Didi Benami Plays With Fire

[koganbot]

Erika brings up Didi's "Play With Fire" over on the Didi-Rhiannon thread, and I talk about it on the Freaky Trigger canon thread. Here's what I say:

Saw Crystal Bowersox and Didi Benami from Stones night on American Idol, and for the second week in a row I thought that, although Bowersox' vocals were stonger and richer and more self-assured, it was flighty quirk-and-curlicue girl Benami who managed to burrow deeper into the music, even while flubbing and flying around it too. It helps Didi that I way prefer "Play With Fire" to "You Can't Always Get What You Want." On the latter, Crystal didn't really communicate much beyond "good voice" and "jazz-soul command," nothing about wanting and getting; she has done and will do a lot better, whereas Didi is unsure and unformed but she's already given three gripping performances, this and "Rhiannon" last week (which you'd think would have been a suicide choice) and "Terrified" during Hollywood week.

The thing about the Stones' best material, which sold big because it meant a lot of different things to different people, is that, paradoxically, for me the material isn't open to a lot of interpretations, and I rarely like to hear it covered. If you can't do Jagger's tensions - e.g., "Heart Of Stone," which is the Stones' real can't-always-get-what-you-want song - can't totally deliver strength and menace while writing lyrics that expose the strength and menace as a fraud, with the singing and playing forcefully counteracting the lyrics and being as convincing as the supposed unmasking... if you can't prance along that balance beam, then what's the point?

Since this time it's Didi's voice, you get the sense that, though as the singer she's the narrator, she as much as the person she's singing about can be menaced and played with, but nonetheless she'll display bits of vocal strength that make the "don't mess with me" credible; and because the song's lyrics own the weakness a lot less than "Heart Of Stone"'s do, Didi's actually brought something to the song, walks along her own borderline between not getting what you say you can, and getting what you say you can't, and not knowing what you need.

Watch on YouTube

EDIT: I say favorable things about Crystal Bowersox' appearance over on Martin's lj.

Comments

[koganbot]

Liz Phair, another skinny-voiced female singer, does real well with the Stones' "Mother's Little Helper."

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

I haven't worked out yet whether my reading of Didi's "Play with Fire" is actually at odds with yours, but: I don't get the sense that her narrator can be menaced and played with. And maybe it's because I've never heard the Stones' version, but I don't get the sense that the song's lyrics own any sort of weakness, either, and that's what makes Didi's version so compelling for me. The lyrics read simply threatening, but Did's voice has that quavering edge to it, and so her weakness becomes the threat: don't play with her, because she'll get darker and deeper than you even know.

I have no idea how the chorus is supposed to connect to the verses, however.

[koganbot]

I like your interpretation too. The song is vague enough to support a number of them.

I assume from the verses that the narrator thinks the girl is slumming and therefore potentially treating him/her as a rich girl's toy. So the chorus is the warning not to do that (though what backs up the warning is left to our imagination).

The owning of weakness comes because if you have to assert you're strong, then the strength is at least in question. Of course, if this were, say, a Ludacris lyric, then I'd be the one bringing the idea of potential weakness to the experience of the song (which doesn't mean it's not there, that I'm the one bringing it); but for me, since the words are Jagger's,* the weakness and the struggle are there by implication, 'cause they're there in others songs of his. But of course the listener is free to choose how much strength or weakness to hear, and which to identify with - this is one reason the Stones made big bucks.

The Rolling Stones "Play With Fire"

For reference: "Heart Of Stone," written one year earlier.

*I believe they are; the song is credited to the pseudonym "Nanker Phelge," but I think that was Jagger, Richards, and Phil Spector. Jagger is generally assumed to be in charge of the lyrics.

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

Actually, what backs up the warning isn't left to our imagination. The first two verses are about how the girl is rich, the mother is an heiress, and the father would be there to complete the happy family if he could -- but the next two verses are about how the father stole the mother's diamonds, the mother (if I'm understanding the Knightsbridge/Stepney reference correctly) is stuck in a shitty neighborhood, and the girl will end up living with her if she doesn't watch out.

My confusion came from the fact that Didi sings "but don't play with me" throughout, which doesn't make it clear what the threat is. (Poor people are powerful too? She's powerful because she's poor? But the rich girl's family seems to have been through some shit too!) But Jagger changes it to "so don't play with me"after the last two verses, clearly implying that he could do the girl what the father did to the mother.

[koganbot]

Well, there's ambiguity both in who the "old man" is - is it the mother's father or the mother's husband; if the latter, isn't the mother still fixed for life? - and what "took her" means: brought her or took away from her? Mom could just be slumming in Stepney, like daughter is slumming with Mick/Didi. But I've never really thought about it to the extent you just have, and your interpretation holds together, though it still doesn't explain how Mick/Didi is going to manage to take her and leave her broke. And how did Dad manage to get Mom's things from her anyway, especially if he couldn't even be bothered to break away (from his mistress, presumably) and visit Mom once in a while? It's possible that Jagger didn't work out these questions either.

One of my favorite Jagger lyrics is in "High And Dry" where he goes, "Anything I wished for I only had to ask her/I think she found out it was money I was after/High and dry, oh, what a weird letdown/She left me standing here just high and dry."