3.12.24

Jennifer’s singin’, “Stand by Me”

And she knows every single word by heart

Was love always this good

Or could this be just the start?

It’s weird the things that hit you harder than you expect.

When David Bowie died, it was a hard loss, but it didn’t surprise me that I felt the way I did. I’d been a fan of his for decades. Same with John Prine.

But when I woke up this morning and read that Eric Carmen had died in his sleep, I felt a pang of sorrow that I didn’t see coming.

Back in 1988, Carmen was a big deal. He had one of the biggest songs from the uber-popular Dirty Dancing soundtrack, Hungry Eyes. And before that, he’d had a big hit with All By Myself, along with songs like Go All the Way with his band, Raspberries. But the song that I most connect with him is Make Me Lose Control.

That single followed on the heels of Hungry Eyes. It’s an interesting song because it’s essentially a song without album. It’s shown up on greatest hits compilations, but that’s about it. I proudly owned it on cassingle back in the day.

Make Me Lose Control came out at a time when I was figuring out what it meant to be a teenager, what falling in love was like, and why I felt the way I did about music. The lyrics I opened with above melded those three ideas into four beautiful lines.

The idea of a dream girl knowing all the words to a song you love … that was (and still is) pure, unfiltered magic to me.

The song was also something of a throwback to earlier times, with inflections of doo-wop and imagery that invokes scenes from American Graffiti.

I still remember getting ready for a family gathering, playing that cassingle on repeat in my Walkman as I set up chairs, put out plates and silverware, and put cans of soda on ice.

Eric Carmen isn’t a musician I can say I’ve thought about very often in recent years, and his passing is yet another reminder to value the amazing things life brings our way.