There are lots of songwriters that fit into this mold. Dylan, Paul Simon, Springsteen and many others. One of those songwriters is a woman named Melissa Etheridge. Etheridge writes songs of the heart and songs of her life. She is a midwestern girl from Leavenworth, Kansas so she is almost a hometown girl. I fell in love with her music several years ago. The thing about Etheridge is that no matter if the song is a rocker or a mellow blues, you always are drawn to her words when you hear her. There was one time, however, when she had some fun with a song and wrote a little satire on being in love with someone who wants you to go away. The first time I heard "Must Be Crazy For Me" it caught me off guard and made me smile. It is one of my favorite songs of hers.
What brings me to this is that last night as I went to bed I decided to listen to some Etheridge. As I was listening, "Must Be Crazy For Me" came up on the MP3 player. I hadn't heard it in a while and when it started I smiled a bit and listened to the words of a person who is totally in love and can't get it through her head that her affections were not being returned. This brought my son. Brett, to mind. Brett went through this kind of situation a year or so ago when he received a stalker into his life.
I am not going to name names. We'll call her S. Well, somebody set Brett and S up for a date and Brett took her out a few times. Brett liked her well enough but more as a friend instead of a serious prospect for the future. S did not see things the same way though. She would call Brett all hours of the night and day demanding that he come and see her or take her out. This went on for a long time and soon she did indeed become a stalker.
Brett came home from work one day and S was sitting in her car outside of his apartment wanting to know if every thing was okay, after all she hadn't heard from him for almost twenty four hours.
Soon text messages began to scroll onto Brett's phone at an almost non-stop pace from S wondering where he was, why wasn't he answering his phone and where was he going to take her on her birthday?
It became a nightmare for Brett. He kept trying to tell her that as a friend, they were okay, but nothing more than that. The trouble was, S didn't seem to have the capability of drawing a line between being a friend and being a future spouse. Nothing Brett could say or do could convince S that Brett wasn't madly in love with her. From her perspective, Brett just didn't realize how much in love he actually was with her.
Finally we got a couple of third parties that knew S and Brett both to intervene to try to get S to stop stalking Brett. It wasn't until S found someone new to stalk did she stop stalking Brett. It was a great day in Brett's life when S drifted away from him and let him go free.
As I listened to Etheridge last night and her song "Must Be Crazy For Me" I pictured S sitting by her phone and texting Brett or calling him. I imagined it was S singing this song instead of Etheridge and I realized that even though Etheridge may have written a satirical song about love not being returned, there was a lot of truth in the song just like all of her other songs.
So I decided to share a moment when Etheridge tried not to be as serious in her song writing as she usually is, but as always, she can't help but throwing a big dose of truth out there that resonates and means something very real to somebody in the world.
MUST BE CRAZY FOR ME - Melissa Etheridge
You tell me not to call you up
'Cause it ties you down
Don't tell your friends
You've been hangin' 'round
You must be crazy for me
You say, you'll see me once or twice
Every week or two
There's more important things
That you've got to do
You must be crazy for me
'Cause when I kissed you last night
In my own backyard
You ran so fast
And you fought so hard
You must be crazy for me
You must be crazy for me
You don't like my hair
You don't like my car
You don't like my friends
You met at the bar
You must be crazy for me
I see you shake your head
And you roll your eyes
Your firm remark
To remove my thigh
You must be crazy for me
'Cause when I kissed you last night
In my own backyard
You ran so fast
And you fought so hard
You must be crazy for me
You must be crazy for me
Do not expect you to wait
Do not expect you to phone
Do not expect anything
When I catch you alone, baby
You must be crazy for me
'Cause when I kissed you last night
In my own backyard
You ran so fast
And you fought so hard
You must be crazy for me
You must be crazy for me
I know, I know, you're crazy for me, baby
You must be crazy for me, for me I know, you're crazy for me
Come on, come on, I know, you're crazy for me
Crazy for me, you can tell me now I know, you're crazy for me
Crazy for me
Crazy for me
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