You Think (1977)
Genre: Bluegrass, Satire
The breakup song is so common in pop music, it probably qualifies as its own genre. The punny “You Think” was my attempt to deconstruct the overwrought purple prose of romantic poetry and leaven bitterness/heartbreak with a little slice of humor. Like any good dysfunctional relationship, it doesn’t rhyme in any of the right places.
I have three stories related to this song…
Story #1—How This Song Came About
The following advice emerged in some self-help books of the 1970s: If you were trying to move on from a marriage or relationship that had gone sour, you should begin active mental rehearsal of all the things you hated about your ex. Forming a negative image of the person would somehow replace all the positives and help you get over your hurt. “You Think” was my musical attempt to take that advice to its logical (and hopefully comical) conclusion.
Story #2—How This Song Didn’t Win Any Awards
I submitted “You Think” to a songwriting contest on the West Coast shortly after I wrote it in the late 1970s. I mailed a recording on a cassette tape with a check for $30 with the enticement that I could potentially be “discovered” as a new talent and if not (as consolation), they would send back expert feedback about how I could make it better. It seemed like a winning proposition. A few months later I received my cassette tape back with a 30-second stock response recorded onto the end of my song. The voice on the tape urged me to avoid using simple rhymes (like “spoon,” “moon,” and “June”). While that may have been fine for older popular music, it said, it certainly was not to contemporary tastes. The rejection was disappointing, not to mention the loss of the money they pocketed (—by my reckoning, $1 per every second of “expert” advice). I didn’t find the feedback particularly helpful and it discouraged me from entering contests ever since. Of all the lyrics I’ve ever written, this is the one song where I intentionally did not rhyme any of the terminal words in the lines of the verse—for comic effect. No spoon, moon, or June.
Story #3—A Bittersweet Memory of My Sister
My brothers and I recorded the first version of this song in 1977 in my parents’ dining room. I played a boom-chick version on the guitar, accompanied by my brother on the dulcimer. Our younger sister, then a teenager, was taking flute lessons in high school. To give her a chance to participate in the festivities, I gave her a phrase to repeat on the flute after every verse. Our dear sister died in 2017 as a result of an aggressive form of breast cancer, leaving this world way too soon. Even though flute is not part of the usual instrumentation for a bluegrass tune, when I re-recorded this song, I couldn’t help but include echoes of her playing in the new version.
Pairs well with Spotify, Apple Music Playlist “Classic Novelties”