While Reviewers Unknown current doesn’t have its own forum (instead we have a spot at the Unleashed forum, but no private section for RU members) when we did, one of my favorites, who thankfully still posts on our current space, is Classic Song Reviews, hosted by the M.A.N. (or “Middle Aged Nerd”), a creation of reviewer Irving J. Frump. The M.A.N. looks at older songs and proves they may not have been as cleaner than current songs as some might think. They were probably just a bit more subtle about it.
I mention this because one song has been playing over the speakers at work, with the current owners actually playing music that doesn’t suck, called Secret Lovers. One of the big hits of 80’s R&B group Atlantic Starr, which still performs today, was this song and if you thought that the other two adultery songs I covered were bad, this may actually be worse and it came out years earlier. Hear (and read) the song and I’ll explain why.
First let me get this out of my system: The first verse includes the line “if they found out it would break up both our happy homes”. Well if your home is so darned happy WHY ARE YOU HAVING AN AFFAIR AND THINKING MORE ABOUT THIS GUY THAN YOUR HUSBAND!!!!!!!!! We can also assume he’s doing the same thing for her and not his own wife, but that line isn’t there. His lines seem to be more about hiding the relationship, while hers is more about feeling for someone other than their spouses.
So how is this song worse than Follow Me or I Like It? Well Follow Me dwells once on the fact that she is married and the rest of the time it’s Uncle Cracker’s character trying to tell her that if she leaves she’ll “never find another man like me”. I Like It is just about some guy trying to talk a woman into having hot sex while his girlfriend and her boyfriend are out of town (with each other if there’s any justice). Secret Lovers does what these songs don’t by actually romanticizing the illicit affair and making it seem more palatable. “Oh, we’re hiding our affair from the people we proclaimed before God and a few hundred friends and family–AND OUR SPOUSES–that we would remain faithful to the person we married but we just love each other so much”.
THEN GET A BLOODY DIVORCE AND MARRY EACH OTHER! YOU’RE HOME CAN’T BE THAT DANG HAPPY IF YOUR CHEATING ON YOUR HUSBAND/WIFE AND ALWAYS THINKING OF SOMEONE OTHER THAN THE PERSON YOU PLEDGED YOUR HEART TO, NOW CAN IT?
I’m sorry, and yes I know I could pick on other songs like Stevie Wonder’s Part Time Lover and Johnny Taylor’s Who’s Making Love (which is actually more of an admonishment) as well as bunch of others, but the ones that come to mind don’t have the same romantic tone and I don’t feel like touching this subject again. Not to say these songs and others like it aren’t as guilty as the other three, mind you, but it doesn’t have the same feel as Secret Lovers, and in a time where affairs are so rampant that there’s an actual dating website, advertising during the Super Bowl of all things, that encourages cheating it makes this song even worse.
Hopefully this is the last Sing Me A Story I dedicate to an adultery song. This just irks me for a number of reasons.
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