Saturday, December 23, 2006

Joni James, "Why Don't You Believe Me"
(November 29, 1952)

Joni alternately expresses the depths of her devotion and pouts that she's not getting through to the one she adores. On the surface it's all very ordinary but I find it mildly curious that the title question is never answered: why doesn't he believe her? She gives no reason, attributing nothing to her love interest but persistent and baseless disbelief. Are we supposed to read between the lines and understand he suspects infidelity? Was infidelity such a distasteful subject back in 1952 that the songwriters had to avoid any direct mention of it lest they turn to stone? I don't really know, but I can imagine the singer's predicament is kept vauge to allow the listener to read whatever they want into it -- false accusations or puppy love, doesn't matter. Ultimately, though, this vagueness doesn't leave me convinced she's actually been wronged. All insistence and no rationale equals pouty, which also equals ugh. It's banal in an interesting way: it goes out of its way to say nothing at all. I like Joni, though, for the irrationally sentimental reason that her picture on Wikipedia is very winning, and I'm willing to believe that no singer could pull this song off without sounding one-dimensional. 3

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