His song was immensely popular in its heyday. Night and day, all the convertibles and cafes unendingly carried the melody like assembly-line workers assembling casing pre-cut sausage. Subtly dissonant enough for the snobs yet rewardingly whistleable enough for the philistines, frosted with bittersweet lyrics that in flavors from pensive to trite. The charts indicated it as a highly accessible diddy, selling a quazillion copies.
But when she listens to it, she remembers how his mouth moves instead of just the words he once muttered to a microphone. She remembers their conversations, their concessions, their confidences. Between his late night guest appearances and music videos and half-time shows, she saw all the ways his two-dimensional mouth can flatly spew even flatter sentiments.
On the teleprompter, his lyrics only iterated personal events and factoids. She knew he left gaps between verses and words and breath. He now had a nineteen-piece band and a new-found focus on instrumental interchanges, which let him sing so very sparsely. He was more a face than a voice at this point in his career.
She thought how his words would never erode. And she thought how this song is perforated with these holes. And how perhaps he always had this hole for a mouth. And she thought of how his mum ways stung worse than his worst words.
The things she wanted to hear and weren't said are what hurt. She wanted to raze the whole song, leaving the meaning and silence mixed as homogenous rubble. But she knew you can't destroy a song. The song would play on radio stations for generations to come, graduating through the annals of genres: Experimental, Post, Modern, Classic, Soft, Easy, Traditional, Oldies.
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