On this Valentines Day we will pause to celebrate not only love but imaginary love. Love that exists only in the longing lives of the lonely.
Songs about fake love, masturbation, strippers and some salty secret love inspired by the sea, are but mere highlights of this soon to be forgotten post.
Up first, Jackson Browne’s classic tale of a roadie's efforts to woo a groupie that ultimately turns into just another night with his right hand that he calls, “Rosie”.
Doraville, Georgia’s Atlanta Rhythm Section released the hit song “Imaginary Lover” in 1978. Part of their greatest hits album “Champagne Jam”.
The song peaked at number seven on the Billboard Hot 100 charts.
Why would anyone need a real lover when an Imaginary Lover offers “satisfaction guaranteed"?
Looking Glass, a group founded at Rutgers University, was a typical One Hit Wonder Band. Their tale of a lonely bar maid named Brandy, reached number one for a week in 1972.
Her secret love is wasted on a dreamlike figure of a man, as she pines for one particular sailor that never returns from his life, the love of his lady, the sea.
San Francisco is the home of the 80’s group The Tubes. Their song of pure lust “She’s A Beauty” was released in 1983.
Originally inspired by a street peep show girl, the tune pokes fun at the listener suggesting “you can look inside another world, you get to talk to a pretty girl…"
Motown’s super group, The Temptations, recorded the dreamy classic “Just My Imagination” on Barry Gordy’s label back in January of 1971. Produced and written by Norman Whitfield, the song hit number one and hung on there for two weeks.
The five-part biopic and mini-series, The Temptations, does a fantastic studio to stage sequence that helps to take us back to those epic recording sessions.
The immortal Patsy Cline recorded a wonderful song of love lost in her 1962 classic, “She’s Got You”.
Material possessions can’t replace a loved one but they sure do make great lyrics for a song that will live forever. Written by Hank Cochran and played over the phone by Patsy to her producer for approval the night Hank first sang it to her.
Described by publishers as an “operatic ballad of lost love” this Roy Orbison original was first recorded in February of 1963 at Monument Records in Hendersonville, Tennessee.
Roy claimed that the origin of this song quite literally came to him in his sleep, later to become one of the most endearing and haunting tunes of the decade appropriately named: “In Dreams”.
According to Orbison he awoke from a half dream state and said: “Boy that’s good. I need to finish that. Too bad things don’t happen in my dreams.” He wrote the entire song in just 20 minutes.
We hope you enjoyed our not so valentine tale of imaginary love. Like Billy Joel once said: "It's just a fantasy, it's not the real thing."
And so it goes.
billboardtop100
decca records
monument records
sun records
Also contributed to this story.
