Singing in non sequiturs

Whoever you are, if you're reading this, the odds are that you're familiar, perhaps too much so, with the song "Happy Together", written by the professional songwriters Gary Bonner and Alan Gordon and first performed by The Turtles, on the album of the same name in 1967. "Happy Together" raced to the top of the charts, pushing The Beatles' indelible "Penny Lane" off the top spot, and remains a popular song to this day, as evidenced by recent up-tempo covers by the likes of Simple Plan and two separate covers on the last season of American Idol alone.

Anyway, I was listening somewhat idly to The Turtles' version of "Happy Together" the other night when, suddenly, this line struck me:

"The only one for me is you, and you for me"

This is one of the most memorable and important lines in the song, coming as it does immediately before the refrain, "so happy together!". At first glance the line appears to make complete sense; "it's me for you and you for me", isn't that what it's saying? Actually, as the line is written it makes no sense at all. The first half, "the only one for me is you" is fine, except that "the only one for me is you" means the EXACT same thing as "you for me". In both halves of the line, the singer is commenting on how his beloved is the only one for him. The "and" in the middle compounds the nonsense by pretending that the latter half of the line is an addition when it is in fact a clumsy repetition.

Those who think that modern songwriting is a travesty, that the 1960s were the glory days of pop music, need to listen a little more carefully. The Top Ten of the Billboard Chart has usually been populated with bilge, be it this sort of non sequitur lyricism or the more tasteless appeal of Katy Perry's pseudolesbian fantasies.