Smokey Robinson and the Miracles

[pantryslut]

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.

Comments

[billbrent.livejournal.com]

"I Second That Emotion" is my favorite Smokey song. It's so plainly vulnerable yet doesn't want to push things too hard. It employs a brilliant use of the conditional voice ("maybe" in the verses, "if" in the chorus) to express the irony that (borrowing from another song) the love you take is equal to the love you make.

There's an inherent contradiction here that gives the song its dramatic sweep. He's leaving it up to the other to make the next move, so it's submissive, yet it's clearly topping from the bottom in implying that unless she commits, he won't, uh, put out. And I think that's what makes it sound like a classically feminine statement of perspective.

In related news, [mini-rant] it burns my butt when someone puts up inaccurate lyrics at a lyrics website. I mean, why bother if you can't get it right? [/mini-rant]

[pantryslut.livejournal.com]

I am so glad you've shown up on LJ.

[innerdoggie.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, I've seen some awful mistakes. One Willie Nelson song transcription was especially dumb. One phrase was transcribed as "since the cradle broke the bow" when it is obviously a reference to "Rockabye Baby", and should be "bough". The same transcriber messed up "a woman's scorn turn her heart of gold to steel" as "steal". Again, the transcriber didn't recognize the reference. No, I don't think these are spelling errors but semantic ones. Spelling errors look difrent.

[billbrent.livejournal.com]

http://www.kissthisguy.com/

Some mondegreens are more equal than others.

[pennski.livejournal.com]

I was mulling over this post on my way to work when they started playing Elton john's "Part-time love" on the radio and I actually listened to the words and found myself going "Hang on - he's talking about polyamory here!" That's not something you come across too often in pop music.