When you’re singing along to a song at the top of your lungs, sometimes you don’t know what you’re singing. Sometimes you can be singing the saddest lyrics imaginable, but you’ve not realised because you’re half-cut on a bottle of rum and some floor-drugs, and it’s Friday night. Ever danced to ‘Gimme Gimme Gimme’ by ABBA?
You may not have cottoned on to the emotional crisis going on in the opening gambit of: “Half-past twelve and I’m watching the late show in my flat, all alone – how I hate to spend the evening on my own. Autumn winds blowing outside the window as I look around the room and it makes me so depressed to see the gloom.“
With that, after listening to a bunch of pop-gems from Stock, Aitken & Waterman (seriously – the English Motown and we’re being deadly serious), and thinking about how The KLF wrote about their lyrics in ‘The Manual’. They talk about (gloriously) nonsense lyrics that just catch the listener right. They started off with KC & The Sunshine Band’s “that’s the way a-ha, a-ha I like it a-ha, a-ha That’s the way a-ha, a-ha I like it a-ha, a-ha” and likening it to their own “Doctor Who, hey Doctor Who Doctor Who, in the Tardis Doctor Who, hey Doctor Who Doctor Who, Doc, Doctor Who Doctor Who, Doc, Doctor Who“, adding “gibberish of course, but every lad in the country under a certain age related instinctively to what it was about.”
Instinctively knowing what it was about. Right. Onto SAW, who they referred to as “kings of writing chorus lyrics that go straight to the emotional heart of the 7″ single buying girls in this country.”
“I should be so lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky – I should be so lucky in love”
So what of Sonia’s ‘You’ll Never Stop Me From Loving You‘? Well, instinctively, it’s a ’60s girl group song of obsessive crushes and love, right? Well, there’s always been something off about it, and it was always the line “it doesn’t really matter what you put me through” which sounds wildly grim and abusive – but on which side does the weirdness fall? Did Sonia accidentally make the ’89 version of ‘He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss)’?
If you read the lyrics just as plain text, then a very dark picture begins to emerge. It begins innocently enough, with two potential lovers too shy to approach each other.
“Even when you’re home, you won’t pick up your phone and take my call. When I see you on the street, you stare down at your feet – you won’t talk at all. If only you would see me one more time, and maybe, some day you will find that you could really love me – you could really need me – maybe you could change your mind.”
Now, we move to what could be considered a more sinister tone, but we’ll give Sonia the benefit of the doubt because she really does seem like the loveliest woman imaginable. Right? Surely she’s not being weird or anything? She’s just uncontrollably head over heels about some guy, right?
“But you’ll never stop me from loving you, it doesn’t really matter what you put me through – you’ll never stop me from loving you”
However, Sonia’s infatuation soon takes a sour turn, where an innocent, all-consuming crush soon becomes a problem. It makes the previous accidental meetings now seem orchestrated. The object of her desire has been put under surveillance. When she saw them on the street, it becomes clear that she wasn’t satisfied with his not picking up the phone, and matters had to be taken into her own hands. She got to know of their whereabouts after presumably, repeated harassment on the landline.
“When I know that you’re alone I wander to your home and catch a glimpse or two. It seems that all the time the thought is on my mind of being with you.“
It’s clear that, while watching him while hidden, she is aware of when he is vulnerable and isolated. Sonia is gathering more information on her victim, perhaps delusional by this point, imagining being with him, regardless of the near constant rebuttals. He’s avoiding the telephone, he’s trying to avoid her in the street, but still, her desire remains. Her fantasies have now become obsessive.
“The times I’ve tried to see you – you know I would meet you any time, night or day – but still you just refuse. And no matter what you do, I’ll never let you get away.“
And there it is. Her relentless pursuit of this poor individual is clear. This is not love, this is a hounding. She’s prowling him through every channel she can think of, orchestrating ‘chance’ meetings, constant phone calls, hiding outside his home just to watch him from afar, and despite his refusal, she is undeterred, and will force him into submission.
Stalkers have a mistaken belief that another person loves them, with a thing called erotomania. Sonia shows clear use of classic stalker behaviours, such as overt and covert intimidation. While she doesn’t clearly use threats of violence toward her target, suggesting that she’ll ‘never’ let them ‘get away’ is clearly ramping up to that.
In “A Study of Stalkers” Mullen et al. identified five types of stalkers:
- Rejected stalkers follow their victims in order to reverse, correct, or avenge a rejection (e.g. divorce, separation, termination).
- Resentful stalkers make a vendetta because of a sense of grievance against the victims – motivated mainly by the desire to frighten and distress the victim.
- Intimacy seekers seek to establish an intimate, loving relationship with their victim. Such stalkers often believe that the victim is a long-sought-after soul mate, and they were ‘meant’ to be together.
- Incompetent suitors, despite poor social or courting skills, have a fixation, or in some cases, a sense of entitlement to an intimate relationship with those who have attracted their amorous interest. Their victims are most often already in a dating relationship with someone else.
- Predatory stalkers spy on the victim in order to prepare and plan an attack – often sexual – on the victim.
We’ll let you decide. However, when you look at Sonia’s follow-up single ‘Can’t Forget You’, you get further delusional behaviour. The object of her affections has tried to get away, and yet, her fantasy remains, convincing herself that she knows it’s wrong, but there’s an imagined love that won’t go away.
“I tried to convince you but emotions are always in the way – now I know I can never love again, nobody else could take your place – it’s no good trying, just can’t fight all the memories of you, and you know that I’ve tried… but what can I do?“
From her ‘Everybody Knows’ LP, Sonia finished her run of singles by the summer of 1990, with a cover of ‘The End Of The World’, made famous of course by Skeeter Davis – a song that was inspired by the lyricist of the song’s pain from the death of her father. It’s bleak stuff.
“Why does the sun go on shining?
Why does the sea rush to shore?
Don’t they know it’s the end of the world?
‘Cause you don’t love me any more.“
Sonia’s final single had the b-side of ‘Can’t Help The Way That I Feel’, which continues the all-encompassing and by now, worrying infatuation. If the theme of the songs has been aimed at the same person, you have to wonder what the psychological toll is on the poor soul.
“I’ve got to do the right thing. There’s a job to be done. I’ll have to lose the inhibition ’til I feel the battle’s won. I’ve been denying the feelings inside me that held me back for so long. How can emotion as pure as a heartbeat be thought of as wrong?”
Harrowing.
While it’s obvious that Sonia was playing a role, just as Eminem did in his equally bleak ‘Stan’, maybe SAW foresaw the obsessive nature present in pop fans that would culminate in ‘stan’ culture, which incidentally is named after the Dido-sampling Eminem track? It’s one thing being desperate for love and attention, but it’s another to let it consume you entirely.
Indeed, it reflects on how we look at over-thinking a situation. It shows the obsessive person in a naked light. It’s horrible, but fascinating stuff. And obviously, you shouldn’t take any of this article too seriously, because that’s exactly what Sonia was warning you about when she released ‘You’ll Never Stop Me From Loving You’ on June 12th 1989.
[check out the weirdest dance routine of all-time below, at 1m 20s, also]
The Pop Corporation 
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