"Part of me thinks that I will always be somewhat disappointed if what ends up becoming one of the most important relationships in my life is with another white person."

Says some unnamed man writing in to the NYT ethicist Kwame Anthony Appiah. Headline: "As a White Man, Can I Date Women of Color to Advance My Antiracism?"

I haven't read to the end yet, but I've seen many hostile references to this column. Are they hostile to the letter-writer or to the ethicist? I don't know, but I became hostile to the letter writer when I got to the sentence quoted above. 

First, he's a man in bits and pieces: "Part of me... somewhat disappointed ... one of the most important..." I was so disgusted I had to restore myself by listening to "All or Nothing at All" by Frank Sinatra.

Sweet blindness.

This is from the "Francis Albert Sinatra Does His Thing" TV special, in November 1968:

Also from 1968, the same Laura Nyro song, from Liza Minelli on "The Ed Sullivan Show":

I'm watching these old videos because I just finished listening to Andrew Hickey's podcast, "500 Songs Bonus: 'Stoned Soul Picnic" by Laura Nyro'" on Patreon (which you need to subscribe to and really should).

"Perhaps no single male fashion accessory provokes as much emotion as the bow tie."

"People who wear them fall in and out of love with them or bear them as a burden for life. People who have to look at them can find them irritating or worse. The presence of a bow tie always seems to draw comment and the phrase 'bow tie-wearing' in certain contexts can sound like a slur.... To its devotees the bow tie suggests iconoclasm of an Old World sort, a fusty adherence to a contrarian point of view. The bow tie hints at intellectualism, real or feigned, and sometimes suggests technical acumen, perhaps because it is so hard to tie. Bow ties are worn by magicians, country doctors, lawyers and professors and by people hoping to look like the above. But perhaps most of all, wearing a bow tie is a way of broadcasting an aggressive lack of concern for what other people think.... Another class of bow-tied men is comprised of comedians who wear them ironically, like Mark Russell [and] Pee-wee Herman.... [George] Will said he started wearing a bow tie in the 1960's as a statement 'when things started going crazy.'..."

From a 2005 NYT article by Warren St. John: "A Red Flag That Comes in Many Colors."

"If I go looking for something I usually don’t find it. In fact, I never find it. I walk into things intuitively when I’m most likely not looking for anything...."

"Obscure artists, obscure songs. There’s a song by Jimmy Webb that Frank Sinatra recorded called, 'Whatever Happened to Christmas,' I think he recorded it in the 60s, but I just discovered it...."

Said Bob Dylan, recently.

 

Questions for discussion:

1. What's the use of looking for something? You'll have better luck walking intuitively while not actually looking. That is, don't look where you're going. That's exactly what doesn't work.

2. Frank Sinatra is hardly an "obscure artist," but there are many recordings of Frank Sinatra singing an obscure song. What's your favorite obscure Frank Sinatra song?

3. Even Jimmy Webb is not obscure, but how many songs has he written, and what percentage of them are non-obscure? But don't talk about them. Talk about a Jimmy Webb obscurity.

4. Whatever happened to Christmas? Remember how love was all around? Whatever happened to you?

5. What have you found, Bob Dylan style, by walking into it intuitively? 

The reason to stay out the road is that "it’s a perfect way to stay anonymous, and still be a member of the social order."

"You’re the master of your fate. You manipulate reality and move through time and space with the proper attitude. It’s not an easy path to take, not fun and games, it’s no Disney World. It’s an open space, with concrete pillars and an iron floor, with obligations and sacrifices. It’s a path, and destiny put some of us on that path, in that position. It’s not for everybody."

Said Bob Dylan, quoted in an interview the Wall Street Journal's Jeff Slate published at bobdylan.com. 

"In 1995, at Sinatra’s request, Dylan played his sunless yet defiant song 'Restless Farewell' for the old man at a tribute concert."

"It’s not hard to tell why the last verse would appeal to the guy who often closed his concerts with 'My Way': Oh, a false clock tries to tick out my time,/To disgrace, distract, and bother me,/And the dirt of gossip blows into my face,/And the dust of rumors covers me./But if the arrow is straight/And the point is slick,/It can pierce through dust no matter how thick. So I’ll make my stand/And remain as I am/And bid farewell and not give a damn. Those Sinatra standards replenished him.... But perhaps the nearest Dylan came to explaining both his gift and its durability was in 2015, accepting an award from the charity MusiCares. Reading from a sheaf of papers in his hands, Dylan exploded the myth of sui-generis brilliance. 'These songs didn’t come out of thin air,' he said. 'I didn’t just make them up out of whole cloth. . . . It all came out of traditional music: traditional folk music, traditional rock and roll, and traditional big-band swing orchestra music. . . . If you sang ‘John Henry’ as many times as me—‘John Henry was a steel-driving man / Died with a hammer in his hand / John Henry said a man ain’t nothin’ but a man / Before I let that steam drill drive me down / I’ll die with that hammer in my hand.’ If you had sung that song as many times as I did, you’d have written ‘How many roads must a man walk down?’ too. 'All these songs are connected... I just opened up a different door in a different kind of way. . . . I thought I was just extending the line.'"

Writes David Remnick in "A Unified Field Theory of Bob Dylan/He’s in his eighties. How does he keep it fresh?" (The New Yorker).

I love that connection of "My Way" to "Restless Farewell." I also love Bob's album of Sinatra songs, especially "The Best Is Yet to Come" — here. And here's Bob singing I’ll make my stand/And remain as I am/And bid farewell and not give a damn to Frank for Frank's 80th birthday:

"Good writing, I think, ultimately exists between the twin goal posts of as-few-words-as-you-need and as-many-words-as-you-want."

"I, a natural natterer, lean toward the latterer. But one must draw the line somewhere. I recommend striking out 'actually' at every opportunity, unless it’s in a discussion of the movie 'Love Actually,' in which case we might want to focus on the title’s confounding commalessness. Similarly, though I would never fault the supreme lyricist Johnny Mercer for the gorgeous 'You’re much too much / And just too very very,' I am on constant alert for 'very,' always looking for the chance to dispose of it."

From "Writers, be wary of Throat-Clearers and Wan Intensifiers. Very, very wary" by Benjamin Dreyer (WaPo).

Here's Dreyer's book: "Dreyer's English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style."

And here's that song (which is about not being able to come up with words to express how marvelous this person is):

 

As for the missing comma in "Love Actually," I think there's some widely held belief that commas in titles are too fussy and you should strike them without worrying about the rules of punctuation. But "Sex, Lies, and Videotape" even has an Oxford comma.

Are the baristas trying to clear this café?

I love Frank Sinatra, but it's been Frank Sinatra since I sat down — with a brief assist from Nancy Sinatra — and not only are the songs repeating — I'm coming flying with him again and we've already been to Peru — but when "My Way" came on again, they cranked up the volume.

Male singers, their microphones, and their gender.

The New Yorker is featuring an old article from 1997: "Sinatra’s Song/What is it about Frank Sinatra that no one else can touch? He could swing, break hearts, and behave badly, and he made his voice an instrument that kept reinventing American music" (by John Lahr). I found this quite interesting:

"The next time you’re with a dining companion, consider what might be different if you were a party of one."

"While breaking bread together has its benefits, only dining with others means you’re missing out on one of the greatest joys of travel — eating alone at a restaurant. This is especially true while traveling, when it is easy to get immersed in a semi-predictable dialogue at the dinner table. There’s the rehashing of the day’s events, discussing details of tomorrow’s itinerary and lamenting how sore your feet are from walking on cobblestones. This isn’t a diss to your companion(s); it’s just the realities of traveling with someone else. Eating by yourself provides an opportunity to hone in on details as they happen — all in real time. You will be more likely to notice the intricate font on the menu or the server’s delicate placement of the bread basket on the table...."

Writes Chris Dong in "Dining solo is one of the great joys of traveling/No offense to your travel companions, but they’re holding you back from a culinary journey" (WaPo).

Most articles about dining alone are about dealing with the predicament of being alone and wanting or needing to eat in a restaurant. But this article has you contemplating an actual preference for being alone while you are with someone else.

It reminds me of that old LSD experiment where the doctor asks the subject — who seems to be having a sublime experience — "Is it all one," and she says "It would be all one if you weren't here." 

But isn't this always the problem with the company of others?

"I feel strongly that the essence of Charlie Brown is premature existential despair and world weariness..."

"... and both this song and the holiday special give you an inaccurate idea of the Charlie Brown ratio of despair to maudlin moments of transcendence. Then again, there’s a sort of evocative melancholy in this song that’s making me regret placing it here, scores of slots below 'Dominick the Donkey.' Eh, it’s probably fine."

Writes Alexandra Petri, explaining her placement of "Christmas Time Is Here" at #80 on "A ranking of 100 — yes, 100 — Christmas songs" (WaPo). 

I found her reasoning very amusing, throughout. Maybe you don't have access to WaPo, but — if you have Spotify — here's the whole list:

"Right now our country's gloomy/Fear is in the air/But when Joe's president/Hope is everywhere/Troubles fly away/And life will easy flow/Joe will keep us safe/That's all we need to know...."

 

Cher weighs in — that's all you need to know — at the 2020 I Will Vote Concert last night. 

As New York Magazine explains, "Happiness Is a Thing Called Joe" is an old song — Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg song from the 1943 film musical "Cabin in the Sky." Here's its original context — question whether there's a problem of racial appropriation — with the devastatingly sweet Ethel Waters:

 

Original lyrics: "It seems like/Happiness is just a thing called Joe/He's got a smile that makes the lilacs want to grow/He's got a way that makes the angels heave a sigh/When they see little Joe passing by..."

ADDED: The all-time greatest political rewrite of a song was Frank Sinatra's "High Hopes" for JFK:

 

Here's the original version, from Sinatra's own movie, "A Hole in the Head":

The double exaltation of Bud Powell.

I don't think I knew the name Bud Powell until last week, when I heard Bob Dylan's new song, "Murder Most Foul," which names the brilliant jazz pianist in the second-to-last line:

Play "Love Me Or Leave Me" by the great Bud Powell
Play "The Blood-stained Banner," play "Murder Most Foul"

Last night, I was reading — and getting close to the end of — Woody Allen's autobiography, and I came across this:

I never thought having biological children was doing them any favor, bringing kids into this world. Sophocles said to never have been born may be the greatest boon of all. Of course I’m not sure he would’ve said that if he ever heard Bud Powell play “Polka Dots and Moonbeams.” Soon-Yi and I chose adoption to try and make life better for a couple of orphans already marooned on this orbiting psychiatric ward....

And then on the last page of the book, summing up, he says "If I could trade my talent for any other person’s, living or dead, who would it be? No contest—Bud Powell."

Here's "Polka Dots and Moonbeams":



If you're wondering what the lyrics are, Frank Sinatra will sing them for you, here.

A country dance was being held in a garden
I felt a bump and heard an "Oh, beg your pardon"
Suddenly I saw polka dots and moonbeams
All around a pug-nosed dream...

"The ‘Rage Baking’ Controversy, Explained/'Rage Baking: The Transformative Power of Flour, Fury, and Women’s Voices' is one of the most hyped cookbooks/essay collections of the year..."

"... but Tangerine Jones, a black woman who began using the phrase 'rage baking' years ago in response to racial injustice, isn’t credited," Eater explains.

On February 4, Simon & Schuster published Rage Baking: The Transformative Power of Flour, Fury, and Women’s Voices.... Then, on February 14, blogger and baker Tangerine Jones published an essay on Medium titled “The Privilege of Rage,” outlining how she coined the phrase “rage baking” back in 2015, and watched as Alford and Gunst’s book was published to great acclaim as her work went unacknowledged. Jones, a black woman, wrote that “Being black in America means you’re solid in the knowledge that folks don’t give a true flying fuck about you or anyone who looks like you,” and that she turned to baking as a form of self care. In 2015, she started posting online with the hashtag #ragebaking, and started the @ragebaking Instagram account in the summer of 2016....

“There are huge consequences when [black women] express our rage because we’re seen as threatening,” [Jones] said in an email, even noting that her post likely wouldn’t have been as popular “if I wasn’t code switching and couching my profound disappointment and anger in ‘eloquent’ ways.”

I'm trying to understand how Tangerine Jones feels, and here's what I come up with. What if some men — without so much as mentioning me — put out a book titled "Cruel Neutrality: The Transformative Power of Blogging, Brutality, and the Detached Voice," and the authors were raking in money and doing TV appearances and their names replaced mine on a Google search on "cruel neutrality":

I don't mind seeing Taylor Swift's name on "my" page, but it would irk me if some men — I made them men to approximate Jones's racial grievance — took my phrase and monetized it, fame-a-tized it. I'd be irked. But I wouldn't think, this is how the world marginalizes people like me. So I'm not getting the full Tangerine Jones effect.

ADDED: The authors of "Rage Baking" are giving some of their profits to "Emily’s List, an organization dedicated to electing pro-choice Democrat women to office, and though Jones dismisses." It's interesting the way rage is becoming part of the Democratic Party brand. I searched for the phrase "rage baking" in the NYT archive, and I found "I Misjudged the Gender Effect/The Sanders-Warren spat looked as if it’d blow over. Instead it’s fueled the 'electability' debate" (a column by Lisa Lerer from a month ago):

Sure, the energy of the first Women’s March, the #MeToo movement and the historic number of women who won congressional seats in 2018 is still alive — or at least available for purchase. Books like “Rage Baking” urge women to use “sugar and sass” as political protest, as pink hats march down runways and designers sell $400 “resistance” sweaters. But it’s not translating into support for the remaining women in the Democratic primary....

Yes, before investing too deeply in rage, get some clarity about whether rage works. It might work to get somebody flinging flour around the kitchen and gobbling cookies — let's face it, "rage baking" comes from "rage eating," and most baking is for eating — but that doesn't mean we want rage at the center of presidential politics.

AND: Some people in the comments are making fun of the name Tangerine, but Tangerine is a fantastic name. I don't think there's anyone famous named Tangerine, but there are 2 great songs about a woman named Tangerine. There's the 1941 Johnny Mercer song "Tangerine" (listen here to Chet Baker and Paul Desmond... wait, that was great, but there's no singing, so here's Frank Sinatra):

Tangerine, she is all they claim
With her eyes of night and lips as bright as flame
Tangerine, when she dances by
Senoritas stare and caballeros sigh
And I've seen toasts to Tangerine
Raised in every bar across the Argentine
Yes, she has them all on the run
But her heart belongs to just one
Her heart belongs to Tangerine
Tangerine, she is all they say
With mascara'd eye and chapeaux by Dache
Tangerine, with her lips of flame
If the color keeps, Louis Philippe's to blame
And I've seen clothes on Tangerine
Where the label says "From Macy's Mezzanine"
Yes, she's got the guys in a whirl
But she's only fooling one girl
She's only fooling Tangerine

And Led Zeppelin had their "Tangerine"! Listen here. The lyrics are a noticeably inferior to the Johnny Mercer song, but still.... Led Zeppelin!

Tangerine, Tangerine
Living reflection from a dream
I was her love, she was my queen
And now a thousand years in between
Thinking how it used to be
Does she still remember times like these?
To think of us again
And I do

"Mayor Bill de Blasio grew hoarse shouting over the cranked-up crooning of Frank Sinatra tunes playing in the Trump Tower lobby as he tried to promote his 'Green New Deal.'"

"The mayor had planned a press conference outside the tower that houses president’s Manhattan residence, but Mother Nature forced him to relocate the event into some very unfriendly territory—the gilded building’s public lobby. 'Had the weather cooperated we would have been outside,' the mayor admitted. The atrium is one of several privately-owned, public spaces in the city that are created in exchange for loosening height restrictions. Trump Tower staff turned up the dial on the PA system just moments before the mayor entered the 5th Avenue building. Tony Bennet[t]’s 'Stranger in Paradise' and Frank Sinatra’s 'I’ve Got You Under My Skin' blasted through the speakers during the event. Trump supporters joined in the noise heckling the mayor with a steady stream of 'Boos' and 'You s—ks' as he tried to shout over the din."

The NY Post reports.

Very funny.

I love "Had the weather cooperated...." You know the weather is not enough. We need the whole climate to cooperate.

And I love that the mayor could move his event into Trump Tower because the city had extracted this access and Trump gave it to get more height to his building. Then the mayor moves his event inside and music — a kind of indoor weather — is rained down upon him, and it's somebody's idea of what sounds Trumpian — Tony Bennett and Frank Sinatra.

By the way, the character who sings "Stranger in Paradise" — in the musical "Kismet" — is the Caliph. In the movie, that's Vic Damone:



ADDED: Video of de Blasio's non-paradise:

"Today, in the internet age, anyone can be a Nigerian prince. In Mr. Abel’s time, however, the hoaxer’s art — involving intricate planning..."

"... hiring actors, donning disguises, printing official-looking letterheads, staging news conferences and having the media swallow the story hook, line and sinker — entailed, for better or worse, a level of old-time craftsmanship whose like will almost certainly not be seen again.... Mr. Abel’s first major hoax, the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals, or SINA — which sought 'to clothe all naked animals that appear in public, namely horses, cows, dogs and cats, including any animal that stands higher than 4 inches or is longer than 6 inches' — began in 1959.... Over the next few years, the organization’s activities (including a 1963 picket of the White House by Mr. Abel, who demanded that the first lady, Jacqueline Kennedy, clothe her horses) were faithfully reported by news organizations, among them The Times, The San Francisco Chronicle and CBS News.... Then there was Omar’s School for Beggars, a New York City institution founded amid the recession of the 1970s, which claimed to teach the nouveau poor the gentle art of panhandling.... the subject of credulous coverage by many news outlets, including The Miami Herald and New York magazine.... There were also the Topless String Quartet, with which, Mr. Abel said, an unsuspecting Frank Sinatra wanted to book a recording session; the Ku Klux Klan Symphony Orchestra, which, he said, the failed presidential candidate and former Klan grand wizard David Duke briefly accepted an invitation to conduct; Females for Felons, a group of Junior Leaguers who selflessly donated sex to the incarcerated; the mass 'fainting' of audience members during a live broadcast of 'The Phil Donahue Show'; his 'discovery' (he posed as a former White House employee) of the missing 18½ minutes from the Watergate tapes; Euthanasia Cruises ('For people who wanted to expire in luxury,' Mr. Abel’s website recounted); Citizens Against Breastfeeding....  To some observers, Mr. Abel’s antics were a Rabelaisian delight. To others, especially members of the news media who had been taken in, they were an unalloyed menace."

From "Alan Abel, Hoaxer Extraordinaire, Is (on Good Authority) Dead at 94" (NYT).

McCain's casket is carried out of his funeral to the same song that was Trump's first dance at his inaugural ball.

From "At McCain’s Memorial, Tears, Laughs and Allusions to the Man Not Invited" (NYT):

And in a nod to Mr. McCain’s affection for the rites of tradition and his penchant for the irreverent, the ceremony got underway with a choir’s rendition of 'Amazing Grace,' but his flag-draped coffin was taken out of the sanctuary by a military honor guard to the piped-in voice of Frank Sinatra singing "My Way."

To refresh your memory:



Here's how I blogged that in real time:

FINALLY: Trump and Melania appear. Her white dress reminds me of cake decorating. Her bare shoulders glimmer. Trump's tux has extremely baggy pants. He eschews tailoring. That's his style. They dance that dance that's not really a dance — just rocking back and forth. I'm worried that the bulky Trump will squish the delicate swirl of fabric that extends from Melania's extensive bust. The dress is floor-length and then some, and I'm sure he's treading on it. Don't tread on me!

The song is "My Way" — "I ate it up and spit it out."

I like the way the Times was careful enough to write "the piped-in voice of Frank Sinatra singing 'My Way'" and not just "Frank Sinatra singing 'My Way.'" Keep it factual. Frank Sinatra was not there. We all know he couldn't be there. He ate it up long ago and spit it out in 1998. But the newspaper of record does well to stick firmly to the facts. It was the piped-in voice of Frank Sinatra at John McCain's funeral. And probably many other funerals. Many people loathe that song, but there's always one person who thinks (or whose family thinks) that he is perfectly unique. Of course, they are right. But there's a big swagger to the song, a fuck you all, I'm outtahere. Which is nervy at a funeral. And downright scary at an inauguration.

The other thing I wanted to highlight from the NYT is this:

[T]he gathering’s most awkward moment: that belonged to [Tommy Espinoza, a Mexican-American leader], who invoked Sarah Palin, Mr. McCain’s running mate in the 2008 presidential election. Ms. Palin was not invited to any of the memorial services, and Mr. McCain, in his final book and in an HBO documentary, said he wished he had defied his advisers and picked his friend, former Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, for vice president.

Mr. McCain asked Mr. Espinoza’s wife, he recalled, what she would think about selecting a woman as his running mate.

“'Well, I really don’t care if it’s a man or a woman — if something happens to you, I want to make sure that person can run the country,’” Mr. Espinoza recounted his wife saying, prompting fleeting and muffled laughs in the church.

They laughed at Sarah Palin. Espinoza delivered a heavy-handed laugh cue and the people laughed and then stifled it.

IN THE COMMENTS: Bushman of the Kohlrabi said:

the piped-in voice of Frank Sinatra singing 'My Way'

But were there any actual pipes involved?

I'm just trying to hold the Times to their own Trump standards here.

I believe this refers to the press reaction to this famous Trump tweet:

Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my "wires tapped" in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2017

The NYT published: "Trump Digs In on Wiretap, No Matter Who Says Differently."

In recent days, the president and his aides have tried to recast his original assertion to make it more defensible. Mr. Trump and Mr. Spicer have both noted that in two Twitter posts the president used quotation marks around the phrases “wires tapped” or “wire tapping,” which they said indicated that they were not meant to be taken literally....

The Times didn't even put quotation marks around "piped-in."

"Bob Dylan is among six acts appearing on a new compilation EP that features 'reimagined' versions of traditional wedding songs for same-sex couples."

"Universal Love opens with Dylan’s rendition of the 1929 great American songbook classic She’s Funny That Way, revamped as He’s Funny That Way... The compilation also features contributions from St Vincent (AKA Annie Clark), who turns the Crystals’ And Then He Kissed Me into And Then She Kissed Me. Kesha flips the pronouns on Janis Joplin’s I Need a Man to Love, as does Valerie June on Noël Coward’s Mad About the Boy."

The Guardian reports.

That reminds me, on "American Idol" this week, one contestant, Marcio Donaldson sang "(You Make Me Feel Like a) Natural Man," and the smart-ass writer at New York Magazine wrote:

Marcio Donaldson, “(You Make Me Feel Like a) Natural Woman”

I almost enjoyed this. I’m all for a man owning the Carole King-penned Aretha classic and belting the words “You make me feel like a natural woman” as Carole intended. But no. Marcio Donaldson had the nerve to change the lyrics to “You make me feel like a natural MAN,” which is… pretty stupid, Marcio. What does “You make me feel like a natural man” even mean? And who cares? Stay tuned in the semifinals for Marcio to tackle Cyndi Lauper’s hit “Men Also Enjoy Fun, OK?” and Madonna’s pop classic “Material Person.”

Carole King-penned... Carole intended... Is Gerry Goffin simply invisible? From the Wikipedia page for the song:

Written by the celebrated partnership of Gerry Goffin and Carole King, the song was inspired by Atlantic Records co-owner and producer Jerry Wexler. As recounted in his autobiography, Wexler, a student of African-American musical culture, had been mulling over the concept of the "natural man", when he drove by King on the streets of New York. He shouted out to her that he wanted a "natural woman" song for Aretha Franklin's next album. In thanks, Goffin and King granted Wexler a co-writing credit.

Ah! So the original idea was the "natural man"!  And men outnumber the woman on the credits to the song. There's Gerry and Jerry. And they're all white people thinking about black people. So what, really, is the original intent? And even if it was a woman — or, specifically, Aretha — what's wrong with extending the idea to a man? Aretha famously flipped the sexes when she sang Otis Redding's song, "Respect."

Did it take "nerve" for Marcio Donaldson to change the lyrics? Are the changed lyrics "stupid"? Does the smart-ass writer at New York magazine (Louis Virtel) think the "Universal Love" project, with all the change-of-sex lyrics is stupid? He mocks —  “Men Also Enjoy Fun, OK?”  “Material Person" — but will he mock Dylan's "He's Funny that Way" and St Vincent's "And Then She Kissed Me"?

And does the smart-ass Virtel know that Rod Stewart sang "(You Make Me Feel Like a) Natural Man," on his 1974 album "Smiler"? It's not a new concept. Rod's version is fantastic. Listen.

On this blog in 2004, we were talking about "Songs transformed with the sex of the singer." Tori Amos had come up with a list of 20 songs, and I said:

The classic example of a man singing a woman's song is Frank Sinatra singing Gershwin's "Someone to Watch Over Me." He's forced to sacrifice the most beautiful couplet -- "Although he may not be the man some/girls think of as handsome" -- but singing words that are an entirely conventional woman's dream, Sinatra lets us see a shocking, haunting vulnerability.

Virtel betrays some woeful sexism when he asks "What does 'You make me feel like a natural man' even mean?" Is the "natural" condition something special for women, some notion that women have more "nature" in them or that Nature is a woman (Mother Nature) and that The Male is something else — something like Civilization and Order? If that's what underlies the question "What does 'You make me feel like a natural man' even mean?," then I wonder if he knows there's another song, "Natural Man," written by comedian Sandy Baron and singer Bobby Hebb and recorded by Lou Rawls, who won a Grammy for it in 1971. Listen here. Lyrics:

Well now, I tried to do what others say that I should do
They say that I should fit in, fool em, fake it
Those kinda dues just make me crazy and blue, man, I just can't take it
So when you see me walkin, won't you notice that proud look in my eyes
My feet are on the ground and my soul is searching for the sky...

Anyway, Marcio Donaldson is one of the top 24 on "American Idol." Here he is singing the Goffin/King/Wexler "Natural Man":

"Younger Than Springtime."

This was the first song that popped into my head when I needed a Rodgers and Hammerstein song for a footnote earlier today. I came up with something else for that post, but the song "Younger Than Springtime" has stuck with me all morning. I rewatched this version — from the movie "South Pacific" — even though I don't like the singer's voice and I find it absurd the way the man has to hold up the woman the entire time he's singing...



Now, the actor you see there — in his shirtless glory — is John Kerr, but the voice belongs to Bill Lee. I mean, I don't particularly like the voice, but they could have had anybody. They didn't need the singer to look great shirtless and nonridiculous with that woman swooning in his arms for 3 minutes. But I guess the people of the time (1958) liked that voice. Bill Lee was also the singing voice of Prince Charming in "Snow White and the Three Stooges" and the singing voice of Captain von Trapp in "The Sound of Music."

I much prefer this version of "Younger Than Springtime" by Frank Sinatra. I love everything about this, including when he waves with his tie at Nancy Sinatra:



By the way the character in the story, Marine Lieutenant Joe Cable, loves the woman, who is Tonkinese, but — spoiler alert — rejects her because of racism and, out of dramatic necessity, dies in battle.

"Make like a Mister Milquetoast and you'll get shut out/Make like a Mister Meek and you'll get cut out/Make like a little lamb, and wham, you're shorn..."

Just a song that came on the car radio today and caught my attention. I thought the lyrics had some resonance for Americans today — one man advising another man to amplify his masculinity. Even better with the video clip — from a movie I've never seen, based on a 1961 Neil Simon play.