Song of the Day: Everyone sing “Don’t tell me you don’t want my love”
Chuck Prophet – The Left Hand and the Right Hand – MP3
On Chuck Prophet’s new song “The Left Hand and the Right Hand” the chorus goes, “Don’t tell me you don’t want my love / Don’t tell me you don’t need my love.” Despite being a double negative, “don’t tell me you don’t want my love” is a pretty great line, so great a line that I figured it surely had been uttered before. And, of course it had. “Is this What I Get for Loving You?” was written for the Ronettes in 1965 by Gerry Goffin and Carole King. It only reached 75 on the chart and was considered a failure by the standards of the time. Such is the price the Ronettes would pay for trying to be me “adult.” While the band would open 14 dates for the Beatles in 1966, they were essentially done.
Marianne Faithfull covered “Is This What I Get for Loving You?” in 1967.
Marianne Faithfull – Is This What I Get for Loving You? – MP3
Is there anything worse than being told that your love is not wanted? Well, yes actually. There are those that just take your love and bend it to their will. I imagine Phil Spector did that with Ronnie, who he married after the Ronettes broke up. By all accounts, her years with Phil were a nightmare. Due to Phil’s jealousy and violent insecurity, she was essentially a prisoner in her own home. I suppose she can consider herself lucky not to have been shot in the face.
Ronnie was allowed out long enough from her domestic stockade in 1969 to record the telling, “You Came, You Saw, You Conquered.” Apparently, Phil was so happy to be compared to Julius Caesar that he failed to recognize that the tune really painted him as the irrepressible douchebag that he most surely was.
