No, I doubt very much, despite what we have become used to hearing about, that “Happy Birthday, Sweet Sixteen” is about an adult planning to take advantage of a young girl just reaching the age of consent. To be honest, even then he looked like your Dad, and to hear such things coming from a man who looks older than he is only strengthens the implications of those crucial four lines. It doesn’t help that, even in his younger days, when this record was made, Mr Sedaka was not exactly your model pop star. We go by the words in this occasional series, and the things they reveal, not necessarily intentionally. Brrr.īefore anyone gets the wrong idea, I’m not suggesting that Neil Sedaka has any such inclinations. None of that is specific: just how big a brother was this guy? 7? 10? 12? On the other hand, the not-liking-each-other when the little brat was 10 does hint that the gap between them isn’t necessarily that wide, but it still doesn’t rule out the possibility that that extremely creepy first verse suggests, that this guy has been waiting for more than a few years for his chance to shag this fresh, innocent, virginal female flesh. When you were ten, he carries on, we didn’t like each other. When you were six, he sings, I was your big brother. The second verse, without ever being explicit about it, suggests that the singer is a relative contemporary of this innocent young lady. Just what the hell is Neil Sedaka planning here? And why? What happens when a girl turns sixteen? That’s right, she becomes legal, as that long ago and utterly disgusting website made very explicit, counting down the days to when the child singer Charlotte Church could be fucked without the fucker getting into trouble with the Law. Whoa, hold on a minute there, what the hell is this about? This guy has been waiting, and for quite some time it would appear, for this girl to have her sixteenth birthday. Tonight’s the night I’ve waited for/Because you’re not a baby anymore/You’ve turned into the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen/Happy birthday sweet sixteen. So, immediately there the song has an atmosphere of patronisation that’s become rather more obnoxious down the years, but that’s not caught my ear this morning. This is supposed to be a happy, welcoming song about a young girl growing up, putting away her early childish and tomboyish ways and taking up the true accoutrements of her femininity, or at least what were thought of as femininity’s true accoutrements in 1962, namely wearing dresses and getting ready for marriage. I’ve heard Neil Sedaka’s “Happy Birthday, Sweet Sixteen” multiple times, taking it at face value, as a seemingly sweet, innocent, joyful song from the back end of the rock’n’roll era, the bloodless years between the end of the first, raucous, rebellious phase, and the British Invasion spearheaded by The Beatles.Īnd it was on Sounds of the Sixties today, last track on another of those 1965-and-earlier shows, just a few minutes ago as write, and for the first time, for no reason that I can pinpoint, I’m hearing it with different ears, and getting pretty creeped out about it. Sometimes you can have listened to a song for many many years without realising that you’ve never really listened to it. Trout Nation – Your One-Stop Procrastination Stop.The Infinite Jukebox: Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel’s ‘Understand’.Wednesday Morning Sitcom Time: Extras s02 e01-03 – Orlando Bloom/David Bowie/Daniel Radcliffe.Wing Commander (Robert) Jeffrey Hawke (Part 3) *Guest Post* Garth Groombridge’s Fictional British Spacemen of the 1950s and 1960s: R.A.F.
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