Radio Songs #27: You Turn Me On...

It's been a while since I did one of these, mainly because they take more time than other posts to get right, but also because I knew this next chapter would be a tricky one.

Workplace relationships / "romances" are unavoidable, I guess. I had three (plus a few near misses) during the time I worked in radio, but this is the only one I'm going to write about. The others... well, one was sweet but tragic (for me), the other was insane. Truly, truly insane. In that if I began to write about it, you would not believe me. And if I told you the story of how it ended, you would call me a liar. If I wrote it up as a film script, it would be rejected for being too far fetched. Sometimes truth is way, way weirder than fiction. Sorry to be a tease, but that's the truth.

Writing about relationships also involves breaking confidences: sharing details that others would probably not wish to be made public... even in a forum with as limited a readership as this. And, of course, it's deeply subjective. So I won't be doing it. I make an exception here because it's such a slight thing that probably meant very little to the other party involved... even though it was quite significant to me. Because it involves my first ever date...

I never went out with anyone in High School, nor in the Sixth Form. All my friends had had relationships of one kind or another by the time they finished their A Levels, but I never had the self-confidence to make the first move and usually ended up fancying people who wouldn't have been seen dead out in public with a loser like me. (The closest I got to asking a girl out - and I really thought she liked me - was getting my best friend to sound her out. He worded it rather badly though and it turned out she thought he was the one doing the asking... which she'd have been more than up for. He wasn't though, and that just left three people feeling uncomfortable, rather than the usual two. I wouldn't recommend it as an approach strategy.)

Look at that - four paragraphs and I haven't even got to the story. I'm sure I can string this one out over multiple posts, if only so I can link to more Radio Romance songs. Like this one from Tiffany... erm, I mean, Joni...

27. Joni Mitchell - You Turn Me On, I'm A Radio

The A&R man said he didn't hear a single when it came to Joni's fifth album, For The Roses, so Joni did what Bruce did on Dancing In The Dark and wrote a song about being told to write a hit. On the surface, this is a love song, and Joni was hip to the fact that radio stations jump at the chance to play songs that celebrate their medium... but it also manages the neat trick of simultaneously praising radio while also being cryptically critical of it at the same time. Pretty clever...

Waving for you
Broadcasting tower
Waving for you
And I'm sending you out
This signal here
I hope you can pick it up
Loud and clear

I know you don't like weak women

You get bored so quick
And you don't like strong women
'Cause they're hip to your tricks
It's been dirty for dirty
Down the line

But you know

I come when you whistle
When you're loving and kind
If you've got too many doubts
If there's no good reception for me
Then tune me out, 'cause honey

Who needs the static?

It hurts the head
And you wind up cracking
And the day goes dismal
From "Breakfast Barney"
To the sign-off prayer

And it worked too, giving Joni her first Top Ten single in her native Canada and her first Top 40 in the U.S. See: writing about radio is all you need to do to be a success!