The Number Fortys: Van Stephenson - "Modern Day Delilah"

In The Number Fortys, we review every song that was sitting at #40 on the Billboard chats, starting in the first week of January 1984, right around the time this writer became cognizant/obsessive about music. The seeds for the idea came from Tom Breihan's Number Ones column over at Stereogum. However, we here at k-postpunk believe that the bottom is more interesting than the top (and obscurity is more interesting than either).

Back when the internet was fun, and we all made jokes and argued about whether a hot dog is a sandwich, you know, before baby boomers started using it, there was this thing called literal videos, where the words of the song are changed to reflect what's going on in the video. This one was my favorite. The original is a 9 by the way.

So years before the concept, Van Stephenson, who is ostensibly the subject of this post, practically made a literal video of his own, in which his song about a hairdresser features a video of a hairdresser cutting his hair.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the Biblical story--and why would you be, have you read the Bible? I have. All the way through. Trust me, it's, uh, not exactly a page turner.  That's why Christians hire a priest to read it for them and tell them the important parts. Church is just like a live action of Cliff Notes when you really think about it.

Anyway, Samson was this really strong guy until he fell in love with Delilah and she cut all his hair off, robbing him of his power (It's a metaphor! A misogynist metaphor too!). So in this song, Van Stephenson, an actual graduate from an actual seminary school, updates the misogynist metaphor for our times, though the song's lyrics are so literal as to obliterate any sort of symbolism or deeper meaning. In Stephenson's song, this song is literally about a girl who cuts hair. Let's point out the line all the darlings and the dears in the first verse, because that's definitely the only time that phrase has ever been used in human speech.

So it's a pretty straightforward song about a talented woman...UNTIL WE GET TO THE CHORUS when it turns out our hairdresser will apparently use her scissors TO KILL YOU (true fact: you're way more likely to be murdered by a man than a woman, and the Delilah of this song is statistically more likely to die because her boyfriend/husband kills her than to die of breast cancer). At this point, the song goes off the rails, psychologically speaking. The hairdresser loves you like a lion / leaves you like a lamb. So she's not only stabbing Van in the heart, she's also fucking him? And how exactly does one leave anyone "like a lamb"? Is there a trail of lamb shit following behind. Does a pungent lamb smell linger in the room? 

The song continues. She slips things into your shampoo (huh?). You wake up on the floor (after being stabbed in the heart?) with a bad hair cut (take a mirror from the drawer / the damage is done) or did she cut something else off? Van goes on to call her "a mistress of lies." And basically the whole song turns into a poorly written gynophobic piece of garbage that suggests Van either has an irrational fear of women or thought it would be a cool idea to write a song about an irrational fear of women. Given his seminary school background, I'm going to go with both.

Musically insipid, lyrically confused, this shitty song reached #22. It's a 0..

Some post WWII philosopher, I don't remember who, theorized that because an event like the Holocaust had never happened before, now that it had happened, it meant there would likely be more Holocausts in the future. I don't necessarily agree with all of that--go ask the native US population how they feel about that "never before in history" shit--but I will say that in 2009, Kiss, yes that Kiss, wrote their own song called "Modern Day Delilah." I listened to it long enough to determine whether or not it was a cover (it's not), but if you can listen to it all the way through you're a stronger person than I am. By the way, the entire recorded output of Kiss is 1. As human beings, they are 0's. Their fans rate a solid 2 only because I pity them so much.

THE NUMBER ONE

First off, that is some seriously bad acting in the beginning of the video, and I hope Professor Lionel gives them all C-minuses.

Now let me answer that question in the chorus. I'm pretty sure, based on their complete disinterest in you, that, despite your obsession and fixation with this person, that no, it is not you they are looking for. This isn't a reflection on you, or your ability to be a human being capable of giving and receiving love. We can't help who we're attracted to. The human heart is a mystery, human sexual urges even more so. The idea that you need advice on how to win this person's heart suggests to me that maybe this isn't the right person for you. In my experience, the best relationships I've been in had a natural momentum of their own. You didn't have to think about it. It just seemed to happen. That's the magic of falling in love.

Conversely, I've been in relationships that, even though they made sense on paper, similar interests, person looked attractive, etc., it just didn't click. It felt like work. Those relationships never got any better. I guess what I'm saying, narrator of this song, is that this probably isn't the person for you. And to Lionel Richie, I would say that writing a song that romanticizes the stalking of, and obsession with, an idealized woman, was not a good idea. In your music video, it ends with the object of your obsession carving a laughably bad sculpture of you (it turns out she was obsessed to!), but in the real world these things all too often end in terror and death. I know that you were just writing a song about longing, but as I would explain to my three year old son, actions have consequences, and you are responsible for those consequences. And while I appreciate a minor key melody, this song is a musical dirge laced with lyrical poison. It gets a 2.