MARIANNE

"Marianne" is a popular song. -- Wikipedia

Well, I guess so. There are a surprising amount of songs with my name in the title, I have come to realize. Maybe that isn't so odd, though, considering that my name combines the two most common and boring female names in the English-speaking world, and it's easy to rhyme. I bet Peter Criss of Kiss found out real damn fast that the only words that rhyme with "Beth" are "death" and "meth." Would have made for a much better song, I think.

This is the first Marianne song I can remember hearing, which was a hit during the brief Calypso-pop trend a few years before I was born:



I liked having a song with my name. It made me feel all important and special. I did, however, in that song mishear the lyrics as "down by the seashore, sippin' sand." I never did figure out why Marianne would be sippin' sand, or sifting it either.

"Carrie-Anne" by the Hollies came next. I was convinced they misspoke. A "C" is easily mistaken for an "M," right?

Then in 1967 there was this hit by Brylcreamed squeaker Frankie Valli and his equally-greasy Four Seasons:



As the years went by, the Marianne songs became known to me. Will Champion of Coldplay loved his Marianne (and ended up marrying her), but Leonard Cohen said so long to his. The Spongetones' Mary Ann was a chatterbox, and Tori Amos' Marianne was dead. The Gore Gore Girls thought Mary Ann was a big bitch, and the Human League's Marianne was an old friend. Stephen Stills wants his Marianne to shape up already, but Jackson Browne tells Marianne "there's more to you than just bad or good." Quirkstress Regina Spektor made her Mary Ann a Grimms' fairytale murderess, and Ray Charles didn't care -- he just wanted to get down with her. Alice Cooper said he couldn't live without her, but Bob Dylan took off in a ship and dealt with it. Marshall Crenshaw really wanted to tell Mary Anne a bunch of stuff, and Stevie Wonder wanted to...get down with her. Steve Miller offered to carry her books back to his place (and then get down with her), and Bill Monroe and his Bluegrass Boys will keep touching up their gray hair until she returns someday.

Oh, that crazy Marianne. Look at all the crap she's stirred up.

No one has ever written a song for me myself, Marianne, to my knowledge. So therefore I will spend 12 seconds writing one for myself:

Marianne! Marianne!
That bitch sure likes Post Raisin Bran!
Marianne! Marianne!
It makes her poop in a garbage can!

Repeat until someone hits you with a broom.