“It Must Be Him” by Vikki Carr

Dave Barry implicitly accused this song of misogyny, placing it in the “‘Songs Women Really Hate” chapter of his famous book of bad songs, but I think that’s missing the point. It’s clear from Vikki Carr’s tortured delivery (which, by the way, is one of the all-time great performances in pop music history) that this is not supposed to be even remotely romantic. It’s a heartbreaking and disturbing look at a woman with a serious neurosis (I believe today we’d use the word ‘codependency’) who can’t stop herself from blindly ‘loving’ a man who has clearly treated her horribly. I actually see it as kind of obliquely feminist in that it’s portraying this mindset as a serious and frightening problem. It’s also quite ahead of its time: we wouldn’t start routinely getting these openly unhealthy obsession songs in popular music until the Alternative Rock era.

Verdict: Good.

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