1 Song A Day: Dawes - 'If I Wanted Someone'
Another piece for 1 Song A Day…this time I’m thinking about critical thinking and pop together, and one of my favourite songs of the year. Oh, and by the way, I signed the acceptance page of a job offer yesterday, so I’m now a Lecturer in the School of Psychology at the University of Queensland. (For US audiences, Lecturer in Australia is, I think equivalent to something like Assistant or Associate Professor?). Not quite sure how much my workload will affect how much I write about music and do my linkstumblring, but we shall see!
An excerpt:
And when the chorus begins ‘if I wanted someone to clean me up, I’d find myself a maid’, the line has to be a direct nod to Neil Young’s ‘A Man Needs A Maid’. Except that Dawes – however respectfully, considering the pastiche – disagree with Neil Young’s old ode to chauvinism. Depending on your point of view, Neil Young’s song will either evoke thoughts about a) how abjectly hopeless men are, how we need women to ensure we don’t fall apart or b) how a woman’s place is in the home, looking after these abjectly hopeless men. As a sometimes abjectly hopeless specimen, I can see the appeal of a) but can also see just how horrifying b) is.
In contrast, Goldsmith rejects the idea that a man needs a maid. Instead, the chorus of ‘If I Wanted Someone’ basically says that different men are different. Some men might want or even need a maid. Some men might want a trophy wife. Some men might want a therapist (many more, I suspect, need one). Goldsmith sings, however, that he wants someone to make the days go easy, someone easy to get along with. Sydney Morning Herald blogger Samantha Brett would be horrified. Different men want different things? Gasp!
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o-song reblogged this from sallyo and added:
Thanks! And I agree with this - I was too glib in that piece about ‘A Man Needs A Maid’. But I do think the song having...
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sallyo reblogged this from o-song and added:
I’ve never understood...thought that “A Man Needs...Maid” is...
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o-song posted this
