The 45s of My Youth: You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

by editor Michele Catalano

It’s sometime in the middle of the night and I can’t sleep. I am 10 years old.  It’s not like I’m going to get up and go outside to smoke a cigarette or something, so I just lie in bed staring at the ceiling. I turn the radio on to a low volume so as not to disturb anyone else. It’s a small transistor radio, so I can put it under the covers to listen. The sound is terrible; it’s like someone singing from inside a tin can. But I don’t care. I just love to listen to music in all the horrible ways a 10-year-old can: a Mickey Mouse turntable, eight-track tapes, and transistor radios.

I’m a weird little kid who thinks too much. I have thoughts running through my head all the time, thoughts that seem weird for a 10-year-old to have. I think about death, war, the end of the world. I think about my parents dying, my sisters getting kidnapped, my school blowing up with us in it. I think of other things, too. Some nights I would picture our local supermarket and, in my mind, would run up and down the aisles throwing cereal and candy and ice cream in my cart. I did everything but sleep, which is pretty much the way it is now.

This particular night I am in tune with the music. I am listening to my parents’ favorite station, WCBS-FM, which has just switched to an oldies format. I love my parents’ music, it brings me great comfort and joy, especially when I am lying in bed at night, feeling lonely and insignificant. The music of the ‘50s and ‘60s speaks to me of backyard parties, my parents dancing with each other, an overwhelming sense of peace.

I listen to a series of doo-wop songs, an Elvis favorite, and some goofy novelty song where aliens are attacking Earth. A song I’m not familiar with comes on. It starts off with a build-up of orchestration, and that makes me anticipate the rest of the song. A woman’s voice kicks in, sweet and sorrowful. It gives me chills. It is my introduction to Dusty Springfield’s “You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me,” and it changes me. There is something in Dusty’s voice that pulls at me; there’s desperation, there’s sorrow, there’s heartbreak. I don’t know the word, don’t have a way to describe what I’m hearing. But my heart hurts and I am crying, and I think I never want to fall in love if this is what it does to you. I put the song in the compartment in my mind where I store all my obsessive thoughts, and it stays there, taking up a huge space, crowding out death and destruction.

****

I would hear the song every so often when I was older, in my mother’s car, on the little gold radio in the kitchen. It always had the same effect on me as it did when I was ten. My heart would hurt, tears would well up, I’d feel weird in the pit of my stomach, like I was yearning for something. But I never asked to turn the song off. I would listen all the way through, understanding that the song was doing what it was meant to do. I was supposed to cry. I was supposed to feel this way. I would think about my 10-year-old self, how at that age I really got the song without entirely getting the lyrics.

It wasn’t until I was in my late twenties when I realized, no, I did not get the song at all when I was younger. Sure, I understood it was a song of yearning, because I felt the yearning. But I didn’t know it was also a song of pleading.

I read a lot of fantasy books when I was young, where the princess always ended up with her prince. I liked those stories for their happy endings; they made me believe happiness was possible, and made me dream that someday I would get my prince, my happy ending. It’s the same reason I loved sitcoms. People always got what they wanted in these stories. People found honest, pure love. Nobody pleaded for it. Nobody turned themselves inside out for love, at least not in the pablum stories I read and watched.

When I realized the depth of “You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me,” it made the song even more profound for me. The idea of sacrificing your very being, of wanting to be so close to someone who doesn’t want you that you would settle for whatever little scraps he would give you, was disturbing to me. Why would you do that?

I stopped listening to the song for a bit because I felt a little jaded about it. It was no longer accessible to me in the way it was when I was in my teens. Nobody was playing it on the radio or in the kitchen.

The phrase “why would you do that?” would come back to haunt me, as would the song and Dusty Springfield’s powerful, emotional voice.

****

It is 3 a.m. I’m still the middle-of-the-night person I was at ten. Most of the time, I lie there, staring at the ceiling, until I reach for my phone and airpods and play some music to soothe myself, perhaps.

I’m six days out from my husband leaving me, suddenly, abruptly, without notice, whatever words you want to use instead of abandoned. I’m depressed, sad, angry, hurt, in shock, and a thousand other emotions that cycle through my brain and body each and every day. I’m listening to a steady diet of my wallowing songs, going through the National and the Mountain Goats and Pedro the Lion; rambling my way through lyrics that cut me, that make me cry harder and wallow deeply. It’s what I need to do. I am trying to purge myself of feelings. And then, for whatever reason, I decide it’s a good time to listen to my favorite Dusty Springfield song. It’s been a while, and it just calls to me there in the middle of the night, like a ghost come back to gently haunt me for my own good.

When I said I needed you

You said you would always stay

It wasn’t me who changed but you

And now you’ve gone away

Don’t you see that now you’ve gone

And I’m left here on my own

That I have to follow you

And beg you to come home?

I burst into tears. I know I would never go so far as to beg him to come home; I hate him at this moment and would not want it. But the lyrics, the way Dusty is singing, twist my arm and scream at me to call my ex, text him, ask him to come back.

I don’t. Yet. I let the song go on as I gently sob into my pillow.

You don’t have to say you love me

Just be close at hand

You don’t have to stay forever

I will understand

Believe me, believe me

I can’t help but love you

But believe me

I’ll never tie you down

There’s the pleading, the sacrificing, the settling. It terrifies me. And then those five words pop into my head: Why would you do that? When I first said those words, I was speaking to Dusty, who is the embodiment of the song. Now I’m asking them of myself. Because my phone is in my hand, and I have his text open, the one where he asked me if he could stop by and get some things he left. He sent it this morning, and I still haven’t answered him because I want so much to see him, to hear him, to possibly touch him, breathe in his air. But I know it’s not the right thing. Why would you do that?

I answer the text:

tell me what you need and I will leave it outside for you

I don’t want to be Dusty, pleading and begging. I don’t want to be that woman who settles for someone who doesn’t love her the way she deserves to be loved. Why would I do that? I’m not going to do that.

I start the song over, tears still streaming. I whisper-sing the words into the darkness. A feeling washes over me, some kind of relief, of catharsis. In a way, “You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me” saved me.

I know there are other versions of this song, and that it’s not an original, but I never listened to any other version. This is Dusty’s song to me. And it is also mine.