Songs I Hate… and Love [#1]: Jimmy Soul- If You Wanna Be Happy (1963)

Perhaps most famous to my generation as the background music to a very NSFW shock site which I won’t bother linking; this classic 60s doo-wop hit leaves me feeling conflicted to say the least.

Download It Here

On the one hand it is an unambiguously, shamelessly, unironically sexist song. The fact that we can play song like this on the radio, which objectifies and patronises women in a chuckling, devil may care way, really hammers home how far we’ve got to go when it comes to gender equality. Add to this the 1960s context of racial inequality and we're in a shit storm of inconsistency. A song as hideously offensive and dehumanizing to People of Colour, sung by white Americans would long since have been confined to the wheelie bin of cultural history. It may seem like I’m exaggerating, but really, I think the light-hearted jokiness of the lyrics is what makes them so fucking sinister. Here they are:

If you wanna be happy
For the rest of your life,
Never make a pretty woman your wife,
So from my personal point of view,
Get an ugly girl to marry you.

A pretty woman makes her husband look small
And very often causes his downfall.
As soon as he marries her
Then she starts to do
The things that will break his heart.
But if you make an ugly woman your wife,
You'll be happy for the rest of your life,
An ugly woman cooks her meals on time,
She'll always give you peace of mind.

Don't let your friends say
You have no taste,
Go ahead and marry anyway,
Though her face is ugly,
Her eyes don't match,
Take it from me she's a better catch.

Say man.
Hey baby.
Saw your wife the other day.
Yeah?
Yeah, she's ugly.
Yeah, she's ugly but she sure can cook.
Yeah? Okay.

It’s ‘tongue in cheek’ in a ‘get back in the kitchen’ kind of a way, which might be funny were it not for the fact that women (and men) were, and still are, expected to perform in certain ways purely because of their gender. Sadly, I can’t separate this song out from the wider context of Patriarchy. Domestic violence, rape, honour killing, pay inequality, this song. They are all rooted in the same oppressive logic which confines us to binary gender roles, and shapes the way we ascribe value to other human beings. Frankly it makes me sick.

On the other hand, this song is absolutely, unquestionably fucking brilliant. The rhythm, the melody, the slightly ramshackle way it’s recorded, the voices, the spirit of camaraderie between the people singing, the instrumentation; it’s an absolute barnstormer. It also has very nice nostalgic value, as illustrated from this scene in that childhood favourite of many people of my age Mermaids (note, young Winona Ryder and even younger Christina Ricci rocking out):



I guess there’s a degree of irony in these three pretty women/soon-to-be-women having a good time to this song sans male presence, but the image of Mrs Flax. (Cher) and her kids boogying to it whilst preparing the kitchen for the return of their new found patriarch is kind of a weird one. An optimist might say it frames Jimmy and co as pathetic characters, ultimately powerless over the women they seek to objectify. But I’ve never been one for the whole beauty as empowerment, lipstick feminism shtick. Ultimately it’s a selfish, short term, local mitigation of a long-term, universal problem. Still, you can’t deny the infectiousness of the song, it’s difficult to watch that video and not dance along.

Jimmy died of a heart attack aged 45. He had never emulated the success of this single, which sold over a million copies, and his failure to have any further success in the charts meant that he ended up spending much of his post-pop star life in the US army. In truth the song wasn’t even his own, it was a cover of a 1930s calypso number by Roaring Lion. I don’t know if he made a pretty woman his wife, or if he was happy for the rest of his life. But I’d like to think that in at some point in some night club in 1960s Harlem, Angela Davis and bell hooks were both getting down to this song; quietly smirking at how stupid men can be.

Bank! Dentist! Work!

I just remembered I have a blog. But sadly, I also have an appointment at the Bank in 20 minutes. And soon I have to go to the dentist and he's going to drill my teeth. And I paid him in advance for the privilege. And I have lots of work to do. Uni work and work work. I am constantly bewildered by the world, and only sometimes in a bad way.