I like driving alone in the car on highways in rural Ontario. I like it even more when the soundtrack is the Shangri-Las, and it is playing very loud.
I bought that zebra-print, denim miniskirt intending for this to be SUPER PUNK ROCK SUMMER 2K8!!!!!! but instead all I want to do is listen to the Shangri-Las. Especially the songs where girl meets boy and then somebody dies, featuring sound effects (ie: birds, motorcycles, waves crashing on the ocean, Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata*), and melodramatic, portentous voiceover. Didn’t Phil Spector** say something once about how his girl group songs were like little Wagnerian operas for the kids? I don’t think the Shangri-Las were ever a Spector group, but, seriously, these songs are BETTER than Wagnerian operas because a) they are listenable and b) they generally clock in at around three minutes, as opposed to three hours. Oh, and also they are seriously awesome, and contain lyrics like these, which are seriously hilarious, and are delivered very, very, well, seriously
Listen. Does this sound familiar? You wake up every morning, go to school every day, spend your nights on the corner just passing the time away. Your life is so lonely like a child without a toy. Then a miracle – a boy.
Is it schadenfreude? Is it the fact that I am a dried-up old spinster? Is it my very bitter sense of irony? Is my strange admiration for teenage girl culture? Yes, it is all of these things. It is all of these things that make me think that those lines are the most hilarious lyrics ever penned. Ever.
*So ubiquitous it is pretty much a sound effect.
**I don’t know what to do with Phil Spector! One one hand: what a horrible, despicable human being, whom I hate with every fibre of my being and whom I wish we could just stop talking about! On the other hand: Wall of Sound! Oh, the cognitive dissonance!