Dusty Springfield - You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me
Besides being the song I most love to sing in the shower, this also has the honor of being the first song to make me cry.
Well, except for that song about the unicorns. Can you blame me? They forgot the unicorns? I remember being so upset the first time I heard that, thinking if only someone remembered the unicorns then we’d have them today and maybe I’d have one for a pet! Then I thought of the unicorns left behind, watching the ark pull away, all their bastard animal friends pointing and waving like “I’M ON A MOTHERFUCKING BOAT!” and then they drowned. That was heartbreaking.
Where was I? Oh, Dusty Springfield. I saw her perform this on tv )back in the time of black and white televisions) and something about it reached into my heart and squeezed it tight. I don’t know if it was the words or the way she sang them or a combination of both. But it made me cry and when I went to bed that night I lay there in the dark with the song playing in my head and I thought, I don’t want to grow up if growing up makes you sing songs like that. Or maybe I do. Crying about love has got to be better than crying about unicorns, right?
And then I grew up and sometimes I didn’t know which one was more mythical, love or unicorns.