the first round
(1) debby boone, “you light up my life”
lit up
(16) hall and oates, “method of modern love”
141-102
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 March 5.
The Emptiest of Vessels: Linda Michel-Cassidy on “you light up my life”
There is a bounty of reasons to dislike the pop song, "You Light Up My Life" as sung by Debby Boone. First, is the story behind Boone coming to record the song. Second, we have its insipid lyrics. Third, and probably least relevant, is that so many people loved and continue to love this pablum and the dead-eyed performance thereof. I am forever suspicious of mass appeal. Fourth, and not at all relevant, is that it reminds me of early high school.
In 1977, Debbie Boone covered "You Light up My Life," which was originally written by Joe Brooks for the movie of the same name, which Brooks also wrote and produced. In You Light up My Life (follow closely, friends) the actress Didi Conn lip-syncs over a recording made by Kasey Cisyk, a classically trained musician and singer. The Conn character is screwed over multiple times, most notably by her producer/occasional lay when she is cast and then replaced by what is essentially a blonde stock character. She is then told her recording of the song will be dubbed into the movie for which she had been cast. Coincidently, Brooks removed Cisyk's name from the credits after she rebuffed his advances, listing it as "cast recording." Cizyk had to sue Brooks for payment for her work. Lots going on here.
The Boone version uses the same instrumental track as the Cisyk one, rendering the former just very fancy karaoke. Supposedly, Boone was chosen because Brooks thought she had a similar vocal style, and Boone did report that he told her to sound as similar to Cisyk as possible. The version sung by Boone, released in August of 1977, was a huge success, landing ten weeks at #1 on Billboard, a record at that time. She won a Grammy (Best New Artist of the Year), American Music Award (Favorite Rock/Pop), and a People’s Choice Favorite New Song Award (tied with “Boogie Nights” by Heatwave). Brooks won the Academy Award for Best Original Song (1978), a Grammy for Song of the Year (tied with "Evergreen" from A Star is Born), and the Golden Globe award for Best Original song (1978), among others.
Before getting any further, let's break this down. The least horrible feature, although not my taste, is the music. Since I have no music training and am possibly tone deaf, all I'll say about that is, it is of stuck-in-your-head quality. I do feel like I can comment on the lyrics, which are bland at best. Still, it's up to the singer to interpret them, or imbue them with something. Anything.
So many nights I'd sit by my window
Waiting for someone to sing me his song
So many dreams I kept deep inside me
Alone in the dark but now you've come along
When interviewed, Boone stated that the “him” of the song was God, in effect claiming that the song was spiritual. This was disputed by the songwriter, Brooks. This I can believe, given his multiple indictments for forceable rape, and pretty much everything ever written about him. If nothing else, this proves that the lyrics are an empty container, awaiting meaning.
And you light up my life
You give me hope to carry on
You light up my days and fill my nights with song
I consulted with a friend, a Unitarian from the Midwest, who confirmed that the song was sung in church back in the day, because it was “good to do the hand signals to,” meaning, I think, some aberration of American Sign Language. When Boone performed the song at the 1978 Oscars, there were children signing along with her. The problem is, it turned out that they were basically miming gibberish, as they were recruited from a regular elementary school, and not the John Tracy Clinic for the Deaf, as Bob Hope had announced. The Academy's response was that they never specifically stated the children were deaf.
Rollin' at sea, adrift on the water
Could it be finally I'm turnin' for home?
Boone’s version became a gold mine. I, like everyone else at the time, conflated the song with the movie with the two different singers with Conn's convincing lip sync. I recall not hating the movie, and maybe even liking it. I tracked down a Mexican bootleg compilation of eight movies purportedly about love, each more obscure than the other. When it arrived many weeks later, mangled and covered with an exotic array of stamps, I hunkered down to watch, if for no other reason than to test my memory. My London-bred husband was only vaguely aware of this piece of Americana, so I forced him to watch it as well. At the very time Boone’s version of the title song was lording it over the US charts, he was a dapper mod popping around Camden Town in the pointiest of creepers, smoking without recourse, and taking the tube to see Madness and The Specials. Meanwhile, I was busy riding a tractor in a bikini and cutoffs, dreaming of my escape. I felt he should pay.
Finally a chance to say "Hey, I love you"
When the film was released to not a whole lot of critical acclaim, I was an indisputably naïve teen, living near a whole lot of nothing. Philadelphia, the den of iniquity I was forbidden to visit, was on the other end of the train line, a doable trip, if only someone would give me a lift to our station, over a half-hour’s drive away. Fear not, dear reader, my former babysitter taught me how to hitchhike. Philly lived up to its promise. I “discovered” ska, and that was that.
Never again to be all alone
You Light Up My Life was on some list of verboten films, perhaps because in the opening scenes, the Didi Conn character, a struggling actress and singer, goes home with a man she just met (sort of a meet-cute, but also harassment-adjacent). Soon after, she reveals she's engaged to another man, which 14-year-old me found very intriguing. The ending, Conn having shed her domineering father and glass of milk fiancée, displays a kind of freedom I had not begun to process. I was, however, able to understand the later betrayal by her hookup/producer/blow dried 1970s bad-boy archetype.
I remember loving the clothes that Didi Conn wore (vest and flare pants combos), wanted her car, and when she popped her cute luggage in that convertible to head off to New York City after dumping her fiancé, I just about lost my mind.
And you light up my life
You give me hope to carry on
You light up my days and fill my nights with song
'Cause you, you light up my life
The theme song had nothing to do with the actual story and even less to do with female autonomy, yet it became an anthem for the possibility of someone like me, a small brunette with a grown-out Dorothy Hammill haircut and out-of-touch parents, to say screw you to what was expected of her. The cruel irony of the Ukrainian-American singer having given life to the song only to have it gifted to an untested but well-connected girl from a powerful entertainment family was, at that time, entirely lost on me. I was too busy burning my forehead with a curling iron and plotting my escape.
In my memory, I'd seen the movie in a double-feature with Saturday Night Fever, another movie (with superior music) on said list. We were also forbidden to see Grease, in which Conn played Frenchie, the pink-wigged beauty school drop-out. I watched these movies over and over, trying to figure out how I would get to be in the world. Sex, sometimes in cars, so many great outfits, and a neverending feed of catchy songs. Being able to sing would help, a talent I did not inherit from my own entertainment family.
This did not deter me from being a theater kid. My main virtue, musical theater-wise, was being small enough for skinny ninth grade boys to lift during the inevitable flip-the-girl-dancers-over-the-back move. Which brings me to a dear friend’s audition. This was early high school, and I have no idea what the show was. Something with a huge cast and dated enough to be copyright-free. She and I had seen You Light up My Life multiple times, because telling a kid what not to do solidly guarantees they'll do it (see hitchhiking, above).
You give me hope to carry on
You light up my days and fill my nights with song
My friend chose to sing "You Light Up My Life" for her audition. This was a bold move, the song was everywhere, and anyone with a set of ears knew what it was supposed to sound like. But she had the sassy pageboy haircut, but in a glowier and natural blond. She nailed the lip gloss, super slick with only a good-girl hint of color. I remember feeling very uncomfortable as she sang. Her version was all want, if slightly off-key.
It can't be wrong
When it feels so right
We spent a lot of time talking about boys, and all those conflicted feelings landed hard in this Catholic school auditorium. I got in the show, as some sort of chorus person, and she did not. Subsequently, she landed a boyfriend who was smart, cute, and nice. Is there a lesson here? Who knows, but whenever I hear the song, I think about how the world would be a better place without high school. And, how it is possible to rock just about any song, provided you're not dead inside.
'Cause you…..you light up my life
The words on the page read like a framework. The tune can become whatever the singer makes of it, meaning that to hold up, the singer must want something or at least have a bit of style. Just watching the blank-eyed Boone perform, while her father creepily looks on, betrays the fact that the singer was not encouraged or able to put any emotion behind the song.
Boone has held to her claim that she was not thinking about earthly love when she sang—a thing that cannot be confirmed nor denied—but I have a suspicion this take was engineered by her daddy, the evangelical superstar, Pat Boone. This purported construction is so very different than the sensibilities that landed the song on the top of the charts for so damn long. Who among us has not pictured the object of our longing, standing in our nighttime front yard, pining. (That this visual is effective was proven a dozen years later by John Cusack in Say Anything.)
After he was forced to watch the movie by his demanding wife, my husband suggested that maybe the “you” was 2nd person. That Boone was singing to herself, empowered. Nice try, bud. His effort to rehabilitate the song pissed me off and reminded me that he grew up with better music than I did. Stay in your much cooler lane, sir.
There are scores of folks currently in middle age, myself included, who can confirm this was their prom song (I wore mauve). These theme songs are chosen based solely on children's untested ideas of true love. This was a song boys played to girls they hoped to grope upon threadbare basement couches, imaging the base count they’d achieve.
That this song can have such a varied interpretation proves the emptiness of the lyrics. The one positive thing I can say is that it provides an opportunity for the singer to make it their own. It is the ultimate musical Choose Your Own Adventure. Exhibit one: this skit from The Carol Burnett Show.
Some cover artists chose, as Boone did, to make something accessible. Versions by Whitney Houston and LeAnn Rimes, while financially successful, added nothing artistically. Sure, they sang pretty songs, if that's your kind of thing. On the other hand, Jean Carn's jazz version is saturated with feeling. The insipid lyrics, which we cannot blame either artist for, fall away. Further proof is offered by two versions by Patti Smith. One was performed on Kids Are People Too, a children’s television show, where she was adorably interviewed by the luckiest children in the world. This rendition was relatively staid, but hinting at the possibilities of Punk. The other, which appears on her album, Easter, is 200% Patti Smith. Corporeal and wormy, it could be read as an homage to heroin. Please note, there is no evidence Smith partook, and I have no idea what I'm going on about. In both versions, most notably the second, Smith pours herself into the void. To be clear, I'm not rehabilitating the song, but praising Smith.
That said, plenty of people love the Boone version, or so says the YouTube comments section. Many write it makes them cry (!) and even more claim it is their very favorite song. There is much talk of Boone's beauty, and lots of God-talk, pro and con.
I sing this song to my bearded dragon:)
3 years ago:
This is a beautiful song, but sometimes it gives me crying spells..., 😭😭
"This can't be wrong when it feels so right," It probably isn't about God
I suppose I should state an official position. To recap, Boone did not write this song, nor was she the original singer. Her voice is perfectly fine (said in writing workshop voice). It has been called "sweet" and "lovely" which I guess is true, if that's your kind of thing. The lyrics are as much a song as an empty toolbox is a thing that can fix a busted pipe. It’s just a container which could be repurposed into any number of things. It depends on the filling. And here, where Boone is charged with loading the vessel with meaning, I give it a hard fail.
In the words of YouTube critic, X_toxicity:
Supposedly the biggest hit of the 70s. However, songs that were less popular have since outshined it.
Really goes to show you that popularity isn’t everything. And more higher quality songs got their time to shine in the future.
Linda Michel-Cassidy is a teacher, editor, visual artist, and back in the day, was a bartender in a joint whose house band covered ZZ Top. Only ZZ Top. She hosts the interview podcast, The Eight Books that Made Me for the Mill Valley, CA Library. Find her at lmichelcassidy.com, on Twitter: @lmichelcassidy, and instagram at: lmichelcassidy.
Meditations in an Elevator Shaft: danielle cadena deulen on “method of modern love”
I have the Hall & Oates Emergency Helpline in my cell phone contacts—you know, just in case. Here, you can have it, too: (719) 266-2837. Now we’re both ready. Ready for what? you might ask and I might respond good question. Let’s consider how this excellent helpline, and its pre-recorded access to the catchy synthetic rhythms of the iconic 1980’s duo, might be put to use. I suppose most might use it as an absurdist pick-me-up in the middle of an otherwise ho-hum day. For that use, I’d suggest you choose option two: “Rich Girl.” Perhaps you’re sad and a bit nostalgic for the 1980’s—you were younger and thinner then, had your pick of beautiful lovers, and want to remember those lovers lovingly. In this case, I’d suggest you choose option one: “One on One.” I, myself, rarely call the line because I am determined that it should only be used in the case of actual emergencies—none of this ho-hum or mid-life-crisis shit. We’re talking your plane is going down, or you find yourself in the trunk of a maniac, or, as I imagine the possibilities of my future imminent death I often land on this one: I’ve fallen down the elevator shaft of an abandoned building and need to distract myself from the pain of my broken legs while I wait for the rescue team to arrive. Don’t worry: I called 911 first and “Call and Oates” second. I’m not an idiot. However, in that unlikely but probable event, I needn’t worry that I’ll never hear Hall & Oates again. I’ll simply go to my contacts list, hit send with my sweaty finger and get this bit of assuagement: The synthetic feminine, British-accented voice of the main menu curator who says “Welcome to Call and Oates, your Emergency Hall & Oates Helpline,” followed by my choice of four top-hit H&O songs.
If I have fallen down the elevator shaft of an abandoned building and need to distract myself from the pain of my broken legs (and possibly ribs) I would undoubtedly choose option three on the H&O Helpline: “Maneater.” Really, in all emergencies I’d choose Maneater, since it’s a childhood favorite of mine. When I hear it now, it sweeps me away to my girlhood self, who never saw the video, but imagined a blue furry monster (e.g. Sesame Street’s Cookie Monster) with enormous jaws, sitting at the counter of a bar in a blue sequenced mini-shirt and red stilettos, looking bored, swirling a dirty martini on the counter. In other words, I liked the song because I thought it was about something different, perhaps fantastical, something that provided a cynical gaze into the secret lives of adults. It seemed to me “anti-romantic” and even at eight years old (the song came out when I was three but lingered among my father’s favorites, so it was always in the house) I was sick of love songs. Despite their hippie style, my parents wore startlingly conventional musical tastes, so as far as I knew all songs were love songs, all with the same worn-out rhymes: fire and desire, arms and charms, you and true. Pop music reigned high in our household, my father’s obsession with his youth somehow tied to knowing who was on the top 40 countdown. Why did he need to know what teenagers were listening to? Why was he obsessed with whether or not I was popular? I wasn’t and didn’t care. The popular girls always seemed to lack imagination, saying the same things at the same pitch to everyone and each other. They didn’t seem like actual girls at all, but archetypical representations of girls who would grow into archetypical representations of women: just as boring, but more stressed out. Back then, without knowing the term “archetypal,” I simply called them “stick figures”—because they seemed to lack specificity.
This is why I loved my blue furry Man-eater: she provided fresh excitement, a twist to what I’d already understood was the mass-desired, tired story of seduction. When I listened to the song, I imagined this: each time a suitor approached her at the counter, giving her sly glances, trying to chat her up in his oversized business suit, my blue furry friend simply unhinged her jaw to swallow him whole, head-first, then went back to swirling her drink, always a slight sadness in her black eyes. Despite the clarity of this scene, and it being my own invention, I had so many questions about it: Why can’t the men see that she’s a man-eater (doesn’t the blue fur and huge jaws give it away)? Why does she seem sad after she’s swallowed them? What is compelling her to eat all these men if she doesn’t actually like it? I have even more questions now: Why did I put the monster in stilettos and how did I know what a martini was? Why did I (and still do) like a song so clearly representative of the anti-feminist, double-standard rhetoric I grew up with? Is this song and my imagined video of it simply a metaphor about the emptiness of seduction? I didn’t know seduction then, but I did intuitively understand the emptiness of cliché, how the narrative of desire that I’d been given in film and music and stories seemed to function without actual people in them, whatever authentic emotion there might have been was long abandoned. A perfect example of this kind of romantic hollowness is represented in Hall & Oates’s “Method of Modern Love.” It has all the trappings of a conventional, mid-eighties love song, but lacks verisimilitude. It has no specificity, no authentic emotion. It’s the tract housing of love songs.
Undoubtedly “Method of Modern Love” was a popular song for its time. It was written by Daryl Hall and Janna Allen—his girlfriend’s sister. I don’t know what to make of that relationship, but in other instances it was a pretty good mix: Janna Allen also co-wrote other Hall & Oates hits, including "Kiss On My List" and "Private Eyes" (notably number four on the Hall and Oates Emergency Helpline). Released on H&O’s album, Big Bam Boom, “Method of Modern Love” reached number five on the Billboard Hot 100 in February of 1985—just in time for Valentine’s Day. I think we can assume that many people listened to this song on Valentine’s Day that year, perhaps at candlelit dinners in the beige, carpeted dining rooms of their tract homes as they exchanged heart-shaped boxes of chocolate and/or diamond heart-shaped pendants and/or teddy bears holding hearts…
Sorry, I just threw up in my mouth a little bit. Ah-hem. Allow me to return to my analysis. Lyrically, the song’s first verse strikes a broad perspective, even what I might call a philosophical stance: “In the moonlite / Under startlite /Songs old as the night / Are what I've been dreamin' of.” I’ve taken the spelling of these lyrics directly from lyricfind.com, which may or may not have taken the spelling from H&O’s original liner notes, though I don’t disagree with their cutesy misspelling of “moonlight,” which suggests that H&O were describing a moonlight-like substance that nevertheless contains no moonlight. It’s the romantic idea of moonlight, not moonlight itself, which, if you think of it, isn’t very romantic: just the cold, sterile surface of a small celestial body reflecting the light of a sun about 150 million kilometers away. “Moonlite,” however, might be imagined as part of our human narrative, so bought and sold, like make-up, or lava lamps, or albums. As we move on to the next lines of the song, the speaker makes sweeping generalizations about our human condition, expecting, I think, our nodding agreement: “Everybody's hard as iron / Locked in a modern world / Dreams are made of a different stuff / I believe love will always be the same / The ways and means are the parts subject to change.” After such a rhyme-heavy start (“moonlight,” “starlight,” “as night”), I’m a bit thrown off by the almost complete lack of rhyme here (“same” and “change” bringing it slightly back with assonance). But that doesn’t concern me as much as the contradictory rhetoric. If love will “always be the same,” then why title the song “Method of Modern Love”, which suggests a cultural and temporal difference from what came before it?
This brings us to the song’s chorus, which offers us no clarification, as it simply alternates between repeating the sentence “It's a method of modern love” (with no clear reference as to what “it’s” refers to) and just spelling an abbreviated version of the title of the song: M-E-T-H-O-D-O-F-L-O-V-E in a strangely stilted, almost computerized staccato. To be honest, in the decades between the song’s release and now, I didn’t even know that spelling was a part of its chorus. The phrase they’re spelling is so long that I couldn’t build it coherently in my head, and the mix, which seems to emphasize everything at once, muddies the vocals, so I always just assumed I didn’t understand the words, and the melody was so forgettable that, well, I just never cared enough to look it up. Now that I know, I wonder if H&O is asserting that one method of accessing modern love is via spelling. That strikes me as L-A-B-O-R-I-O-U-S-A-N-D-B-A-N-A-L. While this strategy for creating memorable hooks has worked before (“R.E.S.P.E.C.T.” - Aretha Franklin) and since (“R.O.C.K. In The U.S.A.” —John Mellencamp), these spelling choruses usually lean on shorter words or phrases that emphasizes what is expounded in the verses and sold by the confidence of the vocalist. Franklin really lets us have it. Mellencamp, however cheesy, is at least unreservedly enthusiastic. Daryl Hall, however, sounds as if he is in the echoing auditorium of an actual spelling bee. Way to bring it, Daryl. You just moved up to the next round. The other third-graders are so jealous.
No—I take it back. Such a song is, perhaps, insulting to the emotional intelligence of third-graders. And this is, really, the most dissatisfying aspect of the composition: the way it infantilizes its audience. “Here’s a song about love” it announces to the listener, “you know, L.O.V.E. You like songs about love, right? Like, moonlite and starlite and how people are so tough to get to know nowadays. You can relate to that, right? Here, buy this song.” Never mind that in an attempt to court universality the lyrics malinger in vagueness. Never mind the second verse that lazily grasps at some attempt of narrative by suddenly addressing a “you” that’s far away (“I can call you / Got your number / Share my life with you /A thousand miles away”), before collapsing back on its sweeping statements about love (“Style is timeless and fashion's only now / We are the ways no one needs to show us how”). Never mind, even, the half-sung, rap-like ad-lib in the song’s closing verse, meant to capitalize on a popular and, at the time, new form of music—I assume, to keep with the “modern” theme in the song. In the video cut, Daryl Hall floats on clouds in an oversized pastel-green blazer with his feathered blonde pompadour, jabbing his hands to the beat in what I believe is his interpretation of the movements of an MC, but for white men in their late thirties. Do you remember in the mid-80’s to mid-90’s when pop musicians kept trying on rap or near-rap in the middle of their performances? It reminds me of my teenage years and my father’s attempted transformation into Cool Dad whenever my good-looking female friends came around, offering them weed and breaking out his album collection. Cool Dad Daryl. That’s what he looks like in the video. Never mind all of that, and you get this: a song built to sell. A song that sounds like the corporate idea of a love song: complete with phrases about love and a mix of popular musical sounds shoved into a computer interface by cocaine-clad business-bros and spit into the hands of a record producer. “Here, do this song,” the producer says, “all the yahoos will love it. And everyone else—well, who cares about everyone else? They could all fall into elevator shafts and no one would notice.”
In this hypothetical elevator shaft, it’s dark except for a hole high up on one side, about the size of a man’s torso, that’s letting the elements through. I’ve grown weary from blood loss (where did all the blood come from? I’m not sure) and listening for the saving sound of sirens. It’s a balmy summer afternoon, but the sun is setting and I’m sweating from the pain of multiple fractures. I stare at the few flies buzzing in and out of the singular shaft of light, wondering when they’ll find me. My phone screen glows lovingly, but my batteries are low. I have just enough left to entertain myself with a video. Since I’ve just listened to “Maneater” on the Hall & Oates Emergency Helpline, I’m curious to view the real “Maneater” video. Why didn’t I ever think to look it up before? But I’m dizzy when I try to Google the video, autocorrect somehow interprets the movements of my trembling finger as “Method of Modern Love,” and before I can stop it from happening, the video begins to play.
As my arms go numb and I slowly lose consciousness, I try to make sense of the video’s imagistic interpretation of the song: is modern love methodology founded in drinking neon cocktails in a theatre-like living room with a zebra-patterned floor, or the rooftop drum set made of metal garbage pails, or an all-male cast clinging to antennas in clouds? And what about that dancing—like a bunch of strutting penguins—is that supposed to be romantic or sexy? Is there anything resembling art in either the song or the video that might give me some bit of sweetness, some remembrance of the heights of human innovation or depth of feeling in these final moments of my existence? Please, God whom I rarely pray to, even if this is some kind of divine retribution, I was a loving wife and mother, a compassionate teacher—surely I’ve accrued enough good will to save me from this vainglorious mediocrity. Please, in the name of All Things Good, grant me this small miracle: let my battery fail so that I might slip into darkness in peace. If you will allow this to happen, in your great mercy and infinite wisdom, I will accept my death with gratitude. Amen.
Danielle Cadena Deulen is an associate professor at Willamette University and co-host of “Lit from the Basement” a podcast and radio show at LitFromTheBasement.com and KMUZ 100.7 FM in Oregon. She is the author of a memoir, The Riots; two poetry collections, Our Emotions Get Carried Away Beyond Us and Lovely Asunder; and a poetry chapbook, American Libretto. You can find her on Twitter, @danielledeulen, or on her website danielledeulen.net.