Mar. 19th, 2011

oursin: George Beresford photograph of the young Rebecca West in a large hat, overwritten 'Neither a doormat nor a prostitute' (Neither a doormat nor a prostitute)

Having suggested in my post yestereen on the music letter meme apropose of 'Many a New Day', that it was from some unnamed genre which is the opposite of torch song -

Torch songs being, pretty much, the ones in which the female singer yearningly declares that she will never stop Loving That Man even if he is not there/has run off with her best friend/has never ever looked at her/etc. I.e. they are from a position of abjection -

I was thinking about songs which do the reverse and posit a subject position of emotional agency vis a vis heterosexual romance in the singer, I realised that these actually fall into at least 3 categories.

a) Along the lines of 'Many a New Day', the ones that are about 'Men - who needs them? if one ditches you they're like buses, there'll be another one along soon'. Other example: The Marvelettes' 'Too Many Fish in the Sea' (also, perhaps, their 'I'm too strong to be strung along', which I can't find on YouTube).

b) Ones with the message along the line of my darling Dame Rebecca's famed apercu 'Men are terribly poor stuff'. E.g Rosemary Clooney and Marlene Dietrich, 'Men are Good For Nothing' and the Velvelettes' 'Needle in a Haystack'.

c) And then there are the ones that are 'Go on, get stuffed: who needs you?' addressed to some specific bloke, either named, as in the case of 'Nathan Jones' being given the air by the Supremes, or unnamed, as in the guy being told that 'I Will Survive' by Gloria Gaynor. (Given the mention in both of those of keys and doors, perhaps the archetype of this one is the blues classic 'You Got the Right Key but the Wrong Keyhole'.)

Any further suggestions?

May 2026

S M T W T F S
      1 2
3 4 5 6 7 8 9
10 11 12 13 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 21 22 23
24 25 26 27 28 29 30
31      

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated May. 30th, 2026 10:26 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios