Hedwig Soundtrack

My feeling is, if it’s worth hearing once, it’s worth hearing 150 times. When I fall in love with an album, I’ll play it for a month with nothing else in between. Such a masterwork is Hedwig and the Angry Inch, the splendid sound track of a splendid movie, made from a splendid stage play.

To tell the strict truth, after listening to the whole a few times, I made a tape with just the ballads. The rockers are great, but I like to sustain a mood for writing. “Midnight Radio,” “In Your Arms Tonight” – does music get any better than this? In “Wicked Little Town” there’s a line, “…and nothing you can find that cannot be found,” that seems to be a Beatles homage. “Nothing you can do that can’t be done, nothing you can sing that can’t be sung…” Beatles, right?

One of my friends describes preparing for an important meeting as “putting on the mink eyelashes,” and I know the exact feeling. You don your armor and face the day. Apparently, every stage show must include a number where the character declares the necessity, no matter how shitty life is, to suck it up, smile, and move forward. The obligatory face-life-with-courage song, like “Tomorrow” in Annie. In this show, the transsexual rock star Hedwig sings “I’m pulling the wig down from the shelf.” Different metaphor, same idea.

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Won’t Somebody Believe Me?

About a thousand years ago (actually, 1969) I saw a movie called The Idol, which I don’t remember, but the soundtrack included a haunting torch song that I was crazy about. I wrote to the production company, asking if it was available as sheet music – I played piano, when there was one around, and wanted to be able to learn it. Some beautiful person sent back a promotional copy of the entire sound track album. My husband liked it too, and after the divorce, we used to take turns having custody of the album for a couple of years at a time. It disappeared long ago and I don’t even have a recording.

The song, whose title I don’t remember, but which may be “Won’t Somebody Believe Me?”, was sung by Cleo Laine. The composer, John Dankworth (her husband) was knighted a couple of years ago, the first British jazz musician to be honored in this way. They have a website where an incredible number of albums are for sale – but The Idol isn’t one of them, and the lyrics aren’t online anyplace. I hope I’ll be forgiven for trying to reconstruct them.

Won’t somebody believe me, in this troubled world
Won’t you believe me, when I say I’m alone
And the life that I’m leading makes me want to say
Trouble is the thing on my mind.

I could be lyrical with what I’m saying
But I’m hysterical in my empty, lonely life
I could refuse you, but I’d be praying
That you’d be back to find the lonely, only one]
And that’d be sad.

Won’t somebody believe me, in this troubled world
Won’t you believe me, when I say I’m alone
And the thoughts that I’m thinking make me want to say
Trouble is the thing on my mind.

That’s all I remember. Might be all there is. Great song. Great singer.