Chart Week: April 3, 1982
Song: “I’ve Never Been To Me” – Charlene
Chart Position: #32, 8th week on the chart. Peaked at #3 for three weeks in May/June.
Worst Song Ever. That’s a heavy crown to wear. Were I to sit down and figure out my least favorite songs of the Eighties, Charlene’s sole Top 40 hit would for sure be at the top of that list. Expanding that to all time, I think it would comfortably squeeze into the top five. I’m not alone. I came across two different Worst Songs of All Time lists, one ranked it at #3, the other at #4.
Charlene initially recorded “I’ve Never Been To Me” in 1976 for her debut, self-titled album. The LP didn’t sell, but was re-released in 1977 as Songs of Love. Included on that re-issue was a new version of “I’ve Never Been To Me” that scrapped the spoken word verse. It was pressed as a single, but barely dented the Hot 100, peaking at #97. Frustrated by her lack of success, Charlene quit the music business, moved to England, got married, and took a job in a candy store. As one does.
I do not get it, but something about the song resonated in the music community. Between 1976 and 1979 at least six other artists took a crack at it. There was even a version told from a man’s perspective. Not one of them reached the Top 40.
The Music Gods knew “I’ve Never Been To Me” sucked, and were doing all they could to prevent it from becoming a hit. However, one asshole in Florida torpedoed all their efforts.
Scott Shannon, a DJ at WRBQ in Tampa, began playing Charlene’s original version of the song in the spring of 1982. I’m guessing that Tampa was a pretty sleepy community at the time, because WRBQ’s listeners loved the song, requesting that it be played again-and-again. Shannon had previously worked for Motown. He reached out to Motown president Jay Lasker, letting him know of the record’s success and suggesting the label re-release it. Lasker had to track down Charlene in England to get her approval. She agreed, re-signed with Motown, the single was issued to radio stations, and by May it was sitting at #3 behind Rick Springfield’s “Don’t Talk To Strangers” and the monster #1 “Ebony and Ivory.”
I’m pretty sure I was as confused about why this song was a hit when I was 11 as I am at 52. It is preachy, self-loathing, judgmental, middle-of-the-road garbage. Charlene’s vocals are straight out of the Mary MacGregor/Debbie Boone school. I guarantee my grandmothers loved her.
The song is basically a rebuke of the sexual revolution and any assertion that women should be allowed the same freedoms in life that men enjoyed. The narrator relates a series of adventures and experiences but claims they were pointless because she ended up alone. And maybe she had some abortions? So the unfulfilled housewife listening at home while she complains about her life should realize it is in fact richer than our narrator’s. I’m not sure how that is supposed to inspire anyone other than the bitter, Phyllis Schlaflys of the world, who viewed any drift from traditional gender roles as a sign that godless communism had won.
The worst part of the song is the spoken-word verse. It genuinely might be the worst set of lyrics ever constructed.
Hey, you know what paradise is?
It’s a lie
Damn, coming in hot.
A fantasy we’ve created about people and places as we’d like them to be
I thought pop music was supposed to be about escape and fantasy. Songwriters Ron Miller and Kenneth Hirsch tried to blow all of that up with a healthy dose of Fuck You and Your Dreams.
But you know what the truth is?
It’s that little baby you’re holding.
Yeah, yeah, who doesn’t love babies. Low blow.
And it’s that man you fought with this morning.
The same one you’re going to make love with tonight.
Jesus, I can’t even…
I get that Miller and Hirsch were probably using this as a romantic device, saying that you can fight with your spouse in the morning, realize your relationship is stronger and more important than whatever caused the argument, and then bone in the evening. Within the context of the rest of the song, though, I hear it more as a statement of obligation, that part of a married woman’s duties are to sleep with her husband on his terms.
That’s truth. That’s love
And maybe you could talk me into this song being more about how life is messy, rarely the romantic fairy tale that little girls are told to expect. What matters are the little details, good and bad, of our daily lives. Not fancy vacations or expensive dinners. The rest of the song is so scathingly judgmental, though, that I can’t come around to that point of view.
That section has been bothering me for 42 years. Until this week, though, I did not realize there was a far worse line just a bit later in the song. I guess I never deciphered what Charlene sang just before the final chorus:
I spent my life exploring the subtle whoring that costs too much to be free
What in the actual fuck?!?!
I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise that two men wrote this song.
Miller and Hirsch argue that because the narrator took the worldly path instead of the domestic one, any hopes for marriage and family have been dashed. Despite what sounds like some kick-ass travels and encounters, in their binary, either/or world, she is damaged goods that no man will be interested in and will live the rest of her life as a lonely, regretful spinster.
What does surprise me is that female vocalists would choose to sing these words. They straight-up call themselves whores, suggest every path they took was wrong, and that the only way to find true happiness is by becoming subservient homemakers like their mothers.
You know what else baffles me about this song? It was released by Motown. MOTOWN! The home of Diana Ross and Gladys Knight and Tammi Terrell and Mary Wells and Teena Marie and countless other badass lady singers. Women who were strong and independent. Women who sang about equality between races and genders. Women who didn’t shit on other women and the choices they made.
Maybe I’m a little cranky because of how truly atrocious this song is and thus judging it too harshly. For sure I’m considering it through a 2024 prism rather than a 1976 one. In the bicentennial year it was still a serious societal argument about if it was good for families if mom worked outside the home. I bet the majority of Americans at the time were against the idea of the liberated woman bringing home the bacon. They viewed ladies who chose not to have families as selfish, morally deficient fools destined to end up alone since they were shirking their biological responsibilities.
In 2024 it all seems so very primitive. But I was mostly raised by a single mom, married a super independent woman, and am raising three independent daughters. So what do I know about “truth”?
Not only did “I’ve Never Been To Me” go to #3 in the US, but it hit #1 in England and Ireland. In Australia it topped the chart for six fucking weeks!!! I might have to take back everything I love about the Australian music scene.
This is a terrible song. Lyrically. Musically. Vocally. Thematically. I get physically ill those one or two times a year I accidentally hear it during a 1982 countdown. If there was a tribunal at The Hague for Musical Crimes Against Humanity, this is the song against which all others would be judged. 1/10