Reflecting on a time in high school when I was at practice for the musical. Why, yes, I was in the musical even though I can’t sing. Every chorus line needs a girl…or…a place to put all the people who want to be in the musical but also can’t sing.
Anyway, while we all waited around in the auditorium for practice to start, a boy (who could sing, and therefore had a leading role) sat down at the piano.
There was much swoonage, as happens when a high school boy sits down at a piano and plays and sings, truly it doesn’t take much and honestly, it has never happened to me as an adult and I’m much more jaded now so I doubt it would have the same effect.
Anyway, the song he chose was Desperado.
If I were to fictionalize my life what happened next was that I would have thrown my hands up, said, “I’m out,” and went to do something more meaningful like…uh…anything that didn’t involve teenage boys or the Eagles.
But, I was in the throes of hormones and inclined to crush on whoever was vaguely popular at the time, not to mention he was not only singing but playing the piano and so I’m certain that my thoughts were more along the lines of, “swoon, wowwww”…and never mind the fact that even though there were a lot of terrible songs in the ‘90s most of the songs in existence were a lot better than Desper-fucking-ado.
I’m trying to imagine what would happen if I were single and someone tried to impress me by playing Desperado, for God’s sake. You’d first have to do that thing where you smile and stand there awkwardly wondering what to do with your hands like when people sing “Happy Birthday.” I’m far to passive to just up and leave…physically. I would dissociate, though. Hard. And I wish I weren’t shallow but I’m not sure there would be any coming back from that whole scene. Truly. Anything but Desperado.
I wasn’t even sure what a Desperado is, besides a terrible song. Upon Googling it seems that a Desperado is a badass type Western person. You would not want to meet him in a dark Western alley. Literally the definitive desperado could not be more different than the Eagles Desperado, who will not shut up…or…perhaps his friend who is also secretly in love with him will annoyingly not shut up…about how lonely he is and how it’s cold. Eagles Desperado has one thing going for him. I can’t actually listen to the song and I thought he was out mending fences, but I Googled the lyrics and found that he was riding fences so I’m glad he has the money to at least maintain his shit.
I think later cowboys had to start wearing bandanas because they heard the Eagles song and couldn’t keep a straight face when the Desperado wandered into the saloon. And then they’d get their ass beat. So they had to cover their faces. And eventually the Desperado just had to fade away because the Eagles made him look like a little bitch.
And that is how, much like the wolf becomes a dog, the fiercest fucker in the West becomes a song sung by a pockmarked 17-year-old boy just trying to get some tail.
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