Somewhere, Someone Needs This Song
Posted on May 30, 2009 Posted by John Scalzi 25 Comments
Which song? This song:
[imeem music=”QGcWD7uNkA”]
It’s my favorite Bonnie Raitt song, primarily because when I heard it I was just old enough to recognize that, in fact, you can’t make people love you. Which was a bummer to me at the time. Happily I got over it, just in time to meet Krissy. Go, emotional maturity! Anyway, enjoy.
This song was popular around the same time that you proposed to Laura Dern, right? Not that it’s relevant in any way… I’m just sayin’….
Thanks, as it turned out, I really did need that right now.
But your the embeddd ink wouldn’t play for me in Firefox. So I went to Youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQgDnZQogDM
Best,
RB
I kind of needed that, too. I’ve been listening to similar things all week. Argh.
Make ‘m love you?
No, ‘spose not.
But if someone you’ve known for eight years has professed their love to you multiple times in the past year, asked you to marry him, helped you plan a wedding, talked about desiring to having children with you, but then when–weeks before your wedding–freaks out because you got accidentally pregnant (using BC, a true accident) and dumps you via email, well, you can take ’em to court and suck them dry for every penny of child support you can.
(Not that I, personally, am sitting here in my second trimester facing single motherhood looking at the July 1st wedding hotel bill and fuming or anything like that…)
I definitely needed that right now. Thanks.
Wierd, talk about coincidence. I was coding and listening to Bonnies early 70s albums when I took a web break. I Ain’t Blue and Love Has No Pride are amazing songs.
this is one of my favorite songs, I just had it stuck in my head
It’s a great song. I like the entire CD.
@4 Anon I am so sorry to hear that. My now husband was my then boyfriend when we had an unexpected blessing. He stuck by my decision to have and keep our daughter and I don’t think either of us has regretted one minute – 23 years later. I know that I was, in part, fortunate. There are decent men out there who will love you and your child. I hope you get to know one.
Hey Anon- hang in there. Start building your support network now no matter what you decide to do about the ‘oops’. Not that it helps but I had something just about as awful happen to me (my husband walked into the delivery room and told me he wanted a divorce) and I survived. It is genuinely true that what does not kill you makes you stronger. It just sucks all along the way while it happens.
This is a good song for that feeling, another one I like is the one by The Eagles- the one that starts “so baby, there you stand…”
Anon – a journalist I knew in Minnesota some 20 years ago got pregnant accidentally and then successfully sued her fiance, a lawyer, who’d suddenly abandoned her; she ended up getting all the support she needed from the father, and in time for the birth. I hope you are successful also. What a sh*t this guy is, or has proven to be (I say this as a dad of two planned children).
As for the song, there’s a not-bad cover version by Prince (of course his title is “I Can’t Make U Love Me”), one of several interesting covers (including “One of Us”) on his three-hour triple album Emancipation from 1996.
Goddamn, anon, your story has really put my relationship-related moping in perspective. Best of luck to you and the baby. I hope things start turning around for you really soon.
Incidentally, the song Mary Beth referred to is “Wasted Time”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikxcuDRiAn4
The more people I know, the more I like my dogs. Anon, hope you nail this guy in court – what a tool!
Love this song, always have….
@Anon This Time: My fiancé dumped me while I was pregnant, 27 years ago. Looking back, it’s the best thing that could have happened! I would not want to be married to the man he is now, nor to have had him as my daughter’s father. It wasn’t easy being a single mom, and I’m very lucky to have had supportive family who made it a lot easier. If you decide to raise this child, either alone or with a better person you will meet down the road, my advice is to always be honest about what happened. I told my daughter as much as was age-appropriate throughout her life, as she asked questions about ‘having a daddy’ and so on, and I’ve never regretted it.
Oh, and she’s the light of my life.
Best of luck to you, be strong!
@Scalzi: Thanks for this song. It’s been a long time since I heard it, and it is gooooood.
#4 what #14 said.
If I had known my wife would walk out on me and an 18 month old, I would have listened when she said she wasn’t sure about the diamond. Not that it slowed her down putting it on (or I’m sure 4 years later hocking it).
The woman I was dating 3 years after the wife walked listened to my stand that I would never marry again and has been getting up on the other side of the bed for 30 years come August, most of them married to me.
Bonnie is definitely one of the classier acts in the music biz.
…it has a real ‘Jackson Browne’ feel to it, doesn’t it?
yeah… there’ve been times when this song would cause a tear of self-pity to meander down my cheek.
dammit. ‘would have caused’.
As my girlfriend just left me, and I’ve been thus far failing to win her back, yes, I’m the one who needs this song.
Wow, havent heard this song in years. Brings back memories, thanks John.
The first time I heard that song I was in *exactly* the place of the person in the song.
Song still makes me cry from the memory, though I’ve moved on since then, and married someone else.Who, btw, is pretty wonderful.
But you don’t totally forget the sad times.
Another Bonnie Raitt song that will break your heart is “Wounded Heart”. It ranks with Billie Holiday’s “Don’t Explain” in my collection of “done her wrong” songs.
I charted the course of my break-up via music in much more detail here, at my website. I’ll probably have to add this song at some point in there.
I think I was inspired to do it by a McSweeney’s article that did essentially the same thing (with different songs), but I can’t remember where I read it and no Google searches have worked out, thus far. Let me know if you know what I’m talking about.
My then-3 year old godson made a similar comment about Toni Braxton’s “Unbreak My Heart.” What killed me was that I then knew he Understood about his parents’ separation. Poor kid.
Anonymous @ 4 – I’ll be thinking of you and praying for you, hang in there.
Context is everything.
I still cry when I hear Clapton’s ‘Tears in Heaven’–
it came out shortly after my brother died.
This is a wonderful, terrible melancholy song, and it makes me sad everytime I hear it. And that’s wonderful.
But on a happier note, for any of you not currently dealing with jackass exes, Bonnie also has one of the best songs ever in her repertoire, just oozing with sex and love and…God, it carbonates my hormones (tm Berke Breathed)
http://www.spacebrothers.com/audio/blenderblues.mp3
You can make her motor moan….*shudder*