round 1

(13) linda ronstadt, “alison”
arrested
(4) alien ant farm, “smooth criminal”
292-260
and will play on 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 closed @ 9am Arizona time on 3/5/22.

you okay? susannah clark on alien ant farm’s “smooth criminal”

The worst thing you can do to a friend who looks distraught is ask them if they’re okay. 
“Are you okay?” is a dagger. It will cut through the calmest of exteriors. It will flatten a fake smile, it will break the levee holding back their tears. It’s a question you ask when you already know the answer. 
“Are you okay?” hatches an egg: They were okay, until you asked, until you made them confront and name their ache. 
In his 1988 hit “Smooth Criminal,” Michael Jackson asks Annie if she’s okay 44 times. The repetition makes sense; rarely does anyone answer this question honestly at first. Jackson named the song’s damsel after Resusci Anne, a brand of medical dummy used to teach CPR. In other words, it’s Annie’s job to not be okay. She exists to be saved. 
When the nu-metal band Alien Ant Farm covered “Smooth Criminal” in 2001, they added in an extra chorus at the end, upping the total “Are you okays?” to 53. Alien Ant Farm’s hard rock version interprets the song’s anxious lyrics literally—a more obvious reaction to broken windows and bloodstains on the carpet. The thrashing guitar is grotesque rather than groovy. When the video charted on MTV’s TRL, I was in seventh grade, and therefore often not okay. 
Unfamiliar with Jackson’s original, I misheard the chorus at first: The way lead singer Dryden Mitchell yelps “Annie” sounded like “hey!” to me, a fourth wall break. But then again, as a 13 year old, I interpreted most song lyrics as direct addresses to me. Alien Ant Farm’s ANThology became a mainstay on my discman. (Well, at least the first two tracks.) 
Listening to both versions of the song in 2022, soundtracking another year of disease and destruction, I’m asking myself another question: do I gravitate toward art that confronts trauma or distracts me from it? 
Of course, this is a false dichotomy. You can’t compare “Call me Maybe” to “Tears in Heaven.” I have room for both—(except not really, I can’t stand “Tears in Heaven.”). But what if the art that distracts you has its own traumatic context? 
We know now that Michael Jackson was far from okay in 1987, when he wrote and recorded “Smooth Criminal.” He hadn’t been okay in years.
In the 2019 documentary Leaving Neverland, Wade Robson and James Safechuck describe their childhood memories of being sexually assaulted by Michael Jackson in graphic detail, providing damning evidence including provocative voicemails and handwritten letters. I was aware of the allegations and court cases, but after hearing the victims’ firsthand accounts, seeing the pain on their faces—I finally filled in the dotted line. I removed all of the Michael Jackson songs from my running playlist. I changed the station when he came on the radio. I was no longer distracted.  
Should cover songs get canceled too? Is listening to Alien Ant Farm’s “Smooth Criminal” a more ethical consumption, a cheat code for separating the art from the artist? It certainly helps when the offender is no longer living to collect royalties—I definitely wouldn’t feel right streaming an R. Kelly song these days, cover or otherwise. But it’s not just about the money—why doesn’t principle keep me from enjoying this music? Why do my toes still tap to the bassline? 
I don’t have answers to these questions. I don’t know what’s okay, because I’m not okay. It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I’m googling song lyrics. Instagram sages tell me that “it’s okay to not be okay.” We’re all parsing the difference between mental illness and a healthy reaction to a cacophony of disaster growing more dire by the day. Might as well put on some tunes. 
You might not realize it, but every song is checking in on you, asking if you’re lonesome tonight, if you’re ready for this, if you’re hanging on the edge of your seat. You answer by pressing skip, or turning up the volume, or singing along, or texting your friend back. I still tune in and out—my thoughts will drown out a verse or two before latching back on the melody. But more often than not, I'll end the song feeling a little more okay than when I started it. I just have to remember to ask myself. 

Susannah Clark is a writer and editor based in Brooklyn, New York. Her writing has appeared in Inside Higher Ed, 68to05, the Brevity blog, and elsewhere. Her essay “House Blend” was listed as a notable selection in 2016’s Best American Essays. 

Linda, My Aim Is True: cheryl graham on linda ronstadt’s “alison”

If you were in your early teens in the late 1970s and had an inkling you might be gay, and if pop music was a repository for all your adolescent angst, and if you wondered, as a budding musician yourself, where you might fit in among the hyper-heterosexual milieu of the music industry, you would have had to perform considerable feats of mental contortion. And when I say you, I mean me. 
As a girl, I found it especially confusing. I wanted both to be the subject of the song and the object of it. I wanted to sing silly love songs to other girls but wasn’t entirely comfortable when that attention turned toward me. I wanted my picture in the paper, but I wasn’t keen on it being rhythmically admired. I wanted to have a thing going on with Mrs. Jones, but I also wanted to be Mrs. Jones.
While there aren’t as many closeted pop stars now as there were 40 years ago, gay music fans still develop a highly-attuned ear, open to a turn of phrase, a dissonant chord, an unintelligible line—anything to suggest that things are not as they seem. Seventies raconteur and 21st-century thirst-trap Fran Lebowitz said being gay doesn’t make you artistic, being gay makes you forced to observe. Those of us high on the Kinsey scale cultivate a sort of aural gaydar, listening for the slightest possibility that while a given song wasn’t written about us, there could be something in it for us. In short, to inhabit the dominant culture and see ourselves reflected therein, we have to queer it.
Covering a song is a way of queering it, in the original sense of the word: to alter it, to mess it up. The word can do double duty when a gay or lesbian singer covers a song but leaves the pronouns intact. That is, when the artist takes on the opposite-sex persona of the original narrator and sings it straight, so to speak. Melissa Etheridge brings a cheeky twist to Rod Stewart’s “Maggie May,” while Calum Scott’s soulful rendition of “Dancing On My Own” gives Robyn’s pop confection greater depth. Patti Smith’s epic reimagining of “Gloria” plays with gender in ways that left certain listeners (hi there) blindsided and exhilarated.
Straight artists can also queer heteronormative songs when they flip the script by simply staying true to the originals: think White Stripes’ cover of “Jolene,” or Amy Winehouse’s “Valerie.” These faithful renditions honor the song as well as their audience. When Ed Sheeran sings “Be My Husband” he doesn’t need to throw in a “have I mentioned I’m heterosexual today?” to reassure his fans.
Then there are the cowards who distort the lyrics to an embarrassing extent. I’m still mad at Shawn Colvin for “Every Little Thing He Does is Magic,” and at Sheryl Crow’s wholesale pronoun changes on “Sweet Child O’ Mine.” And I definitely want to speak to the manager about Michael Bublé’s no homo reworking of “Santa Baby.” 
Maybe calling someone I don’t know a “coward” is a bit harsh, and I will concede that the examples above are extra annoying because I loved the originals. Maybe I should give artists the benefit of the doubt when they change pronouns to make a song more personal to them (except for Bublé—he should go to singer jail). It’s certainly within their rights to recast the song so they can better identify with it if that helps their performance. Though I remain skeptical, I shouldn’t assume Colvin and Crow, et al, were intentionally straight-washing songs lest they lose fans. They may have simply wanted it to align with their own sensibilities. After all, queer listeners have always done just that.
In a 1980 Rolling Stone interview, Linda Ronstadt was asked how she chooses songs. Nearly all of Ronstadt’s catalog is composed of material written by others; as an interpreter of song, nobody does it better. “I pick them because something will happen in my life and I want to describe that situation,” she recalls, “Peter [Asher, her manager] heard this Elvis Costello record and said, ‘This is a hit song for somebody.’ I really loved the song but I didn’t see any way I could do it. Then I met a girl like Alison who became a real good friend to me. … I had a reason to sing it, so then I had to do ‘Alison.’”
This year the head honchos at Faxness let the writers choose our own songs. Their rules stipulate: Cover songs must have been previously popularized by another artist on a commercial release. Many of Ronstadt’s hits like “You’re No Good,” or “Heart Like A Wheel,” don’t fit the bill. Those songs were written and performed by others, but the originals were sufficiently obscure that Ronstadt’s renditions were the first most people heard. She also recorded songs that were previously well known but became forever associated with her. “Blue Bayou” isn’t a Roy Orbison song, it’s a Linda Ronstadt song. The Eagles wrote “Desperado,” but Linda made it hers. Especially during her late-70s run of consecutive multi-platinum albums, songwriters like Smokey Robinson, Buddy Holly, and even the Rolling Stones got the Ronstadt treatment—and the attendant boost to their bank accounts.
In 1978, Elvis Costello was the beneficiary of Linda’s royal(ty) touch when she recorded his song “Alison” for her ninth solo album, Living In the USA. It would be her third LP to top the Billboard 200 album chart, and the fifth in a row to go platinum. In fact, it shipped that way— such was her power and popularity at the time, that 2 million vinyl slabs were pressed and ready to roll in September of that year.
I wouldn’t say “Alison” had been popularized by its writer (don’t disqualify me, Megan and Ander!). Not on a widespread scale, anyway. Costello’s debut album My Aim Is True, (which borrows a line from “Alison” for its title), was a hit with critics, appearing on Rolling Stone’s 1977 year-end list, an exquisite corpse of artists that included the Sex Pistols, Fleetwood Mac, and Muddy Waters. But with listeners, not so much. His notorious SNL appearance in December 1977 exposed him to the insomniac audience, but he had yet to ply the waters of the mainstream. For many people in the US, Linda’s recording of “Alison” would be the first song they’d ever heard written by one Declan Patrick McManus.
In 1978, I already knew “Alison.” I owned a copy of My Aim Is True I’d borrowed from a girl in marching band and never gave back. By then I’d switched my musical allegiance from the peaceful easy feeling of California country-rock to the spiked mohawk anarchy in the UK. I have a distinct memory of driving down Tucson Boulevard in the family Oldsmobile when I heard Ronstadt’s “Alison” on the radio. My reaction was that most singular of American sounds: Hunh. It was like seeing an old acquaintance who’s sporting a radical new haircut. Or like finding out your one weird friend and your secret crush are friends with each other. A curious choice, but kinda cute.
My crush on Linda Ronstadt was no secret. After she became hugely popular I would tell people, with the practiced nonchalance of a serial name-dropper, that my dad used to play basketball with her older brother. It’s true, we lived on the same street as the Ronstadts in Tucson, and it’s true that my dad joined the occasional pickup game with her sibling. Linda’s family lived in a modest ranchlet a half-mile from my family’s cinder-block apartment complex, but I wouldn’t know Peter if he walked in the front door. While I was ruling the tetherball court at Holoway Elementary, Linda had been from Tucson to Tucumcari and beyond, well on the road to superstardom. As an Old Pueblo native, I claim her as a hometown hero, but we’re on a first-name basis in my mind only. Nevertheless, my love for her remains immutable.
My ardor grew stronger when I first saw Linda live, in a homecoming concert of sorts, at the Tucson Community Center in 1976. My mom took me, opting for the mid-priced mezzanine tickets at $5.50 each, but let me rush the stage during the encore. I braved bouncing beach balls and Columbian cannabis for a close-up look at my idol. When she belted “Heatwave,” “That’ll Be the Day,” and “When Will I Be Loved,” I didn’t know those were old songs, I only knew they were her songs.
In a 1980 Playboy interview Linda says, “I have to be emotionally connected to a song or I can't sing it.”  She relays an anecdote about a Saturday Night Live cameo appearance in which she backed Gilda Radner on a song about saccharine, and had to imagine life without Tab before she could remember the words.
It begs the question, then, where did Linda find a connection in songs like “Willin” and “Carmelita”? Does anybody really picture her driving a big rig and snorting speed when she sings the Little Feat song? Or on “Carmelita,” can you imagine her “all strung out on heroin,” playing Russian roulette in Echo Park? 
I love Linda’s rollicking cover of Zevon’s “Poor Poor Pitiful Me” (SynDrums, FTW!), but when she sings “He picked me up and he threw me down/He said ‘Please don't hurt me Mama’” instead of ‘she picked me up’ and ‘I said’ — well, it just doesn’t make sense. Why would the person throwing down also be afraid of getting hurt? Not to mention the other changes she made to the original, including removing the hint of sadomasochism and other shenanigans on the Sunset Strip. (As an aside, how fun would it have been had Terri Clark, who basically covered Linda’s version, reverted to the original lyrics? My gaydar’s needle, already oscillating into the red, would slam to the right so fast it would break the glass.)
 Linda made one minor but significant edit to the lyrics on “Alison.” “I changed it around a little bit in the gender,” she says in a 1978 Rolling Stone interview, “I made it like I heard the girl had run off with some guy. And I was hoping that she would stay away from my particular property.”
To that I say, fair enough. But also, what? 
Costello’s lyrics are notable for their wordplay. “Alison” is no exception. At the end of the first verse he sings, I don't know if you were loving somebody/I only know it isn't mine. “Somebody” can be heard as one word or two; the lyrics are full of ambiguity, but the one thing our narrator knows for certain is that Alison isn’t loving his body. And he’s bitter about it.
When Linda changes the line to “I only hope he wasn’t mine,” it fits with the narrative she invented so she could sing the song. Even if that story changed slightly from one interview to another. Is Alison a friend who’s going down the wrong path, or is she an updated Jolene, threatening to run off with Linda’s man? In any case, those two altered words fail to negate the song’s fundamental emotions of heartache, resentment, and regret. It’s interesting how Linda kind of elides the altered words so you might not even catch the change. Perhaps she wasn’t fully committed to it. Or perhaps I’m looking for something that isn’t there.
I just can’t hear “Alison” as a message to a friend, or even a rival. “I’m not gonna get too sentimental, like those other sticky valentines” is not something you’d say to either. “I heard you let that little friend of mine take off your party dress” comes across as sour grapes when sung by Costello—a snide comment made by a wounded lover. But when Linda sings it, ostensibly to a friend, it almost makes her complicit. Friends don’t let friends take off women’s party dresses.
David Sanborn’s saxophone part, which is a magnitude of cheese greater than the guitar flourishes on the original, almost tanks the song. It’s no worse than other soft-rock saxophones of the 70s, though, and I do love that one note that meets Linda’s last crystalline “true.” It gets me right in the feels, even as the rest of the outro slithers away. 
Smooth-jazz saxophone notwithstanding, it’s Linda’s voice that redeems this cover. I don’t care if she missed the subtlety and subtext of the song when she “reduced it to friendship,” as she explains in Rolling Stone. I’d prefer if she—and everybody else, for that matter—kept the lyrics as they were written. But for this particular blind spot in my musical pantheon, in the end, the words are immaterial. Linda could sing a song in Pig Latin and still reduce me to tears (“Esperanto, why don’t you come to your senses…”). It’s the sound of her voice, across the decades, that allows me to overlook her lyrical trespasses. Just as I and other queer kids did all those years ago, she found something to connect with in her songs, something that resonated with her own life. And we are the richer for it. 
Someday I’ll make one of those crazy conspiracy boards. It’ll have all of Linda’s songs, with yellow Post-it notes on the ones that change the pronouns, and pink for ones that don’t. Ballads will be on one side of the board, upbeat songs on the other. Thumbtacks and string will be employed, until every verse is scrutinized and cross-referenced against the others. Just like that teenager in her bedroom, I’ll pore over lyrics on every inner sleeve of every album, looking for hidden clues, trying to figure out where I fit.

Cheryl Graham circa 1979, in a transitional phase evidenced by black skinny tie and Birkenstocks. Plus cat. Twitter: @FreeTransform