Betcha By Golly Wow

While listening to the debate on Public TV following the announcement of the primary results, I remembered a favorite song by the Stylistics. Sometimes a phrase out of a song from 30 years back will click with what is happening and you find yourself humming the accompanying tune until someone tells you to cut it out because it’s annoying.

The discussion was getting quite good – Congressman Clyburn was spectacular on the Edwards phenomenon [why isn’t Clyburn a contender?], and Senator Biden was positively beaming, because Kerry-Edwards were flickering a light at the end of this tunnel (this is what prompted the song lyrics). You could hear him thinking “don’t lose it, whatever you do, don’t lose it, we’ll all unite behind you, you’ve never seen the Democrats so willing to unite [this is true].” Biden worried only that Kerry would snap up the nomination too soon, leaving the Republicans with plenty of time to turn their multi-million dollar fireworks against him. Somebody remarked how interesting it was that Dean paved the way and legitimized a front-line GWB attack, without which this race would not have picked up its brilliant momentum, and having served that role, Dean is now expendable.

Throughout, I was (unbeknownst to me) humming what turned out to be “Betcha By Golly Wow, you’re the one that I’ve been waiting for forever..” (it had different associations back in the 70s) and so eventually I looked up the Stylistics to see what they’re up to. Did you know that you could actually hire the Stylistics these days for your own personal event? I don’t know if people now would appreciate the subtlety of song lyrics like “Betcha By Golly Wow,” but, oh could these guys sing!