It’s Kate’s birthday today, and so she gets this love song from Big Star’s second album, Radio City, about women born during September.
I say “love song,” but it’s such a wonderfully… macho song, lyrically. “I was your butch/And you were touched,” Alex Chilton sings at one point, later going on to struggle with that whole feelings thing (“I don’t know why/How can I deny/What’s inside?”) and boast that, of course, it’s all about the sex really (“Ooh, when she makes love to me”). But the posturing of the lyrics is at odds with the performance, all jangly guitars and harmonies and something more… soft, perhaps? Something more inviting than bravado? There’s a tension there, and it’s that tension that brings me back to this song so often, just as much as the melody and ease in singing along.
Anyway. Happy birthday to my very own September girl. I love you, you know.