Beneath the Magic of Your Sighs

From around my ninth birthday on I was raised by my Aunt Laura and her British partner, May (that's right..Fatith has two mommies).   We lived in a warm and loving home that was always filled with music, mainly 50s and 60s music by girl singers and girl groups from both sides of the pond.   Through their lives they had accumulated an enormous collection of vinyl by some amazing performers.   After a dreadful start in life, these records would always represent the beginning of a new life with people that truly cared about me.  As my life rolled by they would grow to mean even more.  These beautiful simple songs with their universal messages rescued me from the nightmarish pop music of the eighties and to this day they act as my personal “force field” against…well…just about everything.  I was the weird girl at school and I didn’t care if the kids made fun of me when I’d say my favorite singer was Dusty Springfield or my favorite group was The Supremes.  This music was the best.

These singers and their songs were the first love of my life and unlike many girls I would fall in love with, these songs would always remain true to me.   And that brings me to the subject of this little essay.

My song-writing heroes to this day are Gerry Goffin and Carole King and one of my favorites was “Will You Love Me Tomorrow?”   When I first heard The Shirelles record of this song it was magic.  Everything about it fascinated me- The sweet vocal by Shirley Owens, that touch of echo, that beautiful string arrangement and those glorious harmonies.  To the pre-teen me it was perfection even though I barely understood what the true meaning of the song was.

The 1960 record was the first song by an all girl group to reach number 1 on the charts and the first number 1 for the Goffin-King song writing team.  And that was despite the fact that it was banned by some radio stations for its suggestive nature although it would be considered quite tame based on today’s standards.  Original releases of the single were labeled simply “Tomorrow”.   It’s a pure and perfect pop song and its lyrics about innocence, trust and love have made it the enduring classic that it is.

One of my favorite recordings of this song was a 1969 version by the French singer Francoise Hardy.  It was from one of the few albums she sung in English, and it’s quite a beautiful version.  You can practically see Francoise’s physical beauty in her gentle pouty voice and the arrangement itself is bouncy, poppy and ethereal.  However, there’s one curiosity about it.  She ends the second verse by singing “Tonight beneath the magic of your sighs” instead of “Can I believe the magic of your sighs”.  Since I first heard this I always chalked it up to Francoise singing the English words phonetically and that it was a simple mistake, not a conscious change. 

Not too long ago I was listening to Helen Shapiro’s 1962 recording from here debut album “Tops With Me”.   (For the untutored among you, Helen was one of the greatest UK female singers of the 1960s but virtually unknown in the USA.  More about her in a future blog.)  You can probably see where I’m going with this.  Sixteen year old Helen makes this same mistake.    I did an audio double take and played that part of the song over and over again to be sure that it was the case.  There was no mistaking it.  Was it just a coincidence or was something else going on?  It could be something as simple as Francoise learning the song from Helen’s recording, but could it have been the original published lyric before the first recording by the Shirelles?  My private detective instincts were sparked and my investigation began.

I ran through dozens of recordings in my head but had to listen again to be sure.  Uninspiring versions like Dionne Warwick’s.  Derived arrangements like Jackie DeShannon’s .  Overlong and slow versions by Clodagh Rogers and Amy Winehouse.  The long, confused but yet, endearing 1963 live version by the teen British pop singer, Billie Davis, who actually skips the second verse and sings the third three times!  Dusty Springfield’s amazing version as well as her equally brilliant French version (it conveys the meaning of the song but is not a literal translation).  Recordings by men including a bored sounding Bryan Ferry and the upbeat BBC recording by The Zombies (maybe it’s just me, but the song loses its meaning when sung by a guy).   Lesley Gore’s sloppy arrangement .   And of course composer Carole King’s own fairly dreary version from her Tapestry album (sorry Carole).  All sing “Can I believe…”  And then I hit one:  The 1966 super cool Stax Records recording by Carla Thomas.

Carla Thomas….Helen Shapiro…Francoise Hardy….the same mistake….what does it mean?   Probably nothing.  Is it possible that “tonight beneath the magic of your sighs” was the original lyric?  Could The Shirelles have sung it on those mysterious records simply labeled “Tomorrow”?  I honestly don’t think so.  In some ways the line is more suggestive.  Think about it…”beneath the magic of your sighs”.   I’ve been beneath them- and hell, I’ve been the one sighing above, too!   It’s a line that sort of implies that the fireworks are already well underway, but when you get down to it, it really makes no sense in the context of the song.    The line that we all know and love fits perfectly  Basically, are your magical sighs truthful and if I let you have sex with me will you love/respect me in the morning.  Whether it’s your first time or the first experience with a new lover, it’s that moment when you take the next step and nothing conveys  “true love or just another conquest” better than “Can I believe the magic of your sighs”.  Nothing else fits.  Gerry and Carole always got it right.

So it was all a pointless little exercise for me.  But that’s what I expect from myself.  I obsess over things, but I have fun.  Obsessions and an amazing memory have made me a good detective.  Still, in its own little way, I’ve always had a fondness for the lyric that Francoise sings.  When I was a teenage girl and heard that, I used to imagine myself magically sighing with the lovely Francoise beneath me.    Come to think of it I still do.