June 15 — “This Girl’s In Love With You” by Grenadine

Grenadine

If you only listen to one song this late night, make it “This Girl’s in Love With You” by Grenadine (1994, from the album Nopalitos). This is, of course, a cover of the song “This Guy’s in Love With You”, which was written by Burt Bacharach and recorded by Herb Alpert in 1968. The story goes that Bacharach had the song laying around. He wasn’t using it. Alpert approached him, as he approached other songwriters, asking for some “unused songs”. He gave “This Guy’s in Love With You”, and Alpert turned it into a #1 single.

Grenadine was an indie rock supergroup from Washington DC in the early- to mid-1990s. They released two albums. The members were indie pop royalty, even if most people never heard of this “side project”.

Mark Robinson was from Unrest and Flin Flon and Olympic Death Squad and all that. He was also the founder of TeenBeat Records, and was a known supporter of the Hartford Whalers. He freaking loves this song.

Jenny Toomey was in Tsunami and Geek and Liquorice and Jenny Toomey and all that. They’ll all (except Geek) get features here before it’s all said and done. She was also the founder of Simple Machines Records. For a while, I’ll admit, I was obsessed with Jenny Toomey. I’ll blame a friend from about 18 years ago. A girl who I knew well, but for a very brief period of time. A girl who nobody else was nice to. We’ll call her “Kate”. Kate knew that I liked Tsunami and all that. She knew that I liked Jenny Toomey. She was a really enormously big Jenny Toomey fan and she convinced me that Jenny Toomey wasn’t just “pretty cool”. Jenny Toomey was a freaking queen. She should have walked around everywhere she went wearing a goddamn tiara and she should have had four young men carry her throne around with her sitting in it. Yeah. I drank the kool-aid. I have no idea what ever happened to “Kate”. We were close friends for about six months, and our paths never crossed again after that.

The other member of Grenadine was Rob Christiansen. He was in a band called Eggs. He didn’t quite have the stripes that Robinson and Toomey had.

Anyway, unlike any of the bands that the members were in, Grenadine was a “lounge-y” band. It was perfect for them to cover a song written by Burt Bacharach.

Here it is:
“This Girl’s in Love With You” by Grenadine

In some cases, I hate it when a singer changes the genders of people in a song that they cover. In this case, I’m just fine with it. Jenny obviously sings on this one, and she has to change many of the lines to make the genders appropriate. One interesting one, though is one where female singers are divided.
In the original, as sung by Herb Alpert, one of the bits goes:

I need your love
I want your love
Say you’re in love with this guy
If not, I’ll just die

Some female singers, including Dusty Springfield, changed it pretty straight up so it said

…Say you’re in love with this girl…

while others like Dionne Warwick and this version by Grenadine, the line is changed to go like this:

…Say you’re in love, and you’ll be my guy…

I much prefer the Warwick/Grenadine way so that the “if not, I’ll just die” line rhymes.

Anyway, in the Grenadine version, I absolutely love all the static and warbling and all the stuff that makes it sound hollow and tinny like am radio. I love it.

I don’t have time for much else to say about this. It’s just brilliant.

You can buy Nopalitos from the TeenBeat webstore here. Do it.