The “teenage” song Van Morrison never wants to sing again in his life

Maybe it’s just my generation, but there are certain songs that are etched into my memory through karaoke and late-night pub sing-alongs. It was tradition for my dad, brother, and me to stop in the pub after watching a local football match on a Saturday, and when I remember those days of playing pool in rooms that still allowed smoking indoors, it seemed to me that ‘Brown Eyed Girl’ by Van Morrison was always one song away on the jukebox.

The opening riff of that song seems inextricably linked with the sight of my dad whistling along to it while racking up the pool balls in the triangle. The chorus soon kicked in, and everyone from the quiet family having dinner to the pub’s long-term resident would unanimously click into gear and sing along.

While it was released in 1967, it feels inherently linked to my childhood generation. Largely because it was 30 years old come those days and so had reached classic status for my parents, and partly because it was a song that perfectly bridged the gap between heritage and modernization. It was an old-school pop song that felt compositionally timeless.

There was a simplicity to the arrangement that lent itself to mass sing-alongs. Even if you didn’t know the words, you could “doo-doo-doo” your way through the chorus before belting out the words “Brown Eyed Girl.” In fact, you didn’t even need to know the context of the verses to understand that when those three words were uttered, the singer was deeply in love.

After all, love is the common thread of music’s relatability. My childlike self could figure that out as the song made its way through the dusty haze of the pub, and for a brief moment, a song like that allowed me to be on the level with whoever I shared the room with. Unlike everything else, good music had no age limit.

Or did it? For Van Morrison, the song is merely a reminder of what he may consider cringeworthy adolescence. With that in mind, he has a point. As much as I love my late teenage years, I don’t need a reason to dig up any of my misguided feelings from that age and relive them night after night in a room of crowded people.

“How can a 79-year-old guy sing about something he wrote when he was 20?” he said when referencing that very point. “It’s basically a teenage song. I can’t relate to it much now, you know.”

It would undoubtedly feel like karaoke for Morrison, who, almost 60 years later, may not even remember the specifics of the subject other than her eye color. But to abandon one of his biggest hits altogether isn’t the alternative. The very reason the song has captured the hearts of fans all over the world isn’t for the specifics of the lyrics, but rather the myriad of feelings it provokes. Morrison doesn’t have to go back to his 20-year-old self to sing it; instead, he should join the crowd in enjoying the simple universality of singing about love.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *