Post by Andrew Shaughnessy

“And I'm gonna miss you like a child misses their blanket.” This one ☝🏻 is (thankfully) not mine. This an earworm now lodged in my brain thanks to the local radio station’s decision to play Fergie’s “Big Girls Don’t Cry.” I’m not going to accuse that song of being the worst ever written (though I may) but I will rank the title quote among the worst lines ever written, or at least used in a song—right up there with Sting’s “and when their eloquence escapes me, their logic ties up and …(I’ll spare you the finish)” or Sammy Hagar’s “only time will tell if we can stand the test of time.” 😬 We all have our ‘worst song’ and ‘worst lyric’ favourites. You can’t even finish entering a search cue into a query box before a search platform offers up “We Built This City” by Starship. (Hit me in the comments with your corkers.) I’m onto this today, not because I’m into corkers. Quite the opposite actually. Earlier this week (on the 24th) we lost Canadian singer-songwriter David Clayton Thomas. (Go visit Phil Dwyer’s LinkedIn page who, in addition to informing us of this sad news, posted a video of his time (as composer and saxophone player) in the studio with David Clayton Thomas.) (Side note: we really do walk among giants if we just take the time to look.) Many years ago I happened to see David Clayton Thomas perform “God Bless the Child,” as the featured closing post-dinner act at a conference. The song was one of the ones that, together with “When I Die” and a voice that could stop a thousand ships, rocketed Earth Wind & Fire to the top of the charts. I thought at the time that ‘it couldn’t possibly get better than this.’ Fortunately, even though the man is no longer with us, his voice and his words are (to stand the test of time). Cue his words(1): “And when I die and when I'm gone There'll be one child born In this world to carry on, to carry on.” Let us all try to be that child. Take us out, David Clayton Thomas👇🏻 (with a much, much better earworm). RIP. (Footnotes: 1. His words as sung. Credit to songwriter Laura Nyro for the words.)