999,950: Harry Nilsson — Don't Forget Me

The general listening public has a disease. A deep-seated psychological condition has infested the brainwaves of many of our fellow travelers: The inability to wed lyrics to meaning and meaning to music. It’s some kind of sonic color-blindness that leads people to be able to see the square, but not be able to tell it’s a red square. It just is.

I spent the week scouring the DSM-IV, but couldn’t find a name for the condition. It keeps coming up, so it, like even the ugliest baby, needs a name. Let’s call it The Sting Disconnect.

Why Sting? I’m so glad you asked. “Every Breath You Take” is the ubiquitous hot wedding jam for dancing one’s new spouse over the threshold of life, but Sting’s a creepy dude, tracking, stalking, haunting some poor girl. He’s the kind of guy that women despise, but all they hear is bluebirds and butterflies.

While some artists stumble like dullards into the saving grace of The Sting Disconnect (i.e. Sting), others excel at exploiting it to purposefully warp the listener's perception of the singer. Harry Nilsson, with the Puck-ish swagger that only a man entouraging with an ex-Beatle for the better part of two years could have, often employs The Sting Disconnect; mismatching lyrical and musical tones, and pulling the lyrical bait-and-switch.

On the surface, “Don’t Forget Me” is sweetness - a couple being drawn apart by the forces of the universe. Maybe they’re going to different colleges. Perhaps jobs have pulled them apart? Nilsson, though, is an emotionally abusive wreck. He’s the man that daytime talk show crowds jeer belligerently when his wife says things like, “You don’t know what he’s like when it’s just us!” and “He loves me!” Boooooooooooooo.

The piano chords whisper late-night apologies, while the droning cello is the longing of a lost love. At first, the lyrics are nuggets home-spun advice, as one might give a graduate, but they become an admonition to keep those legs closed, “keep your clothes on and don’t forget me.” This isn’t a lament, it’s a control tactic. It’s a warning to the leaving lover not to forget who-the-fuck-she’s-dealing-with.

Nilsson is a master of sweeping these asides aside and out of view, getting them out fast and moving on to the next line or dressing them in ain’t-I-a-stinker wordplay. He croons, “I’ll miss you when I’m lonely, I’ll miss the alimony, too,” and the audience smiles.

His motivations, though, couldn’t be clearer. He’ll only miss her when his life isn’t being filled with all the things that she’s divorcing him over, but we’re rooting for him, hoping that they can’t patch it up, because breakups are so awful, aren’t they? I find myself writing Nilsson little notes of hope in my head.

Really, I should be finding this woman and driving her as far away from him as possible, from California all the way to the east coast.

We should sit on the beach, staring into the ocean, hoping the sound of the surf will erase the last words he sings her, after warning of the oncoming ravages of cancer, “Nothing lasts forever, but I will always love you.”

I bet she’d be on a Greyhound bus back home within the week.

Don't Forget Me - The Masked A...