Reaching For The Stars, Vol. 127

Chart Week: June 1, 1985
Song: “Voices Carry” – Til Tuesday
Chart Position: #28, 8th week on the chart. Peaked at #8 the week of July 13.

I am positively giddy as I prepare to write this entry. This song/band/countdown combination checks so many boxes that get me fired up to share music trivia with my readers. Such as:

• A band commonly considered to be a One-Hit Wonder that, in fact, had more than one charting single.
• A band whose very first single was, by far, the biggest hit of their career.
• A single so excellent it has dwarfed all else its composer has done, despite she being one of the greatest songwriters of her generation.
• A song that became a hit largely on the strength of its memorable video.
• A video that featured distinctive, Only In The Eighties hair.
• And a super interesting anecdote about the track shared on this week’s countdown.

Whew, a lot to work with! Let’s break it down. Prepare for numerous footnotes.

1) ’Til Tuesday was not a One-Hit Wonder. Barely. “What About Love” made it to #26 in 1986. Sadly the gorgeous “Coming Up Close” did not reach the Top 40. That’s it, two singles that cracked the pop chart.

2) Obviously, “Voices Carry” was their biggest song. ’Til Tuesday didn’t hang around as long as Crowded House – they broke up in 1990[1] – so the comparison isn’t exact. But TT’s singles trajectory was similar to CH’s, at least in the US. I would tell you Crowded House had about 100 great songs, but only two ever hit the Top 40 here. This was ’Til Tuesday’s “Don’t Dream It’s Over.”

3) Aimee Mann is a talented, prolific, and influential songwriter. She’s been putting out great music almost non-stop since the mid-Eighties. She has scored films, recorded with other artists,[2] written and produced for others, acted in both movies and TV shows, and had her own solid solo career over that span.[3] However, she’s not had a pop hit since 1986. She is the classic example of an artist who has a rich, deep catalog of work that insiders revere, but for one reason or another has never been able to find consistent commercial success.[4]

4) The tense, cinematic video for “Voice Carry” stood out from other pieces MTV was playing in the spring and summer of ’85. For starters, it was one of the rare videos that had dialogue in its midst to assist in building a story. It also had memorable visuals that established the conflict in the relationship. This wasn’t a generic couple drifting apart; it was a bohemian musician with striking looks dating a materialistic Yuppie. He wants her to jettison her dreams of being in a band so he can control her. Beyond his clothes and hair, this dude genuinely seems like a jerk. And maybe a rapist??? [5] The dramatic ending, when Mann rises from her seat in Carnegie Hall and begins singing, was a perfect match for the climax of the song. This is a tight, flawless piece of video art. The video alone is a 10/10.

5) Aimee Mann’s hair? Come on. It might not have been Flock of Seagulls level, but it was flamboyant and memorable. That rat-tail braid! I guarantee we were talking about it in my Little League dugout. I bet moms and grandmothers all over the country complained about how that “pretty girl on the music channel butchered her hair, and what was she thinking?”

6) And finally a story I learned while listening to this countdown.[6] Because Mann had been in a relationship with bandmate Michael Hausman, most people assumed “Voices Carry” was about their split.[7] Mann admitted she drew from elements in her life, but most of the track was modeled on a girlfriend’s romantic troubles.

Mann wrote about her pal’s breakup from the perspective of the ex-boyfriend. This was a problem. Many people who heard early demos assumed she was singing as Aimee Mann and about something she had experienced personally, not in the third person as a man. More directly, they thought Mann was singing about being in love with another woman. In 1985. Time to clutch some pearls!

Epic Records was not comfortable with this at all, assuming listeners in Middle America would never buy a record that could be interpreted as referencing a lesbian couple. Or, more likely, worried about an outcry from people who would never purchase it in the first place. Sigh. Mann adjusted her words so that the narrator’s voice was more obviously female.[8]

Did that lyrical change make a difference in the single becoming a hit? Maybe the video doesn’t work as well if the images didn’t line up exactly with the words, not that that stopped many totally nonsensical videos from creating hits in that era. I bet most people wouldn’t have noticed that disconnect. More likely you make a different video, which almost certainly doesn’t have the same impact.

I might be naive, but I’m not sure that Mann’s original lyrics would have driven people away from it. Hell, a lot of idiot, horned-up teenage boys might have bought more copies if they thought it was about an all-female relationship.[9]

Regardless, somewhere there is an aged record exec who still claims credit for giving ’Til Tuesday their only hit by forcing Mann to reframe it.

Now to the song itself. It mirrors the video in its economy. It quickly gets to its point, has a brief instrumental bridge, and builds to a satisfying end. Mann’s ominous, chugging bass notes set the mood instantly. Eerie synthesizers reinforce that this isn’t a song about a healthy relationship. In the opening verse Mann sings that her boyfriend’s response when she confesses her love is that she keep her voice down. That doesn’t seem good! I really like how all those elements are present from the beginning and the band gradually amps up the drama without drifting from the initial composition and tone. Each chorus is the perfect release from the tension that builds in the previous verse.

Mann’s lyrics are achingly sharp and concise, a masterclass of pop writing. She only really pushes her voice twice: first in the bridge, when she says that her partner just wants her to keep her in line, second in the closing section, where she stands and belts the outro at Carnegie Hall in the video. That’s when the song gets truly twisted. I was only 13, going on 14, when it came out, but I was old enough to be worried about what she had gone through to write a song like this. The sequence when she shouts “He said, shut up! He said, shut up! Oh God can’t you keep it down!” is glorious. You hear all the anguish this relationship has caused her and her confidence growing as she realizes sharing it with the world gives her the power in the relationship.

On her first radio hit, Aimee Mann wrote a classic that left a shadow she’s never escaped. From reading about her life, I think she’s fine with that. She’s built a comfortable and fruitful career, that while not loaded with Top 40 hits, has kept her busy for over 40 years.[10] You can pick up almost any album from her discography and find several songs to fall in love with.[11] Thank goodness she ditched that Yuppie and didn’t keep her voice down. 10/10