Smokey Robinson and the Miracles

This started out as a post about liking pop songs that are in opposition to your own ethics. See, last night "Shop Around" by the Miracles came on the car radio. This is my father's favorite song, which I always thought was funny, because he did in fact marry the first woman he ever dated seriously. Steven thought I was belting it out in the car because he, too, married the first woman he ever dated seriously, and that I was enjoying the irony. In fact, I was just enjoying childhood nostalgia.

However, "Shop Around" is not my favorite Miracles song. Actually, I have a tie for my favorite: "You Really Got a Hold On Me" and "I Second That Emotion." Like "Shop Around" for my father (and me), these songs express sentiments that I'm actually not particularly down with. So that's where I started.

But on reflection, I think I love them for a different reason than my father loves "Shop Around."

I think I love the gender-bending.

This is really evident in "I Second That Emotion," a song all about how the singer doesn't want any one-night stands, thank you, only serious commitment. This sort of song should, gender politics wise, be sung by a woman. But it's not. It's sung by a man with a really high voice.

A couple weeks ago, "You Really Got A Hold On Me" was also on the car radio, and I remarked to Steven that it would have sounded so very different if it had been sung by Motown's other primo tenor, Marvin Gaye. The way that Robinson sings it, it's almost impossible to take "You Really Got A Hold On Me" seriously. He knows it's a little overwrought. He knows it's a little bit ridiculous. But he feels it anyway, and you can hear both the humor and the heartbreak in his voice. I love Marvin Gaye but I don't think he could have pulled off the same trick.

And again, the sentiment is one that, if we were being stereotypical about our genders, would be sung by a woman. Has been sung by women, many many times: you treat me wrong but I still love you.

And I think some of the pleasure I get from these songs, these old songs, these classic songs, is knowing that the genders are being messed with. Isn't one of the reasons "I Second That Emotion" so successful because it's unexpected, coming from a man's throat?

Because even with his high, high voice, Smokey Robinson doesn't sound like a girl. He sounds like a sweet, feminine man, a tender man, a delicate man.

Which leads us back to "Shop Around." Which also succeeds, I think now, in part because it's sung in Robinson's tenor. Sung by someone with a smokier quality to his voice, without that pure girlish tone, and the song might easily become mean-spirited instead of playful. It might be harder to pardon the sentiment, for some of us at least. Instead, it's just silly. A little overwrought, a little ridiculous, and a lot exuberant. Robinson's voice undermines the song's metaphor, intentionally or otherwise.

In more prosaic news

I think I need new shoes.

I love my current pair of Keen's, but looking in the mirror this morning, I noticed that they allow me to turn my foot in (roll toward the arch, aka pronate), which aggravates my plantar fasciitis. And this morning, my foot hurts. Even with the arch supports and everything. Sigh.

Any suggestons from the audience?

(x-posted in a slightly different form to fatshionista.)

For those of you dying of curiosity

Because I know some of you are. ;)

In regards to black_pearl_10's recent query...

( possible sexual TMI below )

unexpected consequences of braces

I run into that metal-to-metal taste a lot these days. From forks, paper clips, my thumb ring...