456, SOPHIE B. HAWKINS, "Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover"
Written by Sophie B. Hawkins; produced by Ralph Shuckett
Columbia 74164 1992 Billboard: # 5
457. KEYSHIA COLE ft/MISSY ELLIOTT & LIL KIM, "Let It Go"
Produced by Keyshia Cole, Ron Fair, and Manny Halley; written by Keyshia Cole, Missy Elliott, Kim Jones, Jack Knight, Canion Lamb, and James Mtume
Geffen 000997611 2007 Billboard: # 7
Okay, I have no idea what I want God to say when I get to the gates of Heaven, but if I ever do appear on a resurrected form of either Inside the Actor's Studio or Apostrophe, I am more than ready to declare my favorite curse word. It's damn.
Yes, my best friend would certainly hold a brief for "fuck," and Peter O'Toole's extended riff on the correct way to utter "sonofabitch" (not to mention its importance for modern cosmology) in the neglected sex-and-cloning comedy Creator is awfully compelling, but for me "damn" is the true aloha/shalom of the lot. Emphasize or extend any of the sounds and you communicate a slightly different meaning. Feeling cheated? Hit the D as hard as you can. Thunderstruck by a truly gobstopping aesthetic wonder? Stretch the A out and make it slightly nasal. I could go on and on, but I'm sure grasp the point: damn is the utility expletive.
Here I just pluck out two handy instances: a white one and a black one, as it turns out. Sophie B. is mad as hell but knows she's in a losing fight, while Missy (no disrespect, but did anyone buy the single for Keyshia?) dispenses with the nominal topic of the song and advises us to just surrender to the groove. In both cases, in order to truly communicate, all the singers had to do was kick out the damns.
"Shoot" I have no respect for, but "dang" I'll get to further on up the road.
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