The songs we sing

I heard the song “All I Wanna Do is Make Love to You” on the radio a while ago and I just had to smile.

Even in my younger years, the powerful vocals of Ann Wilson, lead singer of the rock band Heart, always made me want to sing along to this song.

I knew the lyrics by heart but never really thought about it until one day, two colleagues  who we’ll call Ed and Noy hitched a ride in my car and the song came on the radio. Almost immediately, I started humming and couldn’t restrain myself from singing the refrain.

His eyes wide with shock, Ed turned to me and said, “Do you even know what you’re singing?”

Ed was known in the office as a rather serious, upright young man and devout in his chosen faith, which I can no longer remember.

I ran the song quickly in my head and realized it was a bit promiscuous. So I explained to him that I just liked the melody and the vocals and that the song didn’t mean anything to me.

He could not understand how I could like a song for its melody and the vocals and not have anything to do with the lyrics. I do not remember much of the conversation but I sure remember that the air was pretty thick with disapproval.

We fell into a silence made awkward with Wilson still in the background, belting her plea for understanding from a man who'd just come face to face with a boy he had unknowingly fathered during their one-night stand, saying she had hooked up with him only to have the baby that her husband could not give her.

Noy broke the silence by helpfully offering that he liked the song “You’ll Never Walk Alone” from the 1945 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical “Carousel”, but Ed told him that he didn’t like the song.

I was just as incredulous. In a low tone, Noy ran the lyrics quickly in the stillness of the car. “When you walk through a storm, hold your head up high and don’t be afraid of the dark. At the end of the storm is a golden sky and the sweet silver song of the lark…” We both waited.

Go on, Ed urged, smiling at our disbelief.  “Walk on through the wind. Walk on through the rain, though your dreams be tossed and blown. Walk on, walk on with hope in your heart and you’ll never walk alone. You’ll never walk alone.”

“What’s wrong with that?” Noy finally asked. “It’s humanist,” said Ed.

At our perplexed expressions, Ed explained that the song played up the human will to conquer the odds, downplaying God’s will.

So what kind of songs did he like? He said any of the Psalms. Like what? I asked. “In our church, we sing Psalm number this and Psalm number that.  Those are nice.”

It was too much for me. I turned off the radio.