Tuesday 12 April 2011

A Man's Words, A Woman's Voice



Try this, Mutual Attraction - a rock-solid slab of mid eighties R&B funk.


Original album version from Turn On Your Radio (1985) Atlantic (US)/Cool Tempo (UK)

Its by Change, who are a relatively little known Italian and American (not Italian-American) studio group. They put out a string of albums in the first half of the eighties, and had some hits on both sides of the Atlantic, most memorably "A Lover's Holiday", "Searching" and "Change of Heart". In all honestly, they'll go down as a only footnote in the career of Luther Vandross.

So why Mutual Attraction? Well, it's been on my mind since I first heard it, the vocal is by Deborah Cooper, who does a fine job, and the song is written by Timmy Allen, who is now best known for writing and producing some of Britney Spears' more treacly ballads. Well what's struck me is the lyric, which for the most part is a totally par Change lyric, concerned with dancing, love and a sensual subtext. Listening a little closer and you'll recognise that its a paean to a man, and is highlighted by lines such as:

"When I first saw you, you blew me kiss, I smiled and laughed it off, I tried to resist, you look so good, so inviting, I can feel a mutual attraction"

Perhaps it Allen's lack of subtlety, or Cooper's yearning vocal, but every time I hear that I think not of a woman addressing a man, but man imagining himself from the perspective of a woman.

Sure there is nothing new about men writing songs for women, or even partners writing songs for one another to sing. Though I think you could almost place "Mutual Attraction" in the same category as Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958). Quite a stretch? Probably. What strikes me is the mirroring and the switching of subjectivity. The real curiosity of Vertigo is not that the lead character (Scottie/Jimmy Stewart) is obsessed, but rather that he comes to realise that what he has obsessed over is not it appears. Not a real woman, a trap and snare yes, but actually another man's idea of what will ensnare him. The sad predicament is that Scottie has fallen in love with another man's dream.

Returning to "Mutual Attraction", an ironic title perhaps? Isn't Allen 'dressing up' Deborah Cooper? This could be painted as a solipsistic song about a person's - arguably a man's - desire to be desired, rather than to desire for another. This has hardly moved the point along, but i'm left pondering if both possible meanings are nakedly obvious. I wonder what Deborah Cooper thought about it? Was the song written without specifying a gender for the vocalist?


Mutual Attraction (Nick Martinelli Version) - This is the version I prefer