Deixa-me rir...

Caros audiophiles, next week my sobrinha/afilhada will be 17 years old. Surely English speakers should say 17 years young! I suppose Einstein might say that it is all relative. He once famously explained his theory of relativity in this way: 'if a man speaks with a pretty girl for an hour it seems like a minute, but if he sits on a hot stove [fogao] for a minute it seems like an hour'.

Anyway, I started to think about songs which refer to being 17. 

Firstly, Sixteen Going On Seventeen sung by Liesl and new boyfriend Rolf in The Sound Of Music; he is a year older and claims to be wiser, and she, thrilled to be loved and in love for the first time, is happy to massage his ego and pretend that she needs to depend on him.

First love didn't last for long and didn't end well for Leisl with her young Nazi boy.
But for songwriter Janis Ian it didn't even start. At Seventeen recalls her painful lonely experiences of not being one of the pretty or popular girls; it is a story equally understood by awkward shy teenage boys.

For a shy teenage boy or girl the confident politics of the discoteque is both a terrifying playground and a desired utopia. This youthful energy and sexual tension and joyful celebration of the dancefloor are captured by two immortal songs. One from a boy's perspective, one from a quite different girl's view.

Both groups are giants of their respective 60s rock and 70s disco pop eras. They need no introduction. Get dancing!

A proxima.

 

PO