Please Don't Tell Her

This is the flipside of "Tick Tock," on a 45 by Ritchie Cordell (see below).

It's a bitter song, sung by a man who has every right to be bitter.

"Please don't tell her that I love her," the man begins, upper lip set stiffly. "If she should ask me I'll just say/ 'I hope you're happy with your new love/ On this...

Wait for it... here it comes...

"...your wedding day.'" Aw, no!

Not only does he have to attend the wedding between his love and another, he has to pretend to be pleased on her behalf. We might find him, after enduring the ceremony with a forced smile, not on the dance floor but at the bar.

While his pride is wounded, he still has some: "I don't want her sympathy." And anyway, it would only matter to him, as her pity would be insincere: "I know that now she has forgotten/ The dream she used to share with me." Poor guy.

In short, "I must be brave, though she's untrue."

But that's the Smokey-Robinsonesque facade. Inside, of course, he's a mess. "She'll kiss his lips and say I do/ I'll shed a tear by she won't know it."

The backup singers (which sound like they include Simon), sing-- to the traditional processional melody-- "Here comes the bride/ I wanna cry." They, like a Greek chorus, let slip what's really going on.

As Inigo says in The Princess Bride: "His true love is marrying another tonight, so who else has the cause for ultimate suffering?" If he makes it through the whole deal without breaking down, he deserves to catch the bouquet.

Like "Dori Anne," this is a tale of young angst, a popular topic for the slower doo-wop numbers, of which this is one. It has a melodramatic spoken, interlude, a "ba-b-b-ba," a lot of "oooh" in the background... the works.

Simon has often said that doo-wop was one of his major influences, and here we get to hear him assaying the form himself. It's not a classic like "Silhouettes" or "Sea of Love," but it's not half bad, either.


Musical Note:
Ritchie Cordell wrote some of his own songs, which you might have heard, for Tommy James and the Shondells: "I Think We're Alone Now" and "Mony Mony." A cover of the former (by Tiffany) was succeed at the top of the charts by a cover of the latter (by Billy Idol). The only other songwriters to replace one #1 hit with another? Lennon and McCartney.

Cordell also produced "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" for Joan Jett and an album for The Ramones.

Next Song: The Pied Piper

That Forever Kind of Love

Even thought this Johnny Cash-like number mentions grooms and brides, it will never be used as a wedding dance. How do we know? Its first lines are: "All of my friends who've gotten wed/ Seem to wish that they were dead." And, as they saying goes, it's all downhill from there.

"I'll lead a bachelor's life instead/ Unless I find/ That forever kind/ of love."

Divorce rates rose sharply in the late 1940s, then settled back down... but never to the almost-nil figures they had been. Still, the stigma on divorce-- societal, religious, etc.-- was still in force, and many unhappy marriages persisted.

"Take a happy bride and groom/ Look at them-- it's love in bloom," just like most of the pop songs of the day insisted it could, would... and should.

"But later, watch their dream go 'boom,'" Simon, as Landis, laments. "They didn't find/ That forever kind/ of love." [emphasis mine]

The chorus paints their average day: "He buries himself the paper/ She complains and nags and wails." For those of us who don't remember, "the paper" is what we called the newspaper, which was printed on actual paper and delivered stories of yesterday's events to our homes. So the more he ignores her, the more upset she gets, and the cycle escalates (it's a three-dimensional cycle, OK? Just... go read your paper.)

Our speaker is almost thoroughly disenchanted. After all, he has been sold in marital perfection since he was tucked in by Mother Goose and entertained by Walt Disney: "It seems like happy endings/ Are only in fairy tales."

Well, almost disenchanted. He still holds out hope that the "forever kind of love" exists, and that it will happen to him-- "I wouldn't mind/ That forever kind of love"-- and that the glow of early love will last: "Married and yet so starry-eyed... Forever groom and forever bride."

While there are many songs about wanting, finding, and getting love, there are far fewer about keeping it. And this one is about not keeping it. Again, yes, there are dozens of break-up songs, but the idea is that once you are married to the love of your life, you're finally done with all of that "Wishin', hopin', thinkin' and prayin'" and "tossin' and urnin'" that define the dating process.

But the speaker finds that even marriage is no guarantee of happiness and contentment! He surveys his married friends, and finds they have a whole new set of traumas and dramas to deal with.

"Why do fools fall in love?" then, as another song asks, answers itself. Why? Because they're fools! And "why must I be a teenager in love?" is also self-explained by the idea that we never stop being "teenagers" when it comes to love-- love make us teenagers all over again.

Our speaker is almost mature enough. He'll wait for the kind of love worth waiting for-- love with another person who wants to maintain that sense of wedding-day bliss. But soon after the wedding day-- actually, as soon as the ceremony is over-- we stop calling the couple "groom and bride" and pronounce them "husband and wife."

While it is wonderful to try to maintain that wedding-day bliss, it must also be understood that it is impossible to, under the stresses of daily life. Such high expectations cannot help but be dashed. The "forever kind of love," he will have to learn, is possible. It's just a different kind of love that the wedding-day kind-- not the same, as he thinks.

As a friend of mine puts it-- how many put all their planning into their wedding, which lasts just a day... and none into their marriage, which is supposed to last forever.


Next Song: The Growing Up Years

Another Galaxy

This song is much like The Beatles' "She's Leaving Home." As in that song, we get both the woman's story and her parents' reaction. However, there are only two verses here, and one chorus. Also in that song, she is going toward her lover, and in this she is running from him.

But still, both songs are about women leaving stability for the promise of something more, even if it means instability.

While there are scant clues here, we can guess that the wedding was supposed to take place in Texas, since the color of the roses on her wedding cake recalls the song "The Yellow Rose of Texas." Also, there is a "border" so close she can drive across it in less than a day's time.

The song tells us that she feels that leaving before the wedding was the best option, the "lesser crime." Better than leaving the groom at the altar, far better than going through with the ceremony and then getting a divorce.

The word "gone" is repeated, both to imply the finality and irrevocability of her flight, and to imply the idea that she may have left not just her wedding but her senses. In short, she was stretched too tightly, and she snapped.

This is not to say that she is crazy. Having a sane reaction to an insane situation may seem crazy to all those for whom the insanity seems rational. But from her perspective, the situation was untenable, and she did what she had to do to stay sane.

Naturally, even though she feels that was she has done is for the best and will not undo it, there is still the wrenching feeling that comes with abandoning all one has known. Her dreams that night are stormy, reflecting the pain she feels, the pain she knows she has caused, and the uncertainty of tomorrow's life when she wakes.

Perhaps she associates the Mexican shoreline with "hurricane" weather, because she imagines the eye of one passing over her bed, her "pillow" an "island" targeted by the storm. Remember from the song "Hurricane Eye"-- the eye is only a temporary calm. While she is calming down from the turmoil of her leaving, the tumult of what happens tomorrow has yet to strike with its gale in turn.

The chorus explains that changes are hard, almost impossible, but so very necessary. The pain of losing everything, even if that everything is not much or even bad, keeps many people from making such changes. They stay in bad jobs or bad relationships for years or more, afraid to give up stability for potential gain. Most could give up a "no" for a "yes"... but then most such choices ask us to give up a "yes" for nothing more than a wisp of a "maybe."

And then sometimes, the present is so miserable, and the potential future that stems from it so undesirable, that this other potential future-- this thin "maybe"-- is just too alluring.

Tomorrow will bring its half of the storm, yes. But right now, in the hurricane's eye, she can see a calm sky filled with another entire "galaxy" of possibility. And if she can get through the other half of the storm, it should be clear skies after that-- containing a whole galaxy to explore as her reward.


Next Song: Once Upon a Time There Was an Ocean.