first round
(5) scandal, “the warrior”
finished
(12) don williams, “i believe in you”
414-57
and will play in the second round
Read the essays, listen to the songs, and vote. Winner is the aggregate of the poll below and the @marchxness twitter poll. Polls close @ 9am Arizona time on 3/2/23.
The Walls of Heartache, or How I Learned to Like Things: alex berge on “the warrior”
Who’s the Hunter?
Technically, in this case, I suppose I am.
It was deep autumn, 2004. I was home from college for Thanksgiving. The sun set quickly by five o’clock and I was on my way to meet my parents and sister at a local restaurant called the Courtyard that my parents started frequenting just after moving to the Cleveland area and just before I was born. That year was 1984.
I found 106.5, the very controlled eighties and nineties station that played great, safe pop music. I loved 106.5 because it was easy. You know the kind. I turned into the parking lot as Eddie Money was finishing up “Take Me Home Tonight.” Then, without any introduction: boom. The bass drum, tuned low enough to scare off or attract wild beasts, chunks in with the floor tom and cymbals. Crashing and thudding all at once. And then the snare, a gunshot somewhere in the distance. And that was just the first measure. The guitars washed over me, and the vocals bellowed out of my ‘95 Eagle Talon’s speakers like a triumphant siren, as if calling the listener to some new kind of ritual.
I found a parking spot quickly, which is good because by the time the first verse started, I was no longer giving much attention to driving. I sat and listened to the rest of the song, hoping to find out who had done it so I could get back to my dorm room and effectively poison my computer downloading it from Limewire.
Then, some heartache. Phil Rudd’s sticks clicked against the rim and side of his snare. Then on the soft hi-hat. One-two. Then the chords. “Back in Black” started without any mention of the bang bang song I’d just heard. So, like many of us, I remembered as many of the lyrics as I could to search on my parents’ gigantic and arthritic Gateway when we got home from dinner.
That is the long way of telling you that very likely, the phantom tune I had just heard was probably playing on the radio when my parents and sister first started going to that restaurant. That in that same parking lot 20 years earlier, in 1984, nearly four months prior to my gracing the scene, I might have heard those chords and that chorus, somehow. But only if you believe in that sort of thing. I kind of do.
Like many songs now forever etched into my brain, Scandal’s 1984 pop masterpiece, “The Warrior,” found me embarrassingly late, which is not something easily admitted by a person who decided in high school that he would define himself by being an erudite music ingester: not just a listener but someone who went even deeper than simply liking or not liking a song or band. This posture led to an identity of sorts, a dramatic tacit plea for others to think I was smart and cool. I’d have given nearly anything to dip my toe into being mysterious, but I settled. Or at least that was my perception.
But I didn’t own up to the fact that I was—and still am—someone who simply likes what I like and doesn’t like what I don’t. I am no different than anyone else who listens to music, or reads books, or watches TV, or has a hobby, or has been to a mall. Over the last decade or so, I have tried to tell myself the truth: I’m not a music snob, and, truly, I never was because any worthy music snob probably wouldn’t have been 20 years old before hearing the song I’ve been fortunate enough to write about for this tournament. I was never a music snob because I’ve never done the work to truly be one.
Now that I am looking back on that experience of encountering a song that had already existed for two decades, researching and internalizing everything I can about it, there’s something haunting about how after that unwitting introduction, it started popping up more and more, as if I had somehow activated it. This frequency illusion (known colloquially as the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon) happens way too often with me—then and now—and that is in no way a brag. I guarantee you, the reader, have had many instances in which you learn something and then it becomes a part of your daily life, pointing out to you that everyone else around you had known about it, except you. For another quick example: ask me about my time with the concept of the “meet cute” mechanism in romantic comedies, one of my actual favorite genres. It’s a wild ride that will seemingly never end.)
The frequency at which I experienced “The Warrior,” which (suddenly) began playing at basketball games that winter, and now plays at every sporting event and eighties night I attend, as well as in the Home Depot on Halsted Street, on TV shows, etc., makes me wonder where this song was my literal whole life? I’m fine not knowing. But I’m glad I found it, because I’d love to tell you all about what I’ve learned about it in the nearly 20 years since that day. This isn’t the only song that’s caused me to perseverate. Not by a mile. But for a pop song from the eighties, this one deserves some extra thought.
Who’s the Game?
Scandal, featuring Patty Smyth.
That’s the band who recorded and performed “The Warrior,” and throughout many lineup changes, Patty Smyth seems to be the song’s heiress, a development that has always perplexed me, and not because I spent a few days confused about Patti Smith’s involvement with the band (none). Scandal only put out an EP in 1982 and a full-length in 1984 before, basically, disbanding. Patty Smyth is still putting out solo music and there is some footage of her performing “The Warrior” as recently as a few years ago. Some of the band members died or went off into other acts, but past that, I can’t get a good idea about what happened from the naming convention to the disbandment. But I did learn a great piece of trivia: Jon Bon Jovi toured with Scandal (ft. Patty Smyth) as part of the promotional tour for the Scandal EP. Wanting to know more, I fell face-first down a fun and unproductive rabbit hole after typing into the Google search bar, “Jon Bon Jovi Scandal.” The first Google headline reads, “Jon Bon Jovi Admits He’s Been ‘No Saint’” and when I saw that, I knew that was the rest of my night. It’s nothing that bad, at least nothing that I can see. But, to my original point, he was in Scandal for not quite a year before starting his own band. His Wikipedia page makes no mention of his time in Scandal, making me think (wish) there was some inter-band drama, which I’m a sucker for. I’m coming to terms with never knowing. There aren’t many videos showcasing his membership in the band, but they’re out there.
Speaking of the band’s first EP, Paul Shaffer (David Letterman’s sidekick) played the sixties throwback keyboard solo on, “Goodbye to You.” While Shaffer’s not in the actual video, this video is stellar and does much more work for the song and band than the video I’m about to launch into now for “The Warrior.”
The Warrior vs. The Warriors vs. Cats vs. Werewolf
Something I’ve done my whole life: Find a song, then listen to it until it’s tattooed onto my brain. Once I found out about this 20-year-old song, “The Warrior,” it found its way onto my many mixed CDs that played at parties and on car trips and in my shower and at night when I was staring at the oven waiting for a pizza to bake.
But I need to spend some time on the song’s official music video. At the time of my discovery, I hadn’t considered it even having a music video. Now, I know I didn’t think about that possibility because I’d never seen it on MTV or VH1 (which, of course), but also because in 2004, YouTube didn’t quite exist. It would be another few years before I saw it. Music videos have become my favorite medium and watching “The Warrior” again recently didn’t hold the ironic laughter it used to when considering its absolutely bonkers-ness. Instead I have been trying to dial into the something I will harp on a lot in this essay, for better or worse: songwriting and performance intent. This video cashed in all its 1980s-vibe chips and never looked back.
At once, the video pulls from many sources, many inspirations, and, potentially some others I can’t detect (would love to hear your thoughts!). This video from a YouTube show Professor of Rock, hosted by Adam Reader, definitely helped keep me oriented. The music video’s director, David Hahn (not this David Hahn, or this David Hahn, but maybe this David Hahn), had a vision that might have been associatively conceived based on Walter Hill’s spectacular film, The Warriors (1979), a brilliant movie I got to, no surprises, way too late in life. There is a familiar darkness, and, to a degree I love, a sensational and riveting silliness. For instance, within the first few frames of the music video, our perceived hero, Patty Smyth, has her goddamned kimono thrashed by an unknown antagonist, thus literally showing us that our hero is in a situation where being a warrior is not only warranted, but deeply encouraged. But it does little to support that idea or the song as it goes on.
Without relying on a play-by-play of a video you probably saw decades before I did, it’s hard to not marvel at the other obvious pillars the director comfortably leaned against. Less than a year earlier, Michael Jackson teamed up with John Landis to redefine the opportunities and limitations of music videos with Thriller (which has just a hell of an epigraph to kick it off; check it out if you aren’t familiar). And yes, you might have already thought it, but given his one confirmed IMDb credit for this music video, maybe Hahn felt that offering a generic, knock-off version of the iconic Broadway musical, Cats, would seal the viewers’ commitment to seeing just where in the hell this story might take them. But more and more, to me, the video’s aesthetic is as follows: “The Warriors” as live-action Cats. Purely to entertain and capitalize.
Watching it again and again, and hearing Patty Smyth talk about it in the aforementioned interview, this video nearly shows us exactly what the song is not about. We see protagonist Smyth singing to the camera as the same dingbat who clawed and probably destroyed her kimono engages in choreographed dance combat with a host of impossibly modern dance opponents, including a gang whose uniform are cargo nets. There’s also another combatant with a traffic-cone orange mask. That is about as thorough of a description as you need because the whole time, the camera keeps returning to Smyth, whose hair transforms and grows and looks more and more unwieldy even though, at this point, we know she is the Warrior, yet one who is watching this silver-toned threat prance around with other equally unattractive combatants only to find a sweet-looking distressed robo-damsel who seemingly needs help. In health or heart? Honestly, your guess is as good as mine, but I am fairly certain he goes ahead and kills her all the same.
Then, without warning or explanation, Smyth’s hair shoots up even higher as we see her face now painted in a red-white-black-and-blue Kabuki-style pattern. Every time I watch this video, nearing now maybe fifty times, I find myself foolishly feeling like we’re finally at Warrior time, that with her new look, not unlike Bruce Wayne sliding down the Bat pole, we are going to see the triumph that will match the song’s triumphant lyrics and music. The makeup doesn’t last long, though. As quickly as this transformation comes, it goes, with the Warrior back to normal-looking hair and no makeup. Sure, for 20-screen-seconds, there is a somewhat erotic dance to represent a fight between our Warrior and this witless, third-rate Rum Tum Tugger, but it ends with a clunky, pre-Dirty Dancing lift. That’s sort of it.
From here on out, the silver stalker stands steady with a one-thousand-lightyear stare as the Warrior continues belting out the awesome chorus. He does step in to help when she inexplicably falls over, neither faint-looking or physically hurt, and while I can’t really decipher that particular piece of choreography, I do wonder if Smyth resisted the makeup treatment in favor of showing her actual face. After all, music videos were created to sell the song, the album, and, if lucky, the band. There’s more to say about this video, of course, but I’ll end this rant by saying that looking back, with the power of knowing what we know now, it is a missed swing that this video didn’t do more work to support the song’s meaning. I think this song is rooted in strength. And, yes, I know it was a four-minute music video from 1984 and I should probably relax. Pop music by its very nature isn’t supposed to be taken so seriously, I know, and I agree there is no reason to shame a music video. Unless we choose to go a little further. Which I will always choose.
The Warrior of the Words
Serendipity strikes again. As if my relationship with this song wasn’t already filled with some quasi-ethereal circumstances, I learned a few weeks ago that of all years for me to be lucky enough to be in this tournament, it is also the year the song’s co-writer, Holly Knight, released a memoir, “I Am the Warrior: My Crazy Life Writing the Hits and Rocking the MTV Eighties,” which I waited to be released before putting the finishing touches on this essay. There’s only one short chapter detailing the writing and legacy of the song, but one thing blisteringly obvious from the book is that Knight really did embody the female struggle in the music industry during that time, and has written figuratively countless hit songs in her career. But “The Warrior” is among the songs she wrote that remained a “theme song” for the rest of her life.
Lyrically, I think there’s a long-term intention and a short-term vision. In the larger sense, this song is aimed at giving the protagonist agency in heartbreak and loss. Its percussive verse lyrics feed into the anthemic chorus, which is what I imagine many listeners have held on to all these years (in 2004 I internet-searched “bang, bang, i am the warrior”). But how far does the feeling go? I have no idea, but I like to think that at least the germ of the song’s idea is rooted in women having not only a voice, but one that is fueled by unapologetic power.
Holly Knight teamed up with Nick Gilder (of “Hot Child in the City” infamy) to write “The Warrior” with no one in mind to sing it. At least at first. Producer and oft-songwriting collaborator of Knight’s, Mike Chapman, wanted a song for up-and-comer Patty Smyth but sat on the composition for a bit before taking it to Smyth (who was the perceived star of the band she was singing for, Scandal) to record. A year earlier, Knight and Chapman co-wrote “Love is a Battlefield” for Pat Benatar, which is richly and thematically foreboding. Chapman and Knight also wrote/rewrote one of the band Spider’s hits, “Better Be Good to Me,” which ended up being a Tina Turner hit. (Holly Knight was Spider’s early keyboardist.) This is all to say, that there was a fateful energy pulsing through these songs and Holly Knight had her hand on the switch, enabling powerful women to sing powerful songs in a sexist eighties climate that seemed tumultuous and terrifying. It never hurts to have women openly resisting the norms outlined by the Baby Boomer generation/all of history.
In NPR’s “The Women Behind the Music” series, Knight’s edition observes that “Knight wasn't just making statements for women. She described the shifting dynamics of relationships, suggesting that it might be better to unite and take on the world as a team. The fight metaphors in Knight's songs are a reminder that all's fair in love and war — and rock and roll.” I have no further questions.
“The Warrior”’s lyrics, a collaboration between Knight and Gilder, are as ridiculous as they are big. Given Knight’s vast songwriting catalogue, I would have reasoned politely that she must’ve penned most of the actual lyrics. For the sake of the song’s success and my grip on this essay, the lyrics are the lyrics. Nothing more. Nothing less. But in her memoir, Knight tells of the lyric-writing process, which she claims was pretty even in terms of word and line contribution. She says, “I told Nick that we needed to write the kind of male-driven lyrics that men were known for, but that a woman with balls could sing instead.” They succeeded because Gilder, after the song was complete, wanted to record it for himself.
But going further: I don’t think great songs need to always be at the caliber of an AOL Instant Messenger away message. Not all the time, at least. But if a song, deemed great by the critics and record sales, only has tangential and inaccessible lyrics, I often think it is a wasted opportunity. Don’t get me wrong, I admire what Max Collins of Eve 6 did with “Inside Out.” Chris DeMakes, of Less Than Jake, had Collins on his podcast (Chris DeMakes a Podcast) and to paraphrase, Collins tells DeMakes that he was never hoping to tell a story in “Inside Out,” rather he was aiming to use words that simply fit well together and propelled the song sonically. For me, at some point, the free association-style of lyric can pull me away from an otherwise good track. Same with poetry; sometimes, maybe a lot, it’s about how the words sound and that is where it ends. The feeling comes from sound, not meaning. I agree that both can be true and to great effect.
Speaking in generalities, for argument’s sake: Folk music lyrics aim to tell stories. Rap and punk lyrics often dive into real-world political and social plights. What do pop lyrics do, and what are they supposed to do? I think about this a lot, and have for years, since the early aughts when boy bands, teen idols, radio rap, and pop-punk/emo (not real emo) bands dominated. Again, in generalities, boy band lyrics intended to make listeners’ dreams feel tangible, band-member archetype by band-member archetype (Justin Timberlake vs. AJ McLean, etc.). Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, members of the teen pop resurgence, sang about being in a position for those dreams to come true even in the face of hardship. Radio rap in the early aughts was big on money and going to clubs and other embodiments of conspicuous consumption. And with a swift kick to my younger self’s glass chin, pop-punk and emo helped solidify that boys are indeed sensitive, regardless of how they look or act. Actually, sadly and unfairly, pop punk and emo songs often sermonized that girls who don’t love these bad/sad boys back ought to sit heavy with guilt. Always a hyper-focused agenda for pop/radio music, it seems, and I think, lyrically, “The Warrior” splits the difference and splits it well: amped-up, firm female empowerment on one side with over-the-top yet vague, big rock song cliches beaming out on the other. Other songs have done it, too, to great success. But since we’re on this specific journey together, here are a few highlights of “The Warrior”’s words.
First, the use of “bang, bang.” Shots fired. At the “walls” of heartache, no less. According to Knight’s memoir, this was a direct contribution from Gilder a little later into the song’s writing. That onomatopoeia sealed this song’s fate for admittance and tenure in the pop music canon. The move sticks with you and, at its core, is genuinely fun. It is a success on that front, without a doubt. Pop music is catchy. I get that.
Now we have imagery of guns. My wife recently said that she’d known about the song for a long time before she met me as well as a long time before I knew of the song, naturally. Her main point with these lyrics is that warriors, as we often think of them in history books and in popular culture, don’t really use guns. The rest of the lyrics, however, adhere to this insistence on the presence of firearms. “Love is a kill, your heart’s still wild,” evokes a sad Hemingway hunting expedition in Africa, not 1200 AD Japan or Mongolia. In the song’s defense, I’d say that being too literal with pop music is a tricky game. The point is as clear as can be, regardless of these nit-picks.
But then on November 2, 2022, I listened to the song in the shower. I have a shower playlist and yes, it is a weird amalgam of songs like “The Warrior” that have stayed with me closely for years. After the shower-listen, something felt different. It dawned on me: the Warrior is neither our protagonist, nor our antagonist. The Warrior, in song and video, is our narrator, our omniscient voice of relatability. The Warrior is telling us about something that has happened and is equally warning against it, but who is the audience? Other potential heartbreakers? Other women who might experience heartbreak? I looked more closely at the lyrics and while there are points of single-volley dialogue, this verse is the coolest sounding and most enigmatic in terms of intent:
You talk, talk, talk to me
Your eyes touch me physically
Stay with me, we'll take the night
As passion takes another bite
Oh, who's the hunter, who's the game
I feel the beat call your name
I hold you close in victory
I don't want to tame your animal style
You won't be caged
In the call of the wild
What, if anything, is this narrator saying? (Though “Your eyes touch me physically” is simply stunning and not in position for critique.)
Then I thought: the Warrior is talking to herself in what might be the most compelling pep talks I think any of us have been able to experience. You won’t be caged in the call of the wild. Clearly not talking to the person who wronged her. She is preparing herself for a fight and—maybe thinking too optimistically—she is preparing herself to never feel this way again. This is a song about empowerment, about getting knocked down and rising up again. If you survive.
Victory
It’s been a fun effort, delving into a song that might stick in your head for a while before sliding out into the comfortable ether populated by other popular music. Deep dives into these sorts of things—songs, books, movies, and so forth—have always kept me dialed in during times when I was untethered. It doesn’t matter that the video is stone-cold bananas, nor does it spoil anything that the lyrics and their meaning are nebulous yet loud. What matters is the feeling we can get from hearing a new-to-us song that we instantly love and then immediately wonder, Where has this song been my whole life? In the many instances I can claim these feelings, the moment always feels chosen, like that the time and circumstance were necessary. That if the moment had passed, my life might be somehow different, even on a minor-minor scale. Songs score our lives and the playlist will always change. Even if you forget about a song, the next time you hear it, it’ll sound different and the same, depending on where you are and who you’re with. Whether you consider yourself a stereo jungle child or not.
Born and raised in a Cleveland suburb, Alex Berge went on to earn his MFA in fiction. He is a current member of Poems While You Wait, a nonprofit writing collective, and is the former Associate Editor of CRAFT Literary. Alex’s work has appeared in Witness. He lives in Chicago with his wife.
Variations on a popular tune: harris wheless on “I Believe In You”
Scene: A Nashville living room, 1980. Shag carpet, oak paneling. Tacked up calendar. Dried flower arrangement. Soft music leaks out of a silver-plated turntable, a record spinning under the open glass top. A Friday night get-together: lumber execs, car salesmen, PTA rivals, ex-debutantes, music people, ex-military, pharmaceutical sales reps, nurses, ad men, HVAC salesmen. Host keeps spinning same side. Every four minutes he sets the needle and plays it again, without flipping. Music is mostly drowned out by talk: business and shop talk, town gossip, someone’s kid got married, someone’s kid died in an auto accident, merger happening, gas up again, so and so’s daughter’s debut, the nuclear problem, football team’s headed to states, somebody shot up a gas station next town over, discussion of light beer, gut reduction, read somewhere the other day about X being slimming, well you know what you should do, try Y, wife and I have been on it since March and I feel like a hundred dollars… night peters out, guests excuse themselves, sound thins out. Record still playing, stragglers begin to notice. Hey we must have heard this thing a hundred times at… When it’s your party, you play what you like. Hey I’m not saying I don’t like the song; I do. It’s just that… Hostess: Boys, it’s been a nice evening. Let’s not spoil it.
*
“I Believe In You.” Twangy Bakersfield opening. Cowpoke shuffle. Noodling guitar variations, accompanied by pedal steel. Mellow. Descending chord pattern into one-two twang. First verse begins with negative of title phrase (I don’t believe in…), then carries into what Tom T. Hall called a “list song.” Speaker doesn’t believe in: mass media personalities; mass market consumer goods; market prices, aging and mortality; directional platitudes; directional platitudes; directional platitudes; order-based platitudes…
I don't believe in superstars
Organic food and foreign cars
I don't believe the price of gold
The certainty of growing old
That right is right and left is wrong
That north and south can't get along
That east is east and west is west
And being first is always best
I don't believe in superstars
What? See: Kristofferson.
Per Sears’ Consumer’s Guide, Kris Kristofferson was a music and film superstar, known for his often-covered musical compositions, which detail what critics have termed “Rhodes Scholar fallout,” and appearances in the poorly titled The Last Movie, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (in which he played a 36 year old 21 year old), and the unfortunate remake of A Star Is Born.
“Don Williams won’t do beer commercials, sign autographs, or sing in honky-tonks. If that means he isn’t a superstar, that’s fine with him.” —Dick Reavis, Texas Monthly.
Organic food and foreign cars
The health food boom in 1980s America is generally agreed to have been precipitated by a remark made to the home-viewing audience by Steve Martin on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson: “I know, you want to be like me.”
During this decade, foreign cars were also sold.
I don't believe the price of gold
By 1980, the country had been off the gold standard for nearly five decades.
But note the change. Mr. McKinley was nominated at St. Louis upon a platform that declared for the maintenance of the gold standard until it should be changed into bimetallism by an international agreement. Mr. McKinley was the most popular man among the Republicans; and everybody three months ago in the Republican Party prophesied his election. How is it today? Why, that man who used to boast that he looked like Napoleon, that man shudders today when he thinks that he was nominated on the anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo. Not only that, but as he listens he can hear with ever increasing distinctness the sound of the waves as they beat upon the lonely shores of St. Helena.
—William Jennings Bryan, “Cross of Gold Speech.” 1896, Chicago.
The certainty of growing old
It was believed by Saint Thomas Aquinas that aging was not tantamount to a descent into a dark, treacherous valley; even at 50, a man may still pick up women in a bar.
That right is right and left is wrong
Right or wrong, I’ll always love you
Though you're gone, I can't forget
Right or wrong, I'll keep on dreaming
Though I wake with that same old regret
—“Right or Wrong,” jazz ballad turned western swing dance tune (popularized by Bob Wills).
“When a million people drive down and buy the record, you’re right. If they don’t, you’re wrong.”
—Blake Mevis (George Strait’s producer).
And being first is always best
Except when first to:
Contract an untreatable disease
Convert to a persecuted religion in a highly intolerant region
Go deaf from shooting a newly-developed assault rifle
Get eaten by a lion on safari
Go to heaven in a leaky canoe.
*
Sound Emporium, Nashville. Five minutes after two, Don walks into the studio for the afternoon session: white snap button shirt, blue denim jacket rolled up at the cuff, faded jeans and roper boots. He drops his hat into a chair. A big felt Stetson with curled brim and a light sweat stain above the cavalry band. His hair is slicked back, parted in a wave. He slaps his hands together and rubs them. “Boys,” he says, nodding to the session men. “Garth,” he says, shaking hands with the producer. Garth Fundis has produced or engineered for Townes, Waylon, Doc Watson. This’ll be his fourth album with Don.
Session musicians prepping. They use a number system instead of a chord sheet: one-chord, two-chord, three-chord, etc. Session leader to others: Alright, let’s map this thing out here…
To guitar player: I want fills in the first chorus after “love,” “babies,” and “you.” Lean into the second one. Second chorus: fills after “love,” “music,” and “you.”
To steel player: When Don gets to “it’s true, I believe in you,” you take the fill after “you.”
To guitar player: Then, on the third, I want fills after “love,” “old folks,” and “you.” Then the outro. Go a few bars, then restate that descending zig zag thing from the intro… Alright, all set? Let’s cut it.
*
First chorus. Slowed down, mellowed out. But I believe (high pitch flourish on second syllable) in love. Guitar and pedal steel meander between light taps on drum rim. Speaker expresses belief in the generational, the domestic. Guitar licks echo vocal stress…
But I believe in love
I believe in babies
I believe in mom and dad
And I believe in you
But I believe in love
Was it John Donne who said love is like something dearly joined? John Donne who said I like love because it makes me feel like one of my ribs is gone?
How can I live without thee, how forego
Thy sweet converse, and love so dearly joined,
To live again in these wild woods forlorn?
Should God create another Eve, and I
Another rib afford, yet loss of thee
Would never from my heart; no, no, I feel
The link of nature draw me: flesh of flesh,
Bone of my bone thou art, and from thy state
Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe.
―Paradise Lost by John Milton.
I believe in mom and dad
I'd walk for miles, cry or smile
For my mama and daddy
I want them to know
I love them so
—“Mom and Dad’s Waltz,” by Lefty Frizzell.
And I believe in you
Incidentally believing in you seems to have been a common condition during this period.
Now I believe in me
You gave me a reason to
Took me in and cared for me
You believed in me
And I believe in you—“I Believe in You,” the song of the same name (with different lyrics and music) released by Mel Tillis two years earlier, in 1978. It also went #1 Country.
*
Record pushing. Finger dials, taps impatiently, 3x speed of ring… Hello? Jack? What’s the spread? … Every Monday morning, promotions man for MCA Nashville rings up regional directors nationwide to pump them for info on spins, regional performance, local market research, if projections have been met. What’s flopping? What’s rising? What’s stalling? What are you doing about it? He calls his field managers who keep tallies on which stations might add or drop a record. This needs a shove, this needs a push, this needs…
X’s and O’s:
Mentions placed in newspaper music columns. Six months out: artist sent on bus tour to play at radio stations. Come release day: name recognition. Promotional copies of record are sent out. Label flies program directors of radio stations and their wives to private showcase performance by the artist, held in Hawaii or some resort town, featuring complimentary food, drinks, and golf. If artists are put on a station’s playlist, they may also be booked at the concert halls controlled by the radio network.
Release day. Label begins second wave: daily calls with station program directors to get report on record’s performance, identify markets it’s performing well in. If it’s doing well, the label coaxes more spins out of certain stations: It’s fixing to surge. Play it and you’ll be in ahead of the curve. Spins in bigger markets = more of a push on the charts. Get a song into regular rotation—played multiple times per hour, per day—and you’re in business.
The publicity department takes over where promotions left off. Country Music magazine is contacted. How about an exclusive? A cover story? Face on the cover, big feature, our guy’s name in all caps…
Williams is a track-proven artist. Already ten number one country singles. Stations add him to the playlist.
“I Believe In You” debuts on Hot Country on August 23, 1980. It peaks at #1 nine weeks later—on October 18 that same year. The song stays at #1 Hot Country for two weeks and spends 12 weeks on the country chart.
It peaks at #24 on the Billboard Hot 100 and stays on that chart for 13 weeks. It’s Williams’ first (and only) top 40 hit.
*
Second verse. Vocal speeds up, breezing through long lines. Speaker doesn’t believe in religious puritanism. Believes that God is love, that he is omnipresent, all knowing. Speaker experiences existential uncertainty. Pedal steel pulses, wraparound guitar lines echo vocals…
Well I don't believe that heaven waits
For only those who congregate
I like to think of God as love
He's down below, he's up above
He's watching people everywhere
He knows who does and doesn't care
And I'm an ordinary man
Sometimes I wonder who I am
Well I don't believe that heaven waits
For only those who congregate
Legend has it Bonnie and Clyde stopped off during a run to buy the new Jimmie Rodgers side. Which one was it? Likely something from ‘32 or ‘33, before the final run and ambush on Gibsland road.
In the Hills of Tennessee? Miss the Mississippi and You? When the Cactus is in Bloom? Mother, the Queen of My Heart? Whippin’ That Old TB? Gambling Barroom Blues? Blue Yodel No. 11? The Cowhand’s Last Ride? Jimmie Rodgers Last Blue Yodel?
Was it something from the final sessions? One of the cuts he did with the band, like Mississippi Delta Blues? Or could it have been the very last yodel, the one he chose to perform alone, just himself and his guitar?
I was happy, oh so happy
Down in Mississippi way
I was livin' with my pappy
Fifteen years ago todayWhen I left him in the gloamin'
I recall I heard him say
You'll be sorry that you roamin'
Fifteen years ago today
—“Years Ago,” by Jimmie Rodgers.
And I'm an ordinary man
Sometimes I wonder who I am
Groucho Marx once said, the ordinary man lives in a tree.
*
Genealogy of smoothest voices in country music
The first blue yodeler. Jimmie Rodgers (“Treasures Untold,” “Dreaming with Tears in My Eyes”).
The singing cowboys. Gene Autry (“Home On the Range”), Roy Rogers (“Blue Shadows On The Trail”), Rex Allen (“I Ride an Old Paint”), Tex Ritter (“High Noon”), Jimmy Wakely (“Along The Santa Fe Trail”).
Western singing groups. Sons of the Pioneers (“Tumbling Tumbleweeds,” “Cool Water”).
Country duos. The Wilburn Brothers (“Trouble’s Back In Town”), The Louvin Brothers (“Satan Is Real,” “The Christian Life”).
Honky tonk balladeers. Ernest Tubb (“Blue Eyed Elaine”), Lefty Frizzell (“Why Should I Be Lonely,” “Saginaw, Michigan”), George Jones (“Take Me,” “He Stopped Loving Her Today”).
Country tenors. Marty Robbins (“El Paso,” “They’re Hanging Me Tonight”), Hank Locklin (“Send me the Pillow You Dream On”).
Country crooners (baritones). Ray Price (“Night Life”), Faron Young (“Hello Walls”), Don Gibson (“Sweet Dreams,” “(I’d Be) A Legend In My Time”), Billy Walker (“Funny How Time Slips Away”), Merle Haggard (“I’m Always On A Mountain When I Fall,” “I Must Have Done Something Bad”), Charlie Rich (“Behind Closed Doors”).
More country crooners. Willie Nelson (“Slow Down Old World,” “Help Me Make It Through the Night”), Lee Hazlewood (“If It’s Monday Morning,” “She’s Funny That Way”) Gene Watson (“Nothing Sure Looked Good On You”), Mel Street (“I Met A Friend Of Yours Today”), Mel Tillis (“Coca-Cola Cowboy,” “Whiskey Chasin’”), Don Williams (“Good Ole Boys Like Me,” “I Believe In You”).
Daddy sang bass. Johnny Cash (“Don’t Take Your Guns to Town,” “I Still Miss Someone”), Bobby Bare (“That’s How I Got to Memphis”), Tennessee Ernie Ford (“No One Will Ever Know”), Ed Bruce (“Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys”).
*
Second chorus. Quick rush from verse to chorus. Holds note on “music,” followed by bouncy guitar lick. Pauses briefly just before “magic,” holds the final “you.” Trebley guitar lines, jabs of pedal steel. High pitch flourish on next line, then digs into low notes, ending with internal rhyme: It’s true, I believe in you…
But I believe in love
I believe in music
I believe in magic
And I believe in youI know with all my certainty
What's going on with you and me
Is a good thing
It's true, I believe in you
It's true, I believe in you
With the invocation of “you,” the speaker evokes Locke’s concept that Christ and magistrates look to the public welfare; the individual citizen seeks only his own interest.
*
Radio announcer: This is WSM-Nashville. 50,000 watt clear channel broadcasting service of the National Life and Accident Insurance Company. Fiddle screeches, frenetic banjo picking… Heavily accented voice: Alright… getting up time for you and uh, tuning up time for us here, as we bring you a quarter hour of your favorite country music… Radio voice: Eleven minutes before seven o’clock, good morning. Temperature is 50 degrees. This is Radio 65. Harold Hensley with you this morning, along with Bob Randall. Bob will have the news in eleven minutes. Rain coming in, high tomorrow in the mid-60s. Here’s Don Williams…
*
Third verse. Pedal steel swells, 1-2-3-1 guitar lines. Vocal stress on third or fourth syllable of each line. Little hills and valleys. Speaker doesn’t believe: in contemporary morality, in the working day, in racialized society, that superheroes and adventure stars are still commercially viable, that gas is scarce and costs are (five feet high and) rising…
I don't believe virginity
Is as common as it used to be
In working days and sleeping nights
That black is black and white is white
That Superman and Robin Hood
Are still alive in Hollywood
That gasoline's in short supply
The rising cost of getting by
I don't believe virginity
Is as common as it used to be
There are three principal schools of thought on the shrinking prevalence of sexual abstinence.
Our sins are no bed of nettles, but a lotus land of decent ease.
It is sunshine all the time in this land of joy and plenty.
Paradise is not so far distant from the abodes of mortal man but that his emissaries may reach it.
Oh, daddy, don't you worry none
'Cause mama's got the pill
— “The Pill,” by Loretta Lynn.
That Superman and Robin Hood
Are still alive in Hollywood
In fact, the first Superman film since the ‘50s had just been released in 1978; likewise, Robin and Marian, starring Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn in the titular roles, was released in 1976.
That gasoline's in short supply
“That Great Oil ‘Crisis' of '79? The Numbers Spell Out Fraud
THE GREAT ‘oil crisis’ of the summer of 1979 may well go down in history as one of the greatest frauds ever perpetrated on a helpless people. The reality is that there was no shortage of oil; this is verified by every responsible source. Indeed, solid statistics show that there was more oil available than there had been in 1978 when there were no gas lines, no murders of frustrated motorists—in a word, no ‘crisis.’”
—The Washington Post, 1979.
*
Crossover? Must have:
Syrupy pedal steel (or strings). Not too traditional. No banjo, dobro, or fiddle. Strong hook. Good arrangement. Smooth baritone, light accent. Chorus comes early enough. Short runtime. Instrumental hooks, smooth fills. Radio material. Fits the image. Within artist’s range. Commercially viable. Could open stage show with it. Hit material.
Williams cites Brook Benton, Perry Como, Johnny Cash, Johnny Horton, and “a bit of Elvis” as his early musical influences. Country, pop, R&B, and easy listening. He once explained his sound this way: “I guess the vision that I had for myself was that I really wanted to appeal more to the country fans, but I think a good bit of what I’ve done is anything but traditional country. With every album that I’ve made, I’ve hoped I haven’t made such a departure that people listening to it would think, ‘Well, what’d he do that for?’ When I think of people like Hank Sr., I don’t feel like I’m anywhere close to that. But, at the same time, when I first started, I had people come up to me and say, ‘Man, you’re the most country thing that’s come down the pike since Hank Sr.’ I just do what I do and I try to be as honest about it as I know how to be.”
When asked about his biggest hit, Williams said: “Roger Cook and Sam Hogin had written it, but didn’t have it completely finished and gave Garth Fundis what they had at the time. I listened to it, and I told Garth instantly, ‘Man, tell them to get on that and finish it up!’ But Roger had some words in it that were a bit rock ‘n’ rollish that I didn’t feel would be that palatable to my fans. So, I changed some of the words so it would fit me better.”
In an interview with The Tennessean, Cook hinted at some of the elements removed: “The lines about the rising costs of getting high. Of course, Don wasn't going to sing that. He sang ‘the rising cost of getting by,’ you know. And ‘Sometimes I don't give a d---.’ He wouldn't sing that.”
Dick Reavis wrote in Texas Monthly: “[Williams] refuse(s) to consider singing any songs about fighting, marital infidelity, or drinking.” Williams reportedly told Reavis: “I’ve never really done those things, they haven’t been a part of my life, so I guess I just don’t relate to them very well.”
*
Third chorus. But I believe (high pitch flourish again on second syllable) in love. Guitar and pedal steel meander between light taps on drum rim. Speaker expresses belief in the generational, the domestic. Guitar licks echo vocals. Guitar and steel slip away, into outro...
But I believe in love
I believe in old folks
I believe in children
I believe in youI believe in love
I believe in babies
I believe in mom and dad
And I believe in you
But I believe in love
I believe in old folks
All the world is sad and dreary
Everywhere I roam
O dear ones, how my heart grows weary
Far from the old folks at home—“The Swanee River (Old Folks at Home)," by Stephen Foster.
I believe in mom and dad
And I believe in you
Like the picture to an artist that's painted just right
Like the good song to a singer, it's pure joy and delight
Like the heavens to an eagle, like flowers to a bee
They're everything they live for, like you're everything for me
—“You’re Everything To Me,” by Tommy Collins.Today I started loving you again
I'm right back where I've really always been
I got over you just long enough to let my heartache mend
And then today I started loving you again
—“Today I Started Loving You Again,” by Merle Haggard.I love you because you understand, dear
Every single thing I try to do
You're always there to lend a helping hand, dear
Most of all I love you ‘cause you're you
—“I Love You Because,” by Leon Payne.
Harris Wheless is a writer and recent graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill currently based in Raleigh, North Carolina. His work has been featured on NPR and Bandcamp, in McSweeney's, Indy Week, and elsewhere.