‘70s Marriage, ‘80s Divorce: A Musical Breakdown

From "We've Only Just Begun" to "Separate Lives" and beyond...with stats.

Here is an audio version of this essay:

Let’s say you were born around 1950. Your music was big. Big bands, big Hollywood show tunes, the Brill building, doo-wop, girl groups. In 1957, Disney released Fantasia and it was a best seller. Big classical! 

By high school, rock’n’roll had made everything even bigger. Even folk was enormous. Apocalyptic warnings, mystical conceit. 

1966 to 1970 is a very long time. So much happens in politics, culture, style and sensibility, all while you’re going from teenager to full-fledged adult. Something might be changing in you. Your objectless youthful melancholy or sense of political identity might be waning. You might begin to wonder: 

Why do birds suddenly appear
Every time you are near?

Why do stars fall down from the sky
Every time you walk by?

You’re a boomer, but baby you ain’t a baby anymore. You’re getting married!

‘70s Marriage: Even though we ain’t got money…

In 1970, the median age for males at first marriage was about 23; for females it was 20.6. From 1970 to 1974, the marriage rate was higher than it had been at any point since 1950 (to this day, the marriage rate has not returned to 1970-1974 levels), and there were simply more people–many more–to get married. 

A new market for song had arrived. If a songwriter was shrewd enough to sign a contract and whimsical enough to know what forever means, she could move a heart and make a mint.

Source: https://ourworldindata.org/marriages-and-divorces

The Fifth Dimension hits it big–straight to #1 on the Billboard charts–with Laura Nyro’s “Wedding Bell Blues” in late ‘69¹. In ‘70, the Carpenters give us “We’ve Only Just Begun.”² It’s a hit on the charts and endures because it is perfect. It’s almost a duet, with Richard’s backing vocals mixed forward and cutting in for little solo moments. But it’s Karen’s otherworldly voice and Richard’s genius for arranging that makes it sublime. 

“We’ve Only Just Begun” either changes the sound of popular music or is a chief example of a changed sound. It’s smaller, but warm and lush. It feels more like a fire in the fireplace than lightning on Yasgur’s farm, or like morning sunshine through the bedroom window. Light–daylight, dusklight, firelight–makes these marriage songs seem like illuminated testaments from another time. Which is exactly what they are.

In late 1970, young Reginald Kenneth Dwight–aka Elton Hercules John (as if his given name wasn’t royal enough!–breaks onto the scene with “Your Song,” another sweet, intimate ballad. Elton sings:

I don’t have much money, but boy if I did
I’d buy you a big house where we both could live.

It concludes with a declaration that life is so wonderful “while you’re in the world.” It’s one of the biggest first dance wedding songs ever.

Also in 1970, Graham Nash ditches his big pop psychedelia to tell us a spare (but warm), piano-driven story that also has a house at its heart. It’s a very very very fine house, with a fire in the fireplace and flowers in a vase and two cats in the yard. 

Sparer still is Loggins and Messina’s great “Danny’s Song” (1971), which picks up on Elton’s theme of small money and big love, and the Carpenter’s theme of having “just begun.” Sings Kenny:

And even though we ain't got money
I'm so in love with you, honey
And everything will bring a chain of love

And in the morning when I rise,
You bring a tear of joy to my eyes
And tell me everything is gonna be alright.

This is the kind of song a young couple with a guitar could play to each other while they stew some cabbage in their very very very fine house. And it introduces a new element: the child, “as free as a dove, conceived in love.” (His wife’s pregnancy had also inspired the great Jim Croce to write “Time in a Bottle” in 1970.)

“Danny’s Song” gets solid radio play, but it would take Anne Murray’s cover in 1972 to go big. Anne Murray does what Anne Murray does: clarifies and purifies. She ditches the unnecessary verses about fraternities and horoscopes, and when she sings “I think I’m gonna have a son,” it hits in a different way. It’s a wonderful performance. 

In ‘73, one of Stevie Wonder’s three (!) singles to reach Billboard’s year-end hot singles chart is “You Are the Sunshine of My Life.” He sings:

I feel like this is the beginning
Though I’ve loved you for a million years

This is a melody so true it too can be sung by a couple on a shag carpet while their new baby sleeps, but if you think you know it, listen to it again. Stevie’s production is wild! Jim Gilstrap and Lani Groves sing the first few lines, and then it’s like Stevie jumps through the window of the control booth and sings the rest! Backing vocals coo and laugh, vocalists repeat “love has joined us”, bongos patter, and the bass has a paroxysm of pure delight like an infant about to say “Mama” or “Dada” for the first time. It sounds like a bunch of genius babies playing around in a nursery.

Next year, John Denver takes the D off of Danny’s Song and makes his immortal “Annie’s Song,” which was written in 10 minutes and inspired by an amazing Aspen ski run and “the love that I feel for my lovely wife, Annie”, as he put it in a late summer concert in ‘74. (John and Annie were married in ‘67. It was Annie, presumably, that John was so sad to have to leave for work in “Leaving on a Jet Plane”.) Sings the great tenor:

Come let me love you, let me give my life to you
Let me drown in your laughter, let me die in your arms
Let me lay down beside you, let me always be with you
Come let me love you, come love me again

Like Stevie’s song, Annie’s Song also features background cooing. And Lee Holdridge’s string section is gorgeous. If that doesn’t capture the sublime ache of young love, what does?

In ‘75, the always-underrated Dan Fogelberg paints us a pleasing portrait of the day’s lovers and newlyweds in “Old Tennessee.” The singer is living alone in a house without heat during a cold late autumn and missing his girl. He’s heard she’s 

…in San Francisco,
Living your sister who’s a mother-to-be
And her husband’s way down in Georgia
And I’m still in Old Tennessee

The happy couple with their senses filled. Source: Milwaukee Post Bulletin.

Intermission: Seven is Not the Lord’s Number

In ‘75, the first great divorce album is made³ - Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks. The second great divorce album–Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours–is recorded in ‘76 and released in ‘77. It wins the Grammy for Album of the Year in ‘78 and is always listed as one of rock’s most acclaimed albums. Side One ends with “Songbird,” Christine McVie’s lovely piano ballad about wishing the best for her lover. It feels like the first half of the ‘70s. Side Two feels like the second half of the ‘70s. It begins with “The Chain,” in which the whole tortured, breaking-up and divorcing band play on while Stevie and Lindsay just go ahead and murder each other.

If you don’t love me now
You will never love me again
I can still hear you saying
We would never break the chain

One can’t help thinking sadly of Anne Murray singing sweetly that “everything will bring a chain of love” just five years before.

The divorce rate has been ticking upwards for a decade, but now it’s increasing. The duration of marriages that end in divorce in the US is reliably seven years. It was then, it is now (marriage duration is longer literally everywhere else). Dylan’s marriage lasted a bit longer than that, but Fleetwood Mac’s John and Christine McVie’s marriage ended right at seven. (Stevie and Lindsey never married, but their romance lasted about 7 years.)

By the late ‘70s, when you’re approaching thirty, you’ve got a couple kids, your country’s in a recession, gasoline prices are through the roof, and the roof of that very very very fine single-family home has sprung a leak, “even though we ain’t got money” may not be the song you’re singing.

‘80s Divorce: If somebody loves you, won’t they always love you?

In 1980, Air Supply’s “All Out of Love”, written by Graham Russell and Clive Davis, from the album Lost in Love–the title song is about trying to recapture lost love–hit #2 on the Billboard chart. It’s about a couple that’s “tormented and torn apart” and just can’t find the love anymore. They broke the chain.

If Richard Carpenter helped form the warm wedding sound of the early ‘70s, Clive Davis saw the paper peeling on the wall and made the big cold sound of the demolition.

1981 gives us Rosanne Cash’s “Seven Year Ache,” a #1 country song and crossover smash. Written by Cash and produced by her then-husband Rodney Crowell, the song has the big cold synth + drum machine sound of the eighties, and its impressionistic lyrics give us a love-lost dystopia of pool halls, loners, and liars, “Cause there's a fool on every corner when you're trying to get home.”

Also in 1981, Abba made the next great divorce album: The Visitors. It features “When All is Said and Done” and the hit “One of Us.” But their greatest divorce song comes from the previous year. In “The Winner Takes It All,” they sing

The judges will decide
The likes of me abide…
And I understand
You’ve come to shake my hand

The US divorce rate peaks between 1980 and 1985. Abba’s Agnetha Fältskog and Björn Ulvaeus were married in ‘71 and divorced in ‘80. Frida and Bennie had been together for most of the ‘70s, married in ‘78, and divorced in ‘81. 

Also in 1981, Luther Vandross reads the room and sees that half of the paintings are gone. He remakes Dionne Warwick’s “A House is Not a Home.” It’s a classic of the Quiet Storm genre. Brewing since the mid-’70s, the Quiet Storm and its “deep, cognac smooth vocals”, as Naima Cochrane describes it in this terrific Vibe essay flooded the ‘80s with songs of lost love, illicit love, and reconciliation.

In 1982, when John and Annie Denver’s love lost its sense and they divorced, Whitesnake gave us the loud storm of “Here I Go Again”, which sounds like the anthem of some newly-single Bob triumphantly hitting those pools halls to ease his seven-year ache. It’s not an intentionally sad song, and that feeling of liberation must have been profound for a time. Kenny Loggins of “Danny’s Song” makes an album in 1982 called High Adventure, but its hit–”Heart to Heart”--betrays the times:

Does anything last forever
I don't know
Baby we're near the end

Peabo ridin’ high…but alone.

His highness Peabo Bryson had his first Top 10 Single, the majestic “If Ever You’re In My Arms Again,” in ‘84 (it’s that quiet storm again). He’s dreaming of getting back together:

If ever you’re in my arms again
This time I’ll love you much better
If ever you’re in my arms again
This time I’ll hold you forever
This time we’ll never end.

But Phil Collins (first marriage 1975-1980) harbors no such fantasies. In 1984’s “Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now),” he’s imploring his ex to see that he is an empty void without her. He holds out some hope that she’ll come back, which is where “Against All Odds” comes in. In 1985, he’s hurt, he’s lonely, and he’s pissed. In “Separate Lives”, one of many, many duets from the era, Phil and Marilyn Martin sing⁴:

You have no right
To ask me how I feel
You have no right
To speak to me so kind
I can’t go on just holding on to time
Now that we’re living separate lives 

If the stripped-down ‘70s love songs were played together in the kitchen, the ‘80s love songs are played in the neighborhood bars where the divorced guys flirt in vain with fantasies, and over the late-night radio on the patios of the new developments after the kids have been put to bed and mom can slip out of her heels and into her turquoise tracksuit, pour herself a glass of Chardonnay, and gaze at the spindly, just-planted trees (“your property value will increase as these trees grow up,” said the realtor).

She gazes at the real estate investment and pretends they’re old-growth oaks in a romantic, misty forest full of princes, and she is a princess in white linen with perfume on her wrist, which is the subject of Heart’s smash hit “These Dreams” in 1985. The lyrics of “These Dreams” are by Bernie Taupin, who had written the lyrics to Elton’s “Your Song” a decade and a half earlier. Bernie knows his subject well. His first marriage was from ‘71-’77. He’s now on his fourth. He also wrote the lyrics to 1990’s hit “The Kind of Wishful Thinking,” which might well describe our men turning 40 and wondering what to do every other weekend when they don’t have the kids.

The fantasy of “These Dreams” is absent in the whole of the next great divorce album, Bruce Springsteen’s 1987 Tunnel of Love, which gives us “Brilliant Disguise,” which features this brilliance:

Oh we stood at the altar
They gypsy swore our future was bright
But come the wee-wee hours
Well maybe, baby, the gypsy lied

Tonight our bed is cold
I’m lost in the darkness of our love
God have mercy on the man
Who doubts what he’s sure of

I imagine some Bob coming home from the Thirsty Lizard one Tuesday night and asking himself, “What the hell happened?” What did I do?” He’s thinking of some Sandy, who asks herself the same question when she pours her last glass for the night. There were so many Bobs, half in and half out of the deep blue sea. And so many Sandys, like pebbles on the beach. So close they could almost touch.

By ‘87, the situation is all too clear, and Whitney (a Clive Davis discovery) sums it up in “Didn’t We Almost Have It All?”

Didn’t we almost have it all
When love was all we had worth giving?
The ride with you was worth the fall, my friend
Loving you makes life worth living

Whitney’s great two 1980s albums–there should be a category beyond platinum just called “Whitney”--are like a soundtrack of lost love, from “All At Once” and “Saving All My Love for You” (in which she is an unrepentant other woman to some family man) to “Where Do Broken Hearts Go?”, which features a question as simple and sincere as it is devastating:

If somebody loves you
Won’t they always love you?

For most Bobs and Sandys and Johns and Annies, the answer is no. No, they won’t always love you. Which is why Chicago with Bill Champlin on vocals tells his ex that if she ever sees him on the street, she should “Look Away.” It struck a power chord. It was the #1 song on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1989, despite stiff competition from upstarts like Bobby Brown, Paula Abdul, Milli Vanilli, and Debbie Gibson. “Look Away” was what got their heart.

But for some, some lucky few, the answer was yes, and this is the hopeful note with which we close this musical breakdown on ‘70s Marriage and ‘80s Divorce. We began with The Fifth Dimenson’s “Wedding Bell Blues.” We’ll close with what might as we be called “Second Wedding Bell Blues.” It’s Cher and Peter Cetera singing “After All” from the 1989 film Chances Are⁵:

I guess it must be fate
We’ve tried it on our own
But deep inside we’ve known…

After all the stops and starts
We keep coming back to these two hearts
Two angels who’ve been rescued from the fall
After all that we’ve been through
It all comes down to me and you
I guess it’s meant to be
Forever you and me
After all.

Is this whole essay just a wordier (if such a thing is possible? It is!) recapitulation of Billy Joel’s “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant”, in which Brenda and Eddie call it quits in the summer of ‘75? Maybe, but I don’t care. 

I dedicate this to my wife, Lise, who holds the world in a paper cup and puts flowers in the vase that she bought today. We’re still going steady after nine years, longer than there’ve been fishes in the ocean, against all odds.

Here is a playlist with songs from the essay:

• If you dug this, you might dig a similar exercise regarding "The Great Anti-LA Country Song, which endureth forever but had its heyday in the Countrypolitan period.

• If you did not dig this, you might browse the archives since I have no project or plan.

• Things I emphatically recommend: Anna Schott’s account of the adoption of her child. Moving the time horizon out, Rona Maynard’s Things We Say With Flowers is about a long marriage, and it is beautiful.

• I do almost zero social media, but I do do The Peeling Paint Society on Facebook. Check out this beauty:

  

  Courtesy: Louise Ouimet

1. The great Laura Nyro wrote and first released the song in 1966, but she was too late and too early. It could have been a hit in 1950, but who cared in ‘66? By ‘69, the lovers were ready for it again.

2. “We’ve Only Just Begun” was written by Roger Nicholls and Paul Williams and released by the Carpenters in 1970. Paul Williams version compared to Richard Carpenter’s version is a study in arrangement.

3. Well, maybe the first great divorce album is Sinatra’s In the Wee Small Hours, but that’s a different generation.

4. The song is from the movie White Nights, which also features Lionel Ritchie’s “Say You, Say Me.”

5.  The song also appears on Cher’s 1989 Heart of Stone album. It seems like a divorce album, but it feels like it was cooked up by demographic experts at Warner Bros.