Manilow music

       Today I received several Barry Manilow CDs. Yes, I said Barry Manilow. I'll wait until you finish snickering. Done yet? Sigh. Okay, now let's discuss unknown Manilow songs. Not unknown to his fans, of course, but his albums contained gems that did not become hits and so you might be unfamiliar with them. Such as "Sweetwater Jones," "Sandra," "A Linda Song," "Starting Again," "All The Time," "Losing Touch," "Early Morning Strangers," "The Two Of Us," and so on.
       I suspect those songs and others like them weren't hits because they were, for the most part, songs about sorrow and alienation. "Sandra," for instance, tells the story of the perfect housewife who one day "... was doing the dishes when a glass fell and broke on the tile and she cut her wrists quite by mistake. It was real touch and go for a while." Or "The Two Of Us," which tells about a couple who made a life together because they were afraid of being alone, and now they have nothing to fear "except the rest of their lives together." These aren't feel good songs, and you sure couldn't dance to them.
       Many of his non-hit songs are complicated, expressing adult emotions of regret and abiding sadness. For some reason, those were songs that resounded with me when I was teenager growing up in a small Eastern Oklahoma town. Weirdly enough, although the songs may seem depressing, they helped me weather those years. It was like I had found someone who knew exactly what I felt at times. I wasn't alone.
       Manilow fans have taken some hits over the years. His songs have been ridiculed for being too maudlin, too depressing, too uncool. And age has certainly taken its toll on his voice. But he continues to perform to sell-out audiences in Las Vegas, and his Songs of the Fifties entered the Billboard chart at #1. Not bad. Not bad at all. Not bad. Not bad at all.
       For me, I will always be a fan, if only for the fact that those songs recall my teenage years when I was young and naive enough to believe in everlasting love and moonlight and a thousand other things that didn't survive my transition to adulthood. So I think I will put on a Manilow CD and get lost in the songs. Talk to you later.