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Writer's pictureFern

Redux and Rant

My May 5th blog, Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow, apparently experienced a major snafu, and most of you never received it. No worries, just scroll up and you can find it. Hoping that the WIX folks, who were very helpful, have solved the issue, and we are back on track.

Now for the rant. (Feel free to weigh in with your opinion about this song by return email or comment at end.) Somethin’ Stupid, a Rant

The other night I had an oldies radio station playing in the background, as I played Words with Friends at my desk. In my defense, it is one of the few stations that comes through clearly on my vintage 1966 Panasonic box radio. The usual familiar tunes, some annoying, some ridiculous, and some fondly remembered from another time and place, played innocuously, blending into the background as I strove to beat my challengers (I love you all, but you know scrabble is my downfall; the one thing I am disconcertingly competitive about.)


I am able to filter out the benign and vacuous tunes, like Teen Angel, It’s My Party and I’ll Cry if I Want To, even I Don’t Have a Wooden Heart. But then it happened, the ultimate annoying, nerve grating song (to me) that gets my dander up. Frank Sinatra is singing the opening lines of a 1967 duet he recorded with his daughter Nancy Sinatra.

"I know I stand in line, until you think you have the time To spend an evening with me And if we go someplace to dance, I know that there's a chance You won't be leaving with me.” Somethin’ Stupid.” I’ll say! What was ole Blue Eyes thinking? Why in the world did he think that song choice was a good idea?


Was it in the interest of boosting his career? Or his daughter’s career? In fact, they had each had one of their greatest hits the year before, Strangers in the Night for Frank, and “These Boots are Made for Walkin’” for Nancy. Why team up after those successes for what some reviews at the time referred to as the Incest Song? It was clearly a song written to be performed by lovers, and in fact had been written the year before by C. Carson Parks and recorded with his wife Gaile Foot


“Somethin’ Stupid” might have been questionable (and in my opinion, completely distasteful) as a duet sung by a father and daughter, because it was meant for lovers, but that didn’t stop America from falling in love with it.


All these people knew what they were doing. And yet none of them apparently thought it might be extremely fucking creepy for a father to sing a love-song duet with his daughter. How does this happen? How does everyone


involved think this is OK? And how do enough people buy the record for it to stay at #1 for a whole month? Excerpt Stereogum October 2018 Tom Breihan. But “Somethin Stupid” was a huge success, a No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100. It would become Frank’s final No.1 hit on the chart, and the only father/daughter duet to reach the pinnacle of the chart. Fifty four years later, it’s still getting airtime. Amazing. And it still annoys me. Predictably. Frank should have told Nancy to put on her boots and…keep walkin’.


C. Carson Parks: "Something´ Stupid" arranged and played by Soren Madsen. Recorded live in the Church of Lystrup, Aarhus, Denmark, October 2017.

This instrumental rendition is lovely. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecdPcmb9Vdc

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