in your eyes
Maybe it was better left unsaid..."

The writer retreats into his mind, in the same way any of us has when we put are heart out on our sleeve only to have it crushed -- again. He thinks that someday the way he feels won't brand him as a freak to be looked at with shock and horror just because he said three little words;

"If we both were born
In another place and time
This moment might be ending in a kiss
But there you are with yours
And here I am with mine
So I guess we'll just be leaving it at this..."

That's not trite. That is hardly Hallmark. Unless Hallmark now has a "I'm sorry you found out I'm gay, and your not -- and you will never love me," line of cards out.

Of course the writer left the reason for the rejection out of the song. Each of us fills THAT in with why we feel we are a monster that will never be loved. When a songwriter's heartbreak is honest, we fill in the blank with our own pain.