Was (Not Was): Shadow and Jimmy
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What lurks in the shadows? For the next two weeks, we will be shadowing musicians as they explore that question. Taken literally, a shadow as an image created when a solid object blocks light from a small area. It is when the word is considered as a metaphor that things get interesting, and songwriters get inspired. A shadow can be an image of a person, and it can become distorted by the angle of the light or the contours of the surface on which it is cast. So it is not the same as the person who cast it, merely a memory or a distorted impression. “Shadow” is also a term that may be used to describe a ghost or apparition, a supernatural after image if you will. We will be exploring how songwriters work with these ideas over the course of our theme. But first, here is a much simpler explanation. In Shadow and Jimmy, Shadow just a man’s name.
Shadow and Jimmy comes from Was (Not Was)’s 1988 album What Up, Dog?. The album represented the pinnacle of the band’s success, spawning six singles, but somehow Shadow and Jimmy was never even a flip side. Don’t ask me how that happened, because I am at a loss to explain it. The song features a great lead vocal by Sweet Pea Atkinson over a backing track that has the classic feel of songs like Spanish Harlem. The song was a cowrite by David Was and Elvis Costello. David and Don Was would often bring in unexpected artists on their Was (Not Was) projects, and Don especially would later parlay the resulting connections into a very successful career as a producer. The song itself presents a portrait of two men who never finished growing up. As the lyric says, they were “always yesterday’s news”, which, in a sense, makes them both shadows. To me, they represent the parts of maleness that most of us outgrew once we left high school. They never make the leap in their thinking from the idea of girls to that of women. But they are never quite alone as a result, because they have each other. So ultimately, the song is a celebration of a friendship. It may be that some listeners didn’t know what to make of the relationship described in the song. You could dismiss the characters as losers, but Costello and Was don’t do that. Neither character has any success with the opposite sex, and it is not for lack of wanting it. But the songwriters do not want us to pity them; we are asked instead to find beauty in their loyalty to each other. Maybe the song was not a single because not enough listeners could make that leap, but Was, Costello, Atkinson, and the backing band do everything you could ask to make it possible.
