TATAR #16 Venus in Blue Jeans

by Howard Greenfield and Jack Keller (1962)

I feel that the universe is telling me to write about this.

Having not heard this song for what must be decades, it popped into my head recently. Next thing I know I'm reading about how the singer Mark Wynter apparently went on to have a great career in musicals and is back on tour. Should he ever appear in a production of Kismet, I'll have to get a ticket. I mean, I really will have to. That's just how it works.

Anyways, I remember hearing this song as a child and, like all music you listen to a child, it stays with you. So, naturally, when I listened again decades later, I could remember every single word.

And what fine words they are:

"La da da di da da da di di dum"

OK, not the very first line. I mean the next bit:

"She's Venus in blue jeans"

Now that is how to write a song title. The second line is even better:

"Mona Lisa with a pony tale"

This kind of thing is straight out of the Ira Gershwin playbook: juxtaposing the classical with the contemporary ("Of Thee I Sing, Baby"). And I love those two little interval drops in the melody on "Venus" and "blue jeans", like the sentimental sighs of an oh-so-earnest teenager in love.

This characterisation carries on in the middle section which switches perspective from "she" to "they":

"They say there's seven wonders in this world

But what they say is out of date

There's more than seven wonders in this world

I just met number eight!"

I do believe that is an early draft of a poem by Adrian Mole, aged 13 and 3/4. Add in the melodramatic heartbeat of the snare drum, a swooning choir and an obligatory modulation and you have the perfect love song for a smitten teen. 

But, most of all, I'm amazed by the brevity. The video says two minutes. In fact, if you exclude the intro and repeated verse, it's more like one. In just over sixty seconds, the songwriters have managed to capture this boy's character: the dreaminess, the naivety, the purple prose, the hopelessly pedestal-placing attitude to the opposite sex. 

It's a little glimpse inside somebody else's world. 

And that really is a wonder.