I was eleven when it dawned on me I didn’t have to listen to my parents’ music. It had served me well enough. They had a hi-fi in the living room, encased in a lovely wooden cabinet as was common in the seventies and I would slide open the door that hid the shelf that stored albums, scanning through them in search of something contemporary amongst my dad’s classical collection. Favourite album: “Close to You” by the Carpenters. I loved to sit on the step leading down to our sunken living while listening to Karen’s glorious voice sing what I wanted to be my future wedding song, “We’ve Only Just Begun” and that tune about someone with captivating beauty, “(They Long to Be) Close to You.”
On the day that you were born, the angels got together
And decided to create a dream come true,
So they sprinkled moon dust in your hair of gold
and starlight in your eyes of blue.
That is why all the girls in town
Follow you, all around,
Just like me, they long to be
Close to you.
At first when I sang along, I suppose I just sang what Karen sang because that’s the way the song went. I knew she was singing about a guy. In time, I thought more about the words coming out of my mouth in an unintentional off-key harmony to Karen’s perfect pitch. A heavenly guy with throngs of girls in tow. “Just like me, they long to be close to you.” Sometimes I thought it was funny; other times, it just made me feel funny.
Richard and Karen grew up outside of L.A. and the very white dude, with blond hair and blue eyes may have been a California surfer, but I only knew of the Golden State from “The Brady Bunch” and “Adam-12.” I imagined a handsome prince instead. Oh, dear. I was beginning to feel very funny.
I made the necessary adjustment. I changed “girls” to “boys.” Presto! A blue-eyed blonde as the centerpiece. Using fairy-tale magic, I’d turned the prince into a princess. “All the boys in town follow you, all around. Just like me, they long to be close to you.” Whew. I still felt funny, but I was working on it. Presumably, it would take time for gender reassignment lyrics to stick.
My entry into pop music, a realm I continue to love, came in sixth grade, when Cam Millar stood up at lunch and said, “Raise your hand if you like Elton John? Whoever doesn’t isn’t cool.” Hello, peer pressure. Naturally, I raised my hand. Elton. He was the guy with goofy sunglasses, right? I went home and asked for an Elton John album for my birthday, his “Greatest Hits” from 1974, still an amazing collection. Beyond the sunglasses, there seemed to be something funny about Elton, too. Something about his lyricist, Bernie Taupin, drew my attention as well. I suppose I was still working through my own funny feelings.
Listening to Hamilton, Ontario radio station CKOC—clearly none of the broadcasting authorities had dyslexia—on my A.M. transistor radio proved to be a great way to be cooler (or so I thought) as I got to know all the songs by, not just Elton, but ABBA, KC & The Sunshine Band and Barbra Streisand. Surely memorizing all the lyrics to Diana Ross songs would get rid of funny feelings, once and for all.
But then pop music introduced me to Andy Gibb and Rex Smith, triggering more funny feelings, not so much about what they sang but based on their photos gracing the sleeves of the 45s I bought. Hair, I told myself. Clearly, it’s just hair envy. I’d buy some Vidal Sassoon shampoo and puff up my hair with a pick and a gob of mousse. Maybe my big hair could be as dreamy as theirs. I regularly checked their photos, strictly for hair comparison’s sake, of course.
I hadn’t yet realized how badly I sang so I continued to belt out pop tunes I played on my brand-new stereo. My family and a few unlucky friends hid their horror while I made songs like “You Light Up My Life” and “Can’t Smile Without You” more grating than they already were.[1] Still, I became more self-conscious, if not yet about my vocal (in)abilities, then about what others might intuit from the lyrics I sang.
Some songs were safe, if plain weird, like “Muskrat Love” and “Disco Duck (Part 1)[2].” (Some parts of the ’70s are hard to explain. Too much Tang, I guess.) I could also sing “Car Wash” without a thought as my parents fretted about my career aspirations. Butchering the lyrics to “Blinded by the Light” by Manfred Mann’s Earth Band came naturally since I didn’t have a clue what they were singing and there was no internet to check myself. (Seriously, who or what was little Early-Pearly and what’s a curly-wurly? Maybe writer Bruce Springsteen was taking in more than Tang.)
Singing along to songs by guys was also worry-free as I attempted to hit the notes for “She Believes in Me” by Kenny Rogers and “She’s Always a Woman to Me” by Billy Joel. However, I gravitated to the songs women sang so singing often required revisions. Over time, I became much more adept at pronoun gymnastics. Sometimes I made the adjustments while other times I decided the changes would be clunky or just too much to consistently carry off. Donna Summer and I sang “Will you be my Mr. Right?” in “Last Dance” because a change to Mrs. Right seemed nonsensical. I’d never heard that expression. Did guys just not care as much? As well, I had too much fun belting out Sheena Easton’s “Morning Train (Nine to Five)” to bother with alterations. It was chock full of he, his and him.
My baby takes the morning trainHe works from nine to five and thenHe takes another home againTo find me waitin' for him.
“My baby” might be surprised and disappointed to find me at the end of the workday. Clearly, I’m no Sheena but then who is?
And flash forward to 2022. I’m not going to do the math. It’s not hard. It’s just hard to take. (Cue Al Stewart’s 1978 ditty, “Time Passages.”) My, how far we’ve come from the days when Elton sang about “Little Jeannie” and “Nikita,” Barry Manilow sang to “Mandy” and George Michael sang “Everything She Wants.” In the past month, “Unholy” topped the US and British charts, the first Billboard Number 1 by someone who identifies as nonbinary (Sam Smith) and someone who is trans (Kim Petras). No chance though that I’ll be singing along to its inane lyrics, alone or in public. (“Mummy don’t know daddy’s getting hot at the body shop, doin’ somethin’ unholy.”) Still, as they say, it’s somethin’.
I don’t sing aloud when others are present anymore. A friend’s cutting critique not so politely put a stop to my sing-alongs. Simon Cowell would have been nicer. What’s done is done. Karaoke bars are safer to visit, I suppose. Still, I mumble-sing in my home as music plays from my laptop.
Yesterday I listened to YouTube as I did abs on my exercise mat. The online channel has a knack for knowing what I might like to hear after my chosen tune ends. It played a soulful song I wasn’t familiar with, the male voice sounding better than most. As I continued to do sit-ups, the singer sang, “He tears me to pieces.” It startled me. Did I hear that right? And then: “She don’t know you like me. She could never love you more than me.” I glanced at the screen and made a mental note…Omar Apollo singing “Evergreen.” When I finished my workout, I listened again, a video with the lyrics on the screen. My ears weren’t mistaken. A man singing about a man. (According to Wikipedia, Apollo is openly gay.) The song was a modest hit on the Billboard chart, missing the Top 40, peaking at number 51. So far, it’s hit the Top 40 in the UK, Ireland and Australia, its greatest success coming in the Netherlands where it reached number 4. The various videos of the song have more than ten million views on YouTube.
Recently, the music channel reacquainted me with an English band called The 1975 which first garnered international attention with the song “Chocolate.” Their songs are catchy, but I’ve never really gotten into them until their new album, “Being Funny in a Foreign Language,” was released in the past month. I listened to several songs and the lyrics made me listen, having something to say beyond generic fare designed to appeal to (or not offend) the masses. On the lead single, “Part of the Band,” lead singer Matty Healy sings:
I fell in love with a boy, it was kinda lame,
I was Rimbaud and he was Paul Verlaine
In my, my my imagination.[3]
Healy sings of a woman, too, letting listeners speculate about his possible bisexuality or a total ambivalence about sexual orientation. The song hasn’t received a great deal of airplay, not likely due to boy talk but perhaps more on account of its frankness in mentioning heroin, cocaine and ejaculations. Still, the video has received about five million views.
Sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. Same but different. While other people get worked up over pronouns they and them, I’m still taking in how he and him are popping up and evolving in pop music. How lovely to have a singer killing me softly with his song, no lyrical adjustments required.
[1] Full confession: I like “You Light Up My Life” and “Can’t Smile Without You.” I just know I’m not supposed to admit it. Alas, peer pressure persists.
[2] Good grief, is there a “Disco Duck (Part 2)”? Turns out, yes. Mercifully, it’s an instrumental. I’m not providing the link. If you must go there, you’re on your own.
[3] Rimbaud and Verlaine were 19th-century poets who had a torrid, sometimes violent affair. Rimbaud didn’t seem to hide his homosexuality while Verlaine struggled with it, marrying a woman and often getting intoxicated whereupon he would become violent.
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