by Kevin Burton
We should do this more often. This was salve to an aching heart.
Driving around with my wife, looking for garage sales, soaking in that 60s music sound. It was the weekend of our town’s citywide garage sale. On the horizon: low-priced treasures we can not live without, that we would sell at a sale of our own in two or three years.
Good times for sure. How did we get there? It was a long and winding road.
Well, Jeannette has a friend named Judy. Judy has an enclosed deck we may want to use as a model for our new deck when we finally dismantle what’s left of ours. We’ve been talking about going over to Judy’s place to look at it.
Trying to get my mind to remember Judy, I came up with “Judy’s Turn To Cry” by Leslie Gore. “Remember that one?” I asked Jeannette.
“No.”
“Really, no?”
So I dialed it up on my phone. She still didn’t remember it.
Anyway, I let Siri keep playing tunes after Judy’s Turn To Cry ended. We got a Kev’s karaoke playlist with “This Diamond Ring” by Gary Lewis and the Playboys then “Calendar Girl” by Neil Sedaka.
Siri played the feminist anthem “You Don’t Own Me” also by Gore, then “I Will follow Him” by Peggy March, which to me was ironic, as the latter is as un-feminist as you can get.
Eventually we got to “One Fine Day” by the Chiffons, which is also a favorite of mine. But I was stunned and amused to see on my phone, in parenthesis next to the One Fine Day song title “(explicit).”
That I could not believe.
OK, what am I missing? What part of the shooby-dooby-do wop wop harmonies or the lyrics could be considered explicit?
I’ve always thought of One Fine Day as the ultimate happy, hand-holding, girl-group sunshiny fun song.
The song does make reference to a boy “running around.” Could that be it?
So I had to check out the lyrics, because people slip double-meanings into songs all the time. But I couldn’t find any writers who thought it was anything close to explicit.
“Lyrically, the song explores themes of hopeful romance and wistful daydreaming, where the protagonist foresees a perfect moment of mutual affection with an uninterested suitor, conveyed through simple, repetitive refrains such as “One fine day, you’ll look at me / And you will know our love was meant to be,’” according to grokipedia.com. “This phrasing emphasizes longing and inevitability, drawing a brief thematic parallel to the anticipatory aria “Un bel di vedremo” from Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly.
“This song is about a girl who has a crush on a boy who doesn’t appear interested in her. She expects that he’ll eventually fall for her, and waits eagerly for that day,” agrees SongFacts.
Nothing explicit there.
Hey, this song was written by Carole King and Gerry Goffin. When you come across an explicit song in their music catalog, you let me know, OK?
One Fine Day was first given to King and Goffin’s babysitter Little Eva, who had a hit with The Loco-Motion. But “her voice did not sound right when they recorded it, so the song went to The Chiffons,” according to SongFacts.
The song hit number six on the R&B chart, according to Wikipedia. I was surprised to hear that. So R&B maybe, explicit, no.
Two lessons here.
First, don’t take to seriously the offerings of AI. I am guessing some sort of AI thing governed what songs played for my wife and I that day and was responsible for “(explicit)” being put on the screen.
Second, music to the rescue! Doo wop is hardly the main substance of a life well lived. But for me anyway, a visit to the world of pop music improves my mood, my attitude, fosters creativity and brings back memories.
It’s a magic carpet that shouldn’t be forgotten in some dusty garage of the mind. My blogs would probably take on a much sunnier hue if I took that magic carpet ride more often.
