I just realized that the entire plot of the song, "Over And Over Again" by The Dave Clark Five can be summed up as, "I went to a really crowded dance. I saw this really cute girl and asked her out, but she said she was waiting for her boyfriend."
Granted, this aspect of the plot had always registered on me, but for some reason I had always assumed that the song kept going after that. It doesn't.
Who says writing about music is hard?
6 comments:
I think you may have broached a can of worms there, and if you wish to go on enjoying pop music, just don't think about the lyrics. There's no turning back otherwise.
And you're listening to the Dave Clark Five....why?
and if you wish to go on enjoying pop music, just don't think about the lyrics. There's no turning back otherwise.
Most of the time, I really don't notice the lyrics. That's why it took so long for this one to sink in.
And you're listening to the Dave Clark Five....why?
They make me glad all over?
jack, the Eschaton troll, says only fourth rate minds busy themselves with music criticism. Welcome to the club!
Damn, and I could have gotten my master's the easy way.
Great song, great post.
To play tongue-in-cheek pedantic rockcrit: The key parts of the DC5 version are really "about" time. The first verse is his remembering a past in which he was anticipating the future, i.e., what a "drag" the dance was going to be. Then time gets stuck, he gets caught in a lyrical loop and mental stutter and tells us AGAIN and AGAIN about his prophecy. The last verse anticipates a future which never arrives ("her steady date"), and the present moment gets stuck and suspended again, this time eternally, as she through the narrator tells us AGAIN and AGAIN how she will wait, wait, wait and wait. The background vocals borrow the 2-note ascending "moan" of Hank Ballard's lascivious "Work With Me Annie," as if to subliminally suggest that the plot is also about deferred gratification and teenage lust. The song is like "No Exit" crossed with "Waiting for Godot," but raunchier. An unsung (no pun intended) masterpiece of midcentury modernism!
Seriously though, the wonders of Usenet teach us that the DC5's 1965 verion covered a 1958 version by Bobby Day (flipside of "Rockin' Robin"), that had a concluding verse that brought a faint hope of narrative closure to the plot:
"How my poor heart was broken, all my life where had she been? But I'll try over
and over and over and over again.
I'll try over and over and over and over again.
I will try over and over and over and over again."
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