first round

(2) Vangelis, “Theme from Chariots of Fire”
outran
(15) Romeo Void, “A Girl in Trouble (is a Temporary Thing)”
158-148
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 3/10/23.

BEATITUDES OF CHEESE: j.r. mcconvey on “Chariots of Fire: Titles”

Last summer, I got a vasectomy. On the clinic’s recommendation, I brought headphones, so I could listen to music to distract myself during the procedure. As I lay there with my underwear around my knees and a brittle napkin draped over my exposed groin, staring at the acoustic tile and waiting for the doctor to arrive, I was able to run through three full plays of the tune I’d carefully chosen to precede the elective incising of my scrotum—the perfect soundtrack to induce a mix of calm, determination, melancholy and triumph.
As I barreled toward the finish line of my fertility, with my wiener double-taped to my abdomen, reader, nothing else would suffice: it had to be Vangelis’ “Chariots of Fire”.
Why, you ask? Well, yes, in part, because I’d chosen to write about it for March Fadness. But the selection of this resilient gem from the dawn of the 1980s hinged on a much bigger and more consequential truth—one that helps explain why, more than forty years after its release, the song can still conjure indelible images of funny-looking British men in white shorts running through the surf of an English beach in the cloudy dawn; and in doing so, lift our nervous, battered hearts.
We hate to admit it, but nothing is more comforting than cheese.

men running on a beach in chariots of fire but everything is made of cheese

*

The definition of cultural cheese is hard to pin down. It’s silly; it’s embarrassing; it’s garish; it’s maudlin or sappy or sentimental. It’s usually a “we know it when we see it” thing—and there is no question, on watching the opening title sequence of the 1981 film Chariots of Fire, that Vangelis’ theme is gloriously, triumphantly cheesy. Formally titled “Titles”—far too quotidian a name for its musical majesty—the tune is perhaps the apex of the late 1970s analogue synth soundtrack game, and a precursor to many of the cheesy ’80s soundtrack hits featured elsewhere in this competition.
Working on the gustatory premise that being surrounded by cheese brings happiness, let’s assume there are as many subtle varieties of cultural cheese as there are the edible kind. Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou—the man who, understandably, called himself Vangelis—was Greek, born in the small town of Agria on the Pagasetic Gulf. But his “Chariots of Fire” is much too ethereal to be a briny feta, which better embodies a salty hunk like Mötley Crüe’s Tommy Lee, born in Athens to a Greek mom; or George Michael (née Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou) whose defiant 1990s hits always added a hint of tang to the salad. Perhaps “Titles” is instead a creamy Manouri, or a firm, smoky Metzovone? Does the nationality of the composer even matter? Chariots is a profoundly British film and story; maybe its theme is a sturdy log of Dorset White, or a redolent wedge of Stinking Bishop?
Perhaps it’s the sound of the music that defines what we might call the “terroir” of what we might, in questionable taste, call “Ear Cheese”. In “Titles”’s emotional majesty, its ambition, its combined timelessness and evocation of a particular era and sound, is Vangelis’ masterwork more akin to one of the so-called King Cheeses—a Brie de Maux, or a wheel of mighty Parmigiano Reggiano? Or, circling back to the great Hellenic cheeses, what of Halloumi, whose divine squeakiness echoes Vangelis’ tinkling chimes; whose refusal to melt in the face of direct heat speaks of the same solid strength of will that thrums through his anthem’s booming timpani and swelling synths?
The milk, the curd, the rennet, the rind: these are what we seek, arms outstretched, chasing cheese dreams across the salt-lapped shore. 

halloumi shall not flag or fail, it shall char on until the end

*

“Chariots of Fire” is an early audiovisual meme. If you put this music on speakers, spread your arms out and run in slow motion while making a stupid face, most people will know what you’re getting at, even if they can’t name the tune. Maybe they’ll know it from one of the dozens of riffs that have appeared in film and television. There are whole websites dedicated to what TV Tropes calls “Parodies of Fire,” variations of which have appeared on The Simpsons, Married… With Children, Sesame Street and dozens of other shows and films. (Being of a certain age, I will always be partial to its appearance in National Lampoon’s Vacation, when it accompanies the galloping Griswolds on the last leg of their fateful journey to Walley World.) Maybe it’s just found its way into their heads through cultural osmosis, the kind of mass penetration that serves as a collective memory, so that even those who have never experienced a work directly can be said to know its secrets, like Milton’s Paradise Lost, or Citizen Kane, or that ten-minute Taylor Swift song about a scarf. It’s even possible they know it from an echo in a dream, a fragment they picked up somewhere without consciousness, made of nothing but an insistent synth, a swelling of strings, a ghostly piano melody, and the rhythmic LinnDrum whisper that punctuates every other, impellent backbeat: ch-CH-CH-ch-ch… ch-CH-CH-ch-ch… ch-CH-CH-ch-ch…
Howsoever it claimed its mantle, Vangelis’ theme has transcended its origin as part of a film to attain its own meaning. It ripples through decades, speaking of how we chase dreams, how we yearn for the feeling of freedom. It helps us live, this paean to joy pursued and revelation attained. 

*

To cut more deeply into the centre of this dense, rich wheel, I asked a trio of musicians to analyze, compare and offer their thoughts on “Chariots of Fire” and some related representative examples of cheese from three distinct musical genres. First, the realm in which Vangelis frolicked: 1980s synthesizer-based soundtrack music from movies and TV (including Chariots of Fire). Second, the cry of clogged and/or broken hearts struggling to be unburdened by heartbreak and/or desire—the mighty power ballad. Finally, the sound of glow sticks whizzing through the dark and sweaty teenagers squeaking against each other: trance music from the turn of the millennium, when no one had to worry about whether they might get caught on video totally blissing out to some ridiculous-but-sublime Tiësto mix and end up as a TikTok fatality. 
For the first group, I enlisted my friend Mike De Eyre, who a classically trained multi-instrumentalist who played bass for the emo band, The Black Maria. (He now works in mortgages.) For the power ballads, my brother, Kevin McConvey, a high school vice principal and former music teacher. And, for trance anthems, Matt Davis, who does music and sound design for TV, specializing in kids’ programming, and who is most definitely recorded on static film somewhere, looking sketched out in furry pants. Each was asked to analyze a small selection of representative tracks from their assigned genre. (A full list of tracks is below).
The results of their analysis across genres yielded three key findings:

1. Cheese is predictable, which makes it comforting. It uses typical chord progressions, and follows certain obvious patterns.

MD: “Most tracks have an identical structure: mix-in/beat, breakdown, buildup, drop/TRANCE, then the same thing over again one more time… They also have super-simple chord structures that are very easy to follow. The music goes exactly where you expect it to go. I think that’s a hallmark of cheesy music, at least for some listeners.”

MDE: “Major chord overload! Everything follows some pattern involving the 1st, 4th, and 5th chords (with some additions). The major third is featured prominently in the melody, and in any chord it can fit itself into. There’s also this recurring trick where the bass note drops to a minor third but the other instruments continue a major chord progression (in the relative major key)… see beginning of ‘The Greatest American Hero’ for example. Uniquely cheesy!”

KM: “Build is a must. It’s common to start with synth, then bring in piano, and to build dynamically. (I’m not sure if you go here or not, it could be argued that power ballads are all musical sexual interactions.) In all of these songs, you find the Deceptive Cadence—the act of making it seem like we're going to land on the tonic chord, but instead going to the minor vi chord—as well as the "Cadential 6-4”, playing the Dominant in the bass (the fifth note of the scale), with the tonic chord above it, followed by the upper notes also settling on the Dominant chord. Both of these add great drama.”

Repetition is a kind of training. Social media, with its slot-machine mechanic, is a great and terrible example of this: swipe to refresh, and you (might) get a notification, like, or comment that triggers a dopamine hit; now do it again. On a more dramatic level, when Steph Curry arcs up a three pointer at the buzzer, we may put our emotions on a very thin line and feel that contraction as the anxiety of anticipation. When our anticipation pays off, the endorphin rush can be awesome. Steph drains the bucket. The dealer turns over an ace. Your latest video goes viral. Or, in the case of music, after a carefully crafted build-up of tension, the big moment finally comes. Witness, if you will, the final chorus of Kelly Clarkson’s “Since U Been Gone”, as it wallops its way out of the drum-and-guitar breakdown like a teenaged Mike Tyson berserking through a suburban mall in a lush, copper Alanis Morrissette wig before landing its huge knockout punch. Clarkson’s tune and its juicy hammer of a chorus speaks to how pop music—and cheese, especially—leans so hard on repetition. The big chorus makes us feel great because we know it’s coming. The more often a song can feed the serotonin and norepinephrine receptors in our amygdala, the more it can lift us. Cheese, like drugs, gives us an easy hit, over and over again.
One particular chord pattern turns out to be present in a significant number of songs that one might call cheesy. The I-V-vi-IV chord progression is foundational in a lot of overwrought pop music. The comedy troupe Axis of Awesome catalogued its prevalence in a famous video, and the array of tunes in the mix is mind-bending. The song that kicks it all off is Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’”. I’ll take the liberty of assuming most readers would identify this song as, in some way, cheesy. And yet, about two minutes into the mix, the Axis drops a fragment of The Beatles’ “Let it Be”—a song that I would guess the majority of respondents would never identify as such. It’s simply… too good? So, although the I-V-vi-IV chord progression and its particular melancholic sweep is the backbone for songs like Elton John’s Gorgonzolic “Can You Feel the Love Tonight”, Bon Jovi’s family-sized block of Cracker Barrel jack, “It’s My Life”, and a bunch of middling Havarti from the likes of Weezer (dill), Blink 182 (jalapeno) and Avicii (“Mediterranean herbs & spices,” or something), it is also present in “Let it Be,” a legitimate modern secular hymn, and can therefore not be said to be inherently cheesy.  
To be fair, this would probably prove true for just about any chord structure. Music is music; there are days when “Fat Bottom Girls” can reduce me to tears for no good reason. Structure alone does not give us solids; it is milky, watery, undelicious. For the holy reaction to occur, we need structure, plus what might be called presentation, or aspect. The cheeseball must sit with confidence amid its more reasonable cousins in snackdom, saying YES, I am crusted in nuts. And PROUD OF IT. 

blink-182 as jalapeno havarti cheese, in a realist style

 

2. Cheese is informed/shaped by enthusiasm for technology of the time, thereby coming to define and evoke a specific period or era.

MDE: “First consistent thing I noticed is the unapologetic ‘artificial’ sound of the synths and drum machines… the technology had just become widely available in the ’80s so it sounded new and novel, but it aged quickly and poorly.”

KM: “Synth and piano are key elements. Reverb. Space. Fills, solos, drums—captured in the bombastic style of the time—all create space and grandeur, timbre and texture.”

MD: “There are a ton of sounds in these trance tracks that sound super dated… System F’s terrible snare, Robert Miles’ over-reliance on his piano delay, and the shitty flute lead in Braveheart, which probably sounded passable at the time but sounds super fake now.” 

The quality of cheese that gives it its sharp edges—its salty crystals and weirdly pleasing molds—is how suspension in time creates a fine rind of nostalgia. Creators trying to capture a moment end up creating time capsules instead, sealed by the shiny red wax of their enthusiasm for new technologies that won’t be new for long. But age often improves cheese. Everything trends eventually, and younger generations are curious about the ones that preceded them. Even fresh cheese tends to be marinated in cloudy memory, and often pays homage to traditional values or bygone times. (This is what gives us “retro”.) The future can be cheesy, but generally only as a projection of some utopia based in archaic ideals; The Jetsons are cheesy and Elon Musk is stank-ass cheese (dick cheese?), whereas the creeping existential threats of climate collapse, mass extinction and nuclear war resist the cast of cheese. (Too depressing!)

 

3. Cheese is self-serious, which can make it feel hollow but also bolsters its ability to comfort us, because it confirms to us that what we think of as our stupidest, scariest or most vulnerable feelings are valid.

MD: “A minor key doesn’t necessarily make something cheesy, but it does speak to the self-seriousness of trance music. It’s cheesy because it thinks it’s cool, and it’s such goofy music.

MDE: “The chorus always seems to be a full-blown explosion in the major key—they sound triumphant without earning it.” 

KM: “Both the Deceptive Cadence and the 6-4 are very common musical tools, used often in classical, pop, R&B, etc. They just aren't often found in rock music, and their use in power ballads seems to bridge a style gap. They are overt, in-your-face, and lack nuance, and that they don't usually appear in rock music lends these songs a type of insincerity that is endearing, accessible—and somehow, paradoxically, sincere.”

The final active enzyme in good cheese is more nebulous and harder to define. The truest and most potent power cheese inhabits is a big-eyed emotional guilelessness that approaches the nirvana of Zen Buddhism. This special magic lies beyond technicality. Its mere existence is a rebuke to the weight that comes with judgment, with the merciless human tendency to compare and rank everything. Cheese repels shame.
Cheese is never gonna give you up. It believes—truly, madly, deeply—that heaven is a place on Earth. As demonstrated by “Titles”, “Hooked on Classics,” “Theme from Hill Street Blues” and other instrumental cousins, cheese is more than words. It wants to know what love is, even if love hurts. It can’t fight this feeling anymore. It just called to say I love you. Cheese is airplane dancing to Tiffany, and loving it. It’s cranking Carly Simon’s “Let the River Run” from Working Girl and imagining that you’re Melanie Griffith in a shiny 1980s office tower, putting your feet up on the goddamn desk like the goddamn winner you are. It’s pulling out that old Phil Collins Greatest Hits CD and facing the fact that, for no reason beyond its raw cheesiness, “Against All Odds” can still crush you like a massive shoe slowly coming down over all that you know and love, except that you and your family end up in a deep tread, escaping doom: it leaves you terrified, but newly alive. Put it on loud and try not to air drum, friend. In fact, don’t—that’s the third element doing its thing. Pound the sky with Phil. Let your partner see the tears roll down your face as you do it. Let go of every time anyone ever told you had bad taste, or raised their eyebrows at a thing you loved; every barb and snark about your stupid hair or goofy dress, every crack about your blemishes, every time you failed in bed, every time you fell short and felt ten years old again, filled with terror about the miserable person you might become. Let the electric piano and rattling cymbals pound all that shit out of you—all that weight—so that you find yourself lifted off the ground. So that you feel holy. And say it out loud, so everyone can hear: TAKE A LOOK AT ME NOW.
The ridiculous as the sublime, and the sublime in the ridiculous: this is the balance, the secret, the essence and affinage of the finest-quality cheese.

*

In conclusion, we can glean from this admittedly limited and pretty random sample that, formally, cheese relies on a few standard tricks. In its familiar, repetitive structures, its embrace of the newest sounds, and in its implacable confidence that, with enough will, you can emote your way through the darkest of storms, Ear Cheese tells us the future—or at least tells us that it’s there.
If the 1980s is the defining decade of cheese, it’s probably because of the birth and evolution of the synthesizer—but also because it was the last unbroken decade. In the 1980s, what we now call the climate crisis had only just begun to poke its unassuming little head through the hole in the ozone layer. There was pollution and acid rain. But there was no global warming yet, and no one was afraid of it. Y2K wasn’t even a thing, because not many people had computers. The millennium and the widening gyre it brought was still 20 years away, far over the horizon. So, cool new synthesizers? Nifty vocal effects? Yes please. How better to soundtrack America’s shining city on a hill, or the icy sheen of Thatcher’s Britain, than with music that was futuristic and gut-grabbing and filled with possibility? It was the 1980s. What could possibly go wrong?
If we peg the peaks of Ear Cheese to major clicks in the Roman calendar, and consider earlier octarian centuries (perhaps searching for cyclical patterns in hope that 2080 might offer our surviving children a rip-roaring time to look forward to), the evidence does present some theoretical solace. The 1880s produced huge crumbly hunks such as Grieg’s bombastic “Hall of the Mountain King” and Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture,” through which nostalgia marches like an overcaffeinated gorilla in full military dress. Is it possible that Pachelbel’s revered Canon in D—which dates to 1680, features the harpsichord as an auditory signature of the Baroque, and happens to include a variation on the I-V-vi-IV chord progression—might be not only the original one-hit-wonder, but also the progenitor of cheese in the western classical tradition: the Godfather of Goudas, Boss of Beemsters, Master of Muensters?
Although it is tempting to think so, the truth is that cheese is a modern invention: a simulacrum, a metaphor based on a by-product—a feeling we can categorize as we like. At its best, cheese offers us the good parts of populism, the ones where people feel comfortable getting together to believe in something, in a real, exposed kind of way. (The astonishing success of Choir! Choir! Choir! is a good example of this.) It gives us the goofy smile. It brings butterflies to our stomachs. It makes us feel naïve. It makes us young. What better proof than a finely aged cheddar that age is merely a luscious ripening of youth?
Yet, suddenly, some among us—from our vantages on the gurney of the vasectomy clinic, or the hospital bed, or just countless nights on the couch—are starting to be able to see the end of the movie. The freeze frame that comes just before the credits roll. And, like all the best cheese, the sublime nugget that Vangelis left as his masterpiece gives us permission, as we charge down the beach, splashing madly toward the finish line, to want what everyone wants, deep down inside. With unconditional faith, it cheers us on past judgment, shouting from the heavens: Run for all you’re worth, and finish with your hands in the air.

APPENDIX 1: SONGS FOR ANALYSIS

 

1980s SOUNDTRACKS

 

POWER BALLADS

TRANCE

*Tracks 1-3 from Ferry Corsten’s classic Trance Nation 1 compilation:

APPENDIX 2: CHEESY GREEK COMPOSERS THAT ARE WORSE THAN VANGELIS

  • Yanni

J.R. McConvey’s debut short story collection, DIFFERENT BEASTS, won the 2020 Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for speculative fiction. His writing has been shortlisted for the Journey Prize and the Bristol Short Story Prize, and appeared in publications including Joyland, The Globe and Mail, The Walrus, and Weird Horror. He is also a media producer who works in documentary and virtual reality. He grew up in the 1980s, but to be honest, he’s a 90s guy who still wears Nine Inch Nails T-shirts to Christmas dinner. He lives in Toronto with his family, and is online @jrmcconvey & jrmcconvey.com.

colleen e. kennedy on “a girl in trouble (is a temporary thing”)

Even in a sea of one-hit wonders, “A Girl in Trouble (is a Temporary Thing)” by Romeo Void may be a bit of an underdog. Hell, it’s not even the most well known song by Romeo Void. “A Girl in Trouble” is a scrappy, sax-heavy post-punk tune that may have been officially the highest charting hit for the short-lived San Francisco artscene band (peaking at number 35 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1984), but their 1982 breakthrough song “Never Say Never”—all sexy brattitude—has definitely proved longevity and popularity over their only Top 40 hit. And double hell, the band dissolved the year after the release of “A Girl in Trouble” due to a lack of support by their label. But the very underdoggedness of the song, an ode to women’s perseverance under the patriarchy, is the very reason to revisit this new wave wonder. 
Vocalist Debora Iyall and bassist Frank Zincavage were art school friends at the San Francisco Art Institute, and rounded out the band with saxophonist Benjamin Bossi (who passed away last December), guitarist Peter Woods, and original drummer Jay Derrah. (The band went through four drummers, including Aaron Smith who played on the discussed track.) The group ironically formed on Valentine’s Day in 1979, with their anti-romantic name inspired by a magazine headline “Why women can’t get laid in San Francisco.”
And a jaded look at dating, love, and sex in the 80s is the recurring thread winding throughout so many of their lyrics. In “Never Say Never,” Iyall sneers the refrain “I might like you better / If we slept together,” before conceding “But there's something / In your eyes that says: “Maybe that's never.”  “Never say never,” is her tenacious response. In “White Sweater,” our heroine escapes a sexual assault attack on a first date and is now haunted by nightmares. In “I Mean It,” the woman is so love- or sex-starved that she is willing to debase herself to prove her desire (which doesn’t seem to be fully reciprocated). After the souring sexual encounter of “In the Dark,” she plaintively repeats “This is not my idea of a good time.” Even Dan Savage wouldn’t be able to offer any advice to this Ms. Lonelyheart. Pat Benator turns to martial metaphors to describe love in the ‘80s, but Iyall turns to disease. “Love is an illness to be endured,” Iyall laments on the song of the same title. (Last year for Pop Matters, Imran Khan more fully explored the sexual danger of the lyrics on Romeo Void’s debut album It’s a Condition within the context of 1970s sexual serial killers and films like Looking for Mr. Goodbar.) 
 Across their three albums—It’s a Condition (1981), Benefactor (1982), and Instincts (1984)—and the EP Never Say Never (1982), San Francisco is part punk rock and part film noir. This is Sin City. The city is littered, always cloaked in darkness, the streets sleek after a gritty rain. Danger lurks in every street corner, and closing time is another opportunity to head home for an unfulfilling one night stand. Mornings are for hangovers and regrets. Men are cruelly indifferent lovers or violently cruel abusers. Our female narrator oscillates between femme fatale or girl in distress (sometimes both in the same song), and Bossi’s jazz-inflected saxophone wails along adding an additional touch of urban sleaze. 
All of this brings us to their one-hit wonder, “A Girl in Trouble (is a Temporary Thing)” from their 1984 album Instincts, their major label debut on Columbia Records.
Bossi’s jazzy sax kicks off the song with a melancholic keyboard drone and dance beat before Iyall begins singing the opening lines: “She's got a face that shows that she knows she's heard every line…” Another romance-adverse, world worry heroine! Iyall’s voice is a pop marvel, smoky, sexy, and sometimes snarling—sometimes nearing the sultry perfection of Chrissie Hynde, at other times as bratty as Patty Donahue of The Waitresses, but in this song, she seems to echo Bananarama’s “Cruel Summer.”  
The title hints at the very outdated euphemism for a young single pregnant woman, but in a post-Roe world (the Supreme Court case was only a decade earlier), this young woman has options. That this is a 1984 song dealing with sexuality, unplanned pregnancy, and abortion is even harder to write about in 2023, after the reversal of Roe v. Wade. Maybe Madonna told her papa not to preach, but when she declared “I’ve made up my mind/ I’m gonna keep my baby,” that too is a pro-choice sentiment: she chooses to have and raise a child. In Romeo Void’s song, abortion is a clear and straightforward solution. 
Lyrically, however, there isn’t much in the song to imply terminating an unwanted pregnancy. The lyrics lean more into the My Favorite Murder motto: “Stay sexy, don’t get murdered.” Within the lines are all the ways that women must prepare themselves to survive in a man’s world. Our girl acts tough, creates a demeanor warning men to “stay away,” and takes the longer and safer path back to her car. “There's a time when every girl learns / To use her head … There's no time for her to be afraid,” Iyall croons. Australian rocker Courtney Barnett turns to a similar theme of taking precautions in a vile world of toxic masculinity and incel violence in her 2018 hit “Nameless Faceless”: “I wanna walk through the park in the dark … I hold my keys / Between my fingers.” Barnett even paraphrases Margaret Atwood’s horrifying maxim, “Men are scared that women will laugh at them… Women are scared that men will kill them.” This again is the world of Romeo Void songs: sexy, sure, but also dangerous af.
In a 2012 interview with Keith Valcourt for Rocker, Iyall shares the song was inspired by a friend: “At its heart it was always meant as a pep talk. A girl in trouble is typically a pregnant girl, but the song is a pep talk to my friend who we called ‘Teen Troublemaker.’ She was the original actual girl who I’m talking to on the phone.” This may not be exactly the uplifting pep talk of Annie Lennox and Aretha Franklin singing “sisters are doing it for themselves!” but “She takes care of business / Keeps a cool head” clearly shows that this cynical sister is also doing it for herself. She has no other way. 
In the same interview, Iyall confirmed a longtime rumor about the song, that it was a feminist response to Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean,” probably the greatest pop song ever about denying paternity. Iyall explains, “I loved that song, danced to it in the clubs, but fuck Michael Jackson. If some woman comes to you and says, ‘I think you fathered my child.’ To respond, ‘The kid is not my son.’ I thought that was really cold so, ‘Girl In Trouble’ is my answer to him.” 
The repeated chorus “A girl in trouble is a temporary thing (Temporary, Temporary, Temporary, Temporary)” shows despite the nightmare world of the patriarchy, the terror is temporary and this girl is going to be okay. Probably. To survive, you need to be prepared for the worst, remember there is no time to be afraid, keep a cool head, and take care of business. 
After being wooed away from indie labels to join Columbia Records, the major label pressured Iyall—a big, beautiful Cowlitz woman—to lose weight, and in the video directed by Julia Heyward (who also directed the Talking Heads’ “Burning Down the House’), a thin dancer appears in the dreamlike video as Iyall’s proxy. The video reminds us of the fatphobic erasure of women in music videos, such as Heart’s 1980’s videos that only show lead vocalist Ann Wilson from the chin up or C+C Music Factory using a thin dancer to lip synch to soul goddess Martha Wash’s vocals. The band broke up the year after their biggest hit. 
But Iyall, who became an art teacher, has occasionally recorded and performed over the years—both by herself and reuniting with the band several times over the last four decades. She even re-recorded a new version of “A Girl in Trouble” (without the familiar saxophone, but with female backup vocalists) in 2011. Most notably, Iyall composes a new verse, writing a happy ending for our young woman, one of moving beyond fear, of growing wiser, and learning to love herself. “She’s on the mend and knows / that she earned those scars and lines / by and by—one step at a time. / Her love can dazzle and delight, she transcends. / She has more riches than she can spend.”

Colleen E. Kennedy is a writer, editor, and communications professional living in Baltimore. Previously a university instructor of literature and theatre, she writes about art, theatre, culture, and music in the D.C. and Baltimore metro areas.

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