This morning on London’s finest underground system – which also happens to be its only one. Thankfully for it I say, as I fear any competition may wipe the floor with the tube – I inexplicably found myself humming the mid nineties Cher power ballad “If I Could Turn Back Time”
One may recall this particularly hideous blot in the history of music as the video makers decided to discard any subtlety in sexual undertones by placing Cher on the (large) gun turret of a battleship with a bunch of sailors.
If I could turn back time… Is this the wistful dreaming of a forgotten youth or is there a more sinister undertone?
If I could find a way… ah, no sinister undertone, she has no flux capacitor to trouble us with. So what would she do if she could turn back time? Maybe try to avert some of the world’s disasters, possibly to impart all current knowledge onto our predecessors thereby making our race more advanced, or advising her younger self not to try acting.
I’d take back all those words that have hurt you…So it’s about men. Typical. And ALL the words? This could take months or years depending on the length of the relationship – and I presume it’s pretty long if you’ve written a song about it. Unless of course it’s a new fling with a toyboy.
I mean, Cher’s getting on a bit she can’t be attracting many young suitors without record sales to back them up (she calls the period immediately after the release of “Do You Believe” the summer of love) so any weeklong fling might be enough to provoke a song – pathetic old hag that she is (is that libellous? Not if it’s true – which it is – I have proof – see here) She probably made some reference to the Supremes and he stormed out as it flew over his young head (with pert pecs). In which case it would only be about 10 minutes to turn the clock back (if she penned the song fairly swiftly). And of course some of the words that initially hurt can actually lead to better things – including makeup sex (not sex with lipstick). Do you really want to remove all traces of makeup sex from your past Cher? If not then you’re going to have to find a pretty complex database filtering system to pick out only the things that hurt that stayed hurt.
Can’t remember any more words – and I refuse to look them up.
And by the time I’d gotten thus far I had reached Bond Street. Where I alighted humming the Cher tune to myself hoping that I could contaminate as many minds as possible with it. I wonder how many central londoners were whistling this today? Maybe some of them went home and wrote about it for the web…
Tomorrow I shall purposefully whistle The Shoop Shoop Song
ps. If I could turn back time I’d stop being late for work by precisely 10 minutes – It’s happened everyday for the last week – late but accurate doesn’t work as an argument though unfortunately.