He's gotta ticket to ride

Last week my iPod was acting funny and started playing songs from my mother's playlist, which it has been specifically instructed (over and over again) not to do.

Mom's music runs along the lines of her favorite praise & worship recordings, Sandi Patty, Don Moen, old-school country, Marc Anthony (don't ask me how he got in there but she loves him, especially his hit "I Need to Know," which shows up in my Top 25 Played playlist all the time), and that sort of thing. When I bought her iPod, I also loaded it with stuff my boss recommended. Some of it my mom likes, and some of it she doesn't (she wasn't impressed with Il Divo, for example, and I really don't think you can fault her for that). For laughs, I included a Carpenter's disk (my boss lived in Hollywood in the 70s, and I think that has something to do with her taste in music. She's also a big fan of Heart, CSN and, other gems from that time period). I think it's a best of CD but I don't remember the title.

Anyway, while my iPod was punking me, the Carpenters' cover of the Beatles' "Ticket to Ride" came on.

Apparently this was a hit song for them, and all I can say is, were all those people drugged? Incapacitated? Hooked up to machines? Unable to choose for themselves?

Most of us know "Ticket to Ride" as an upbeat song about a breakup, right? Sure, "upbeat" and "breakup" are probably words that don't belong in the same sentence, but John and Paul did a good job bringing the whimsy (though according to Wikipedia, Paul didn't do much writing as far as this song is concerned; I'll leave that argument to their heirs and the Beatles scholars).

In her version, Karen Carpenter successfully sucks all the fun out of the song, and I swear to god, as I was driving down the 5 freeway when it came on, I got a little scared. It's really a creepy version.

The way she sings those lyrics, I couldn't figure out if she was glad the guy ("the boy that's driving me mad...") had split on her, or if maybe, just maybe, she had something to do with it. I mean, at the end of the song, I started thinking maybe Karen was considering killing him.

Wouldn't it make the Carpenters a lot more interesting if Karen had secretly been a serial killer? Seriously, I could get into that story.