Surprise!: Karen by Night

Jill Sobule: Karen by Night

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Prepare to be surprised. If you look on the sidebar to your left, you will see that our new theme is Surprise!. It’s pretty vaguely defined, so it should be all the more surprising. Pretty much anything can happen here for the next 24 hours. The surprise may be a feature of the music, a narrative turn in the lyrics, a cover song that you always thought was the original, or something else. Even I don’t know all of the surprises in store, but I can’t wait to find out.

Consider our first example. This one is all about the lyrics. Karen is nice, if somewhat mousy. She runs a shoe store, and all of her employees agree on this point. But they have never seen what happens after dark… The surprise actually comes fairly early in the song, and then only deepens. Jill Sobule displays here the odd sense of humor that made her song I Kissed a Girl, (what I call the real one), a novelty hit. Sobule can also get serious, and is a fine songwriter either way, so I am doing her something of a disservice in sharing another of her “funny” songs. I encourage you to learn more about her work.