“A torch song is a sentimental love song, typically one in which the singer laments an unrequited or lost love, where one party is either oblivious to the existence of the other, or where one party has moved on.” (Wikipedia)
Sarah Vaughn, Broken Hearted Melody. YouTuber comment: “Late 1959. I was in 4th grade, listening to KFWB Los Angeles.” Same here. Same year, same grade, same station, KFWB, Channel 98! Color Radio! ‘Color Radio!’ as part of their promo was not a racial reference but an allusion to the fact that color TV had recently become available.
My favorite deejay was B. Mitchel Reed. I learned ‘semolian’ and the Yiddish ‘mishigas’ from him. His real surname is ‘Goldberg,’ which means mountain of gold. I will say no more lest, at this time of resurgent anti-semitism, ‘thanks’ to the despicable Democrats, I ‘trigger’ any anti- or philo-semites that might be hanging around. It’s Saturday night, friends. Let’s forget about this political Scheissdreck for a few hours. Tomorrow’s another day. I now take a sip of my Jack & Coke and slide into some Boomer nostalgia.
Timi Yuro, Hurt. When I first heard this I was sure she was black. I was wrong. She’s Italian, and her real name is Rosemarie Timotea Auro. What pipes!
Billie Holliday, The Very Thought of You
Roy Orbison, In Dreams
Peggy Lee, Oh You Crazy Moon
Ketty Lester, Love Letters
Etta James, At Last
Lenny Welch, Since I Fell for You
Sentimental you say? What would life be without sentiment? You say it’s overdone? You suffer from an excess of cool. It’s Saturday night, punch the clock, pour yourself a stiff one, and feel. Tonight we feel, tomorrow we think. About sentimentality and everything else under the sun.
What great songs!!
Thanks.
Bill,
Your post on sentimental songs stayed in my mind these past two weeks, and yesterday while reading the poet Mark Doty’s Dog Years: A Memoir, I came across this reflective passage on sentimentality that, I think, is worthy of consideration:
“The oversweetened surface of the sentimental exists in order to protect its maker, as well as the audience, from anger. At the beautiful image refusing to hold, at the tenderness we bring to the objects of the world — our eagerness to love, make home, build connection, trust the other — how all of that’s so readily swept away. Sentimental images of children and of animals, sappy representations of love — they are fueled, in truth, by their opposites, by a terrible human rage that nothing stays. The greeting card verse, the airbrushed rainbow, the sweet puppy face on the fleecy pink sweatshirt — these images do not honor the world as it is, in its complexity and individuality, but distort things in apparent service of a warm embrace. They feel empty because they will not acknowledge the inherent anger that things are not as shown; the world, in their terms, is not a universe of individuals but a series of interchangeable instances of charm. It is necessary to assert the insignificance of individuality to make mortality bearable.
In this way, the sentimental represents a rage against individuality, the singular, the irreplaceable. (Why don’t you just get another dog?)
The anger that lies beneath the sentimental accounts for its weird hollowness. But it is, I supposed, easier to feel than what lies beneath rage: the terror of emptiness, of waste, of the absence of meaning or value; the empty space of our own death, neither comprehensible nor representable” (p.14).
Vito,
I found your comment after ordering F. Scott Fitzgerald’s CRACK UP to get a better insight into Richard Yates who thought that the writer’s life was “the only life” as Bailey reports him as saying, and that his personal authenticity required the full integration of the IDEA of being a writer with BEING a writer, and that this in turn required aping the self-destructive booze-hound existence of his hero Fitz.
Ever read CRACK UP?
Doty’s take on sentimentality goes deep and resonates with me. It displays real insight into the phenomenon. I hope to write a separate post analyzing the above passage. It is philosophically rich.
Thanks for the above and for the various book recommendations you have made over the years. The Gordon bio of Eliot is phenomenally good. Poor Vivienne! and what a rascal that Russell was.
Bill,
No, I never read Crack Up.
I am glad that you found the Doty quote “philosophically rich”; I thought that his take on sentimentality had real merit, but I wanted to have your reaction. I am enjoying this Dog Years, which is a beautifully written, deep meditation on love and loss of our human and animal companions.