DRESSED IN BLACK

Listen to DRESSED IN BLACK by The Shangri-Las.

I've discussed many times, even on this blog, the strangeness of the Shangri-Las. They're a group that was very popular in their time, but are almost forgotten now, and to the extent their remembered, it's as a bubblegum teenybopper group. A little like the Beach Boys actually, and like the Beach Boys, their reputation completely obscures how f*@#%*%g weird some of the music is.

In the case of the Shangri-Las, the disjunction is even more acute. The catalog of disturbing, unnerving, creepy, frightening tunes is quite long, and yet these same songs are beloved on oldies radio and cherished by music fans. It says a lot for the quality of the music, doesn't it?

Dressed In Black is hard to describe, except it's one of the most melodramatic performances of all time, chronicling as it does a girl's ever-growing love for... *SPOILERS* ...her dead boyfriend. And as it builds and builds, don't lie and say you were ready for how the song drops all the way out to Mary's whispered incantation, and then ends. Seriously, it's a miracle of pop music, and as an added bonus, it causes nightmares.

Photo: Empire State Building series (6).