I don’t know why you think the lyrics presuppose she loves him back. There is clearly nothing in the song to indicate that. First o fall he asks her to “imagine me and you”, would seem to indicate that there is no actual “me and you” at that point. In actuality the idea that he needs her to say it back to “ease his mind” would seem to indicate the opposite. And then the line “How is the weather” seems to me to indicate the true banality of their actual relationship.
The guy may not be a stalker, but I do think that there is no reciprocation, which is why he seems so desperate.
I voted “creepy”, but not because of the song itself. I find the lyrics mostly innocent, if rather insipid.
However, when I was in high school, we had a neurotic, obsessive band director who had an arrangement of the song her boyfriend had done, and she insisted on making us play it over and over, even when we hadn’t practiced some of our other pieces in a week. We had to perform it at every single event–sometimes repeatedly. We were specifically forbidden to play other things, including our signature piece (“Old Time Rock and Roll”), because we had to play “Happy Together”. Again. While people at the football game yelled at us to play something else. She had a full-on breakdown shortly before homecoming and ran off to another town, leaving us without a director for the rest of the year. We formed a Band Council and came up with our own homecoming spectacular–which did not involve “Happy Together”–to considerable acclaim.
We never played that damn song again, but it still creeps me out a little, because it reminds me of her.
I think it’s a case of overthinking, too. Sometimes threads like this get a little crazy with normal love songs being branded stalker-songs. People do sound obsessive when they’re in love but who would want to write a song where the sentiment is, “I find you somewhat attractive, I may not LOVE you yet so I’ll hold off with the infatuation for a few more dates, but let’s go out a few times and see where this goes?”
This is true. Today, it seems that any thoughts on a guy’s part about a girl that he’s attracted to is “creepy.” Man, does that word get thrown around a lot. CREEEEEEEPY. The Shins have a song called “Caring is Creepy.” Is this title intended to lampoon the seemingly ever-present belief nowadays that any kind of sentimental thoughts towards someone else are interpreted as “creepy?”
I haven’t heard the song but I know the title, and I’ve wondered that myself. Yes, sometimes romantic interest is legitimately creepy but you’re right that it gets thrown around an awful lot.
So he’s imagining how things will be if they’re together. Why is that creepy? I’ve done that lots of times with people I’ve crushed on. Yes, if I actually went up to them and told them those things in song form, it would be creepy. But people imagine themselves with the object of their affection lots of time even if they know better than to unload all that stuff on a first date.
I don’t know if I would use that exact word “creepy”. But it’s certainly not a sweet song. It’s a sad / deluded song, which is somewhat covered up in the biased narrators lyrics, but is coming through in the musical undercurrent of sadness. The song has a clear subdued sad sound / mood.
Anyway, he is doing much more than just normal crushing. “Thinking about her day and night”, is not something you do before a first date. Not being able to see oneself loving anybody but that person (who doesn’t love you back) is too much, even if you are infatuated. How is the weather? The skies are not blue.
There was an episode of It’s Garry Shandling’s Show (not to be confused with The Larry Sanders Show) in which the Turtles guest starred and played it. The plot of that one had to do with Garry being traumatized when he sees a topless picture of his mom from a 1960s anti-war demonstration, and the Turtles come on to play Happy Together and send the audience on a flashback to the era.
But that doesn’t mean they never been together, only that they are apart now. The tense is only future, not contrary to fact (which I will admit can be bitch to scan.)
And where do you get that the skies are not blue now?
I always imagined the song being sung when he is missing her dreadfully because they have been apart for so long - maybe on the bus ride back from her house.
Creepier than Maxwell’s Silver Hammer. It’s not just the lyrics, it’s also the melody, which sounds like horror music and some nut creeping around the Bates’ Motel.
The OP compared it to “Every Breath You Take”. Imagining, day and night, a future together is worlds away from watching every breath taken and every move made.
I didn’t see this mentioned yet, but I know there exists a cover version of this song that deliberately plays up the stalker angle. I can’t remember it whatsoever, but I know I heard it on Dr Demento in the mid 90s.
So this certainly isn’t the first time somebody’s noticed.
I’ve always thought the song was a little…off. The lyrics aren’t explictly bad, but the “how is the weather?” line always unnerved me and there’s something to the mostly-monotone delivery of the verses that puts me in mind of a stalker talking to himself.
I’ve never assumed that was artist intent, though.
That’s one of my all-time favorite songs, ever. Not creepy! At all. It’s a damn happy song! I want to go skipping hand in hand with my high school sweetheart through a field of daisies, after thinking of him day and night, and we will be so happy. Together.
Saccharinely sweet. It borders on the sort of “bubble gum rock” groups like the Archies put out.
But an episode of Medium used it to creepy effect. It played throughout an episode where Allison was visited by the ghost of man who died after she told the police to suspect him of being a serial killer, and posthumously it appeared he wasn’t. He asked Allison to pass on a message to his finance, only to have it turn out that he and she were partners in serial rape/murders. The finace ended up getting lethal injection, and their fate in the afterlife was to have to spend eternity with each other.
What’s creepy is that so simple, normal, and innocent an occurrence as a teenage crush can be interpreted as “creepy” by some busybody. Then there are rumors and warnings and insinuations until everyone involved is worked into a panicky lather, whereupon there’s an anonymous tip investigated by some bored bureaucrat who has to justify his excessive paycheck one damn way or another. A zealous prosecutor sends some adrenaline-junkie, military-minded, kill-team-member cops to threaten him with all of a few dozen charges they just make up on the spot, unless he cooperates, which means confessing to lesser charges that the DA, one eye on the next election, runs with. Then, after his life is destroyed just by the accusation, under more lawyers’ fees than a millionaire could afford, he’s bullied into taking a plea deal that a judge, under no obligation to honor it, decides to ignore, and, hoping to make an example and win over the “tough on crime” voters, throws the guy into a stone-and-iron rape room for years. That’s creepy. So just stop it already.