Women's voices: Full of sleep

Here’s one of the big differences between female and male singers—women sing about love in all its permutations; men…eh, not so much.

For example—the Voices today sing about love at a certain age, about growing old with your lover, being there, taking what comes—including wrinkles and memory lapses. Tell me about any man singing about that.

No, didn’t think so. Their songs are all about the heat, getting it on with some drop-dead gorgeous chick (or a lot of them—in fact, as many as humanly possible, plus two), and then moving on. 

This is entirely in keeping with the male ethos: it's been my observation that the older a man grows, the younger the women he pursues. Emphasis on "younger" and "women" plural.

The visual image for this is that tedious brand representative, “The Most Interesting Man in the World”—grey head- and body-hair, salon-tanned and surrounded by shellacked and lip-glossed bimbos who couldn’t cough up an intelligent thought between them if you bundled them up with Encyclopaedia Britannica and a year’s supply of ginkgo biloba.

Or The Pokey Little Puppy.

(I used to listen to Lohman & Barkley on KFI during my morning commute in LA back in the 80s, when I had a car with only AM radio. I recall an exchange where one of them commented to the other, “You know, if Wilbert Harrison were going to record ‘Kansas City’ today, the line would go, ‘They got some crazy little women there, and I’m going to get me six.’” Bingo.)

The best you can shake out of them is something like “It Was a Very Good Year”—and that’s basically a list of the women the aging singer has gone through as he moved up the wealth ladder. (And, BTW, he refers to them all as “girls”.) Yeah—there’s love, for you.

By contrast, have a listen to Martina McBride’s “When You Are Old”. I fell in love with the line, “When your brave tales have all been told, I’ll ask for them when you are old.”

McBride is one of the singers I discovered on the mix tapes my sister used to send me in the UK. At one point, I was so enthused by the finds I made in listening to them that I made a mix tape of my own and sent it to my friend The Pundit’s Apprentice back in Virginia. He gently replied that he couldn’t make it through the entire A-side, and, basically, save my time and postage and don’t do that again. Well, I hope he gets through this one, because I just find it stunning.

The second piece is from Bonnie Raitt. Yes, again.

There is something about “The Dimming of the Day” that just stops me in my tracks. Imagine—proclaiming that you actually need someone, on into the beginning of that good night.

She had me on the opening line, but the one I really love here is, “You know just where I keep my better side.” If that’s not a sign of long-term, true love, then shoot me now.