Call me Betty

"What's your favorite song" is a question that has haunted me most of my life. Seriously. Choosing one to love and honor above all others was just something I couldn't do. But recently, on several long walks to work, I've figured out what I think the BEST song is, factually speaking.

"You Can Call Me Al." No, I'm not kidding. I realized while doing all I could not to participate in the whistling interlude that this is the peppiest damn song that ever lived, and it manages not to be obnoxiously happy.

"He doesn't speak the language, he holds no currency, he is a foreign man, he is surrounded by the sound. The sound. Cattle in the marketplace, scatterlings and orphanages," These lyrics are no "Barbie Girl" (possibly the other most peppy song alive, and one that makes me want to incite violence). The lines magically flow into one another like a poetic collection of really vivid scenes. For example, "Angels in the architectures spinning in infinity" reminds me of that building in Salamanca, Spain with all the gothic relief work that some witty restoration artist added an astronaut to in the mid nineties. And the song was written well before that happened, though I guess the "angels" were still spinning in infinity. It also has a bit of angst which I may or may not be projecting, but when I want to hear it in a sad way I just focus on the verse about a man in the midst of some kind of crisis who, spurning his wife and family, ducks back down an alleyway with a roly poly little bat-faced girl. I'm not quite sure what roly poly and bat-faced actually mean, but it feels plenty sad when I need it to.

The tune also has a healthy dose of nostalgia for most of my cohort because it was on heavy enough rotation in our childhood homes, you'd think payola was involved. I've seen so many copies of that vinyl, each worn down like the back pockets on your best pair of jeans, with Garfunkel's orange 'fro hovering in between taupe and sienna instead [ed. note: I realize this song was on Graceland, not an S&G record. What am I thinking of, Bridge Over Troubled Water? Eesh. I hope not). And I've danced in friend's livingrooms to it when we got to that year in college when we first really started appreciating our parents' taste in music. And I've brought it on uncountable roadtrips. And I walk to work with it, and let it put an obvious bounce in my step. And I whistle, outloud. And I feel like I'm privy to some kind of inside joke when the backwards bassline blurs past and I know that's exactly what it is.

It's not my favorite because I'm just not capable of that kind of commitment. But it's definitely the best.