The World’s Best Love Song

The world’s best love song doesn’t have “love” in the title, nor does it appear on any “Best” lists that I could find of the most love-centric titles for Valentine’s Day. No “Love Me Tender,””Greatest Love of All,” “She Loves You” (“yeah, yeah, yeah!”), “Love Is Blue,” “I Can’t Stop Loving You,” “How Deep Is Your Love.”

None of that.

Instead, the world’s best love song is titled, “Sham-A-Ling-Dong-Ding,” and it may just be the now departed singer-songwriter Jesse Winchester’s finest work in an illustrious, if under-appreciated career.

The silly title is both fun and deceiving, offering Winchester a playful refrain that could easily have been rendered into a clever har-de-har bit of laughter, an inconsequential breather (not that there’s anything wrong with that!) in an ouevre that sparkles with lyrical originality, accessible, compulsively singable tunes, and his trademark impeccable phrasing.

But “Sham-A-Ling-Dong-Ding” goes somewhere else instead.

The first stanza takes us suddenly and unexpectedly into the power of memory, where we are swooped into being 17 again (Shazam!) on a summer’s night, dreamy with inchoate emotions and the wonder of discovery we can barely begin to comprehend.

The boys were singing shing-a-ling
The summer night we met
You were tan and seventeen
O how could I forget
When every star from near and far
Was watching from above
Watching two teenagers fall in love

Ah yes, teenagers falling in love. And the secret language—verbal in this example, but also a language of looking, blinking, gazing, smelling, murmuring—that is beyond words altogether but no less powerful.

Whether teenager or much older still, there is a language of the outer world and everyday social interaction, and for lovers, an invisible—at least to all others—cocoon of almost hermetically sealed love language, an intense private exchange that only they are privy to with and of each other. In that world, “language” isn’t always up to the task.

The way we danced was not a dance
But more a long embrace
We held on to each other and
We floated there in space
And I was shy to kiss you while
The whole wide world could see
So shing-a-ling said everything for me

I could go on, but I won’t. Instead, I give you one man on a stool, singing from the deepest wells of all he has known and learned from his tender heart, reflecting, remembering, praising in its most profound sense. That is more than enough on this Valentine’s Day, I trust.

So give this a close look and listen instead (full lyrics are below), and note the awe and the depth of response from Elvis Costello and Neko Case. This is why human beings write music, and poetry, and all the other mad-for-life art that so gladdens the human heart.

***

***
Sham-A-Ling-Dong-Ding
The boys were singing shing-a-ling
The summer night we met
You were tan and seventeen
O how could I forget
When every star from near and far
Was watching from above
Watching two teenagers fall in love

The way we danced was not a dance
But more a long embrace
We held on to each other and
We floated there in space
And I was shy to kiss you while
The whole wide world could see
So shing-a-ling said everything for me

And O the poor old old folks
They thought we’d lost our minds
They could not make heads or tails
Of the young folks’ funny rhymes
But you and I knew all the words
And we always sang along to
O sham-a-ling-dong-ding
Sham-a-ling-dang-dong

So after years and after tears
And after summers past
The old folks tried to warn us
How our love would never last
And all we’d get was soaking wet
From walking in the rain
And singing sham-a-shing-a-ling again

***

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Twitter: @AndrewHidas

Deep appreciation to the photographers! Unless otherwise stated, some rights reserved under Creative Commons licensing.

Elizabeth Haslam, whose photos (except for the books) grace the rotating banner at the top of this page. See more at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhaslam/

Library books photo by Larry Rose, all rights reserved, contact: larry@rosefoto.com

Winchester photo at the 2011 New Orleans Jazz Fest by Robbie Mendelson, Smithtown, New York, https://www.flickr.com/photos/robbiesaurus/