One Song at a Time: "Oliver's Army"

Elvis Costello and the Attractions, circa 1979

The song: "Oliver's Army"

Artist: Elvis Costello and the Attractions

Released: 1979

Typical "Zomby" panel.

This is a pilot of sorts for a potential series. I guess whether it continues depends on what readers think of it and how much I enjoy writing it. Honestly, I feel guilty when too much time builds up between posts. To counteract this, I wanted to come up with something I could write quickly, without a great deal of research or preparation, so that I could have new content here every day or two.

In the past, that function was filled by Zomby, since originally all I had to do to turn Ziggy into a zombie was cut and paste him into Microsoft Paint, select the default shade of light grey from the color palette, and then click on the title character. Bingo! Instant hilarity! Then, the site that provided the black-and-white Ziggy panels I needed started posting grainier, lower-quality scans of the cartoons. Suddenly, I had to manually, painstakingly "paint" Ziggy the proper shade of grey to make him undead. Bogus! Besides, I'd already cycled through most of the potential punchlines with Zomby and wound up doing variations on variations by the end.

So what else could I do on the fly? Well, my iTunes library currently has 17,372 songs in it, so maybe there's some potential material there. Here's the plan for Best Songs Ever: I'll pick one particular track from those 17,372 songs and write a few paragraphs about why I like this song so much. This will be half music criticism and half autobiography, since I'll inevitably wind up writing about how these songs have affected my life. Does that sound good? If so, let's continue.

The Armed Forces LP.

"Oliver's Army" by Elvis Costello and the Attractions is a song that must have come to my attention about twenty-five years ago, when I was a terminally-confused teenage weirdo who didn't know anything about anything but thought he knew a great deal about a great deal. Costello's then-recent Spike album, featuring the hit single "Veronica" (a collaboration with Paul McCartney) was a big crossover hit in 1989, the very year I entered high school, and that was probably my gateway into his discography.

I'd seen Costello before that, but I hadn't really paid that much attention. Seeking more, I consulted the encyclopedic Rolling Stone Album Guide for some much-needed album guidance, and that led me to Armed Forces, a 1979 LP Costello recorded with his sometimes-backing band, the Attractions. Rolling Stone didn't steer me wrong, either: Armed Forces is an excellent concept album with a consistent warfare motif, often using militaristic imagery to describe romantic relationships. The songs on the album are propulsive and punchy, with sharp, sardonic lyrics and catchy, indelible melodies.

One track that stuck out from my very first listen was "Oliver's Army," which was actually a big hit over in England, hitting #2 on the singles chart and going gold. Considering the prickly, political lyrics, that's kind of a mind-bender.

The song, not remotely romantic in nature, addresses the issue of England sending its poor, disadvantaged young men (Costello has described them as "mere boys") to fight and die in a variety of foreign hot spots. The "Oliver" of the title is likely Oliver Cromwell, the one-time "Lord Protector" of England, who seized control of the country from reigning monarch King Charles I in a bloody takeover in the mid-1600s. Cromwell's so-called New Model Army, with which he waged civil war in his homeland, is considered the historical forerunner of the modern British military.

The central thesis of Costello's song is that the British government is coldly sending citizens it considers expendable to do its dirty work abroad, a theme encapsulated by this shocking, unsparing couplet: "Only takes one itchy trigger/One more widow, one less white nigger."

How did a song this bleak become a big radio hit? Easy. It's a work of supreme, danceable pop craftsmanship, including a florid piano part Costello admits was swiped directly from ABBA's "Dancing Queen." Listening to "Oliver's Army" on repeat today, I realized how heavily Costello's song shows the influence of Phil Spector's operatic "Wall of Sound" pop and R&B hits of the 1960s. Towards the end of "Oliver's Army," Costello even starts doing the woah oh oh ohs from seemingly every Ronnettes record.

To be honest, when I was 14, I had no idea who Oliver Cromwell was, and I probably couldn't have located most of the places Costello names in the song (Johannesburg, Checkpoint Charlie, etc.) on a map. But any kid sitting through a dull day of high school can relate to this repeated line from the chorus: "And I would rather be anywhere else but here today!"

Okay, folks, that was the pilot. Let me know if you have any interest in seeing this kind of thing on a semi-regular basis.

Why "Be My Baby" is probably my favorite song... and one of the saddest, too

Making up for his sins at home: Harvey Keitel in Mean Streets (1973)

"You don't make up for your sins in church. You do it in the streets. You do it at home. The rest is bullshit, and you know it."

- Martin Scorsese, Mean Streets

Martin Scorsese himself speaks those words, from off-screen, at the very beginning of Mean Streets, his grungy, heartfelt drama about small-time gangsters in a deeply Catholic Italian-American milieu. I quoted that speech last week during my stay at the behavioral health center while talking to a female patient (not the aforementioned Helen). She said she didn't feel like she could "fix" her problems from inside the hospital, and I told her about those opening words from the Scorsese film because I felt they were appropriate for the occasion. The entire opening sequence of Mean Streets is remarkable, and I want you to see it. Here, take a look:

In his book Ebert's Bigger Little Movie Glossary, critic Roger Ebert cites his own so-called "8MM Omen": "Films that start with old home movies are never about happy lives." And true to form, Mean Streets is not a cheerful, upbeat film. There are moments of humor and humanity in it, but in the larger sense, it is a tragedy. And what music does Scorsese use to set the tone for this downbeat film? "Be My Baby" by the Ronettes, a #2 hit from 1963. The song was co-written and produced by Phil Spector, who created the record along with the songwriting team of Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich, while the record's powerful lead vocal is supplied by Ronnie Bennett, who later married and divorced Phil Spector and is more commonly known today as Ronnie Spector. In short, there were a lot of talented people behind this record, but it somehow manages to be even greater than the sum of its parts.

"Be My Baby" is often used in romantic comedies, and Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys has called it one of the happiest records ever made, but I feel that there is a crushing sadness at the core of this song. Let's examine the lyrics of the first verse:

The night we met, I knew I needed you so.
And if I had the chance I'd never let you go.
So won't you say you love me? I'll make you so proud of me
We'll make 'em turn their heads every place we go.

You will note immediately that there is no indication that the man Ronnie is addressing even likes her, let alone loves her. She just met him and suddenly decided that she "needed" him. They're clearly not in a relationship. She wants "the chance" to grab onto him and never release him. She hasn't been given that opportunity yet. "So won't you say you love me?" is a particularly needy inquiry, and "I'll make you so proud of me" is like a child promising her parents that she'll be on her best behavior. "We'll make 'em turn their heads every place we go" indicates that the singer cares what other people think of her and may be using this relationship to get attention from passersby.

The oft-repeated chorus is simplicity itself. It's just variations on "be my baby," "be my little baby," and "be my baby now," with a "please" or a "darling" thrown in now and again. This is as emotionally direct as singing or songwriting gets. The woman is asking, in no uncertain terms, for a man to love her. She's not playing coy or hard to get. She's just letting herself be vulnerable and open to rejection.

There really is only one other verse. The rest of the song consists of repetitions of the chorus. But the lyrics of that second verse are worth examining, too:

I'll make you happy, baby. Just wait and see.
For every kiss you give me, I'll give you three.
Oh, since the day I saw you, I have been waiting for you.
You know I will adore you 'til eternity.

There is more than a hint of desperation here. The woman is promising the man everything. She is granting him the keys to the kingdom, so to speak. This is the kind of thing you might say to a photograph of someone you love when you're alone in your room, but if you actually spoke these words aloud to that person, he or she might think you were mentally disturbed. I think Ronnie is one step away from kidnapping this guy and chaining him up in her basement. Either that, or she'll buy one of those Japanese body pillows and fashion it into a facsimile of her dream man. 

It's interesting to note that in another Scorsese film, The King of Comedy, Sandra Bernhard's character does participate in the kidnapping of a talk show host played by Jerry Lewis and uses the opportunity to "seduce" him and serenade him. In all seriousness, "Be My Baby" is a song that hits me hard every time I hear it. And that's why it's probably my favorite recording of all time.