Frank Sinatra's Glad To Be Unhappy

I've given myself the task of writing about one song a week for 2024 because, well, I think it'd be fun.

Frank Sinatra's Glad To Be Unhappy

Happy birthday, Frank.

Honestly, what more can someone say about Sinatra? So let's just get right into it.

Well, let's just say this: I don't get Frank. There are definitely some artists whose greatness I don't get. I'm getting around to Presley. I'm bemused by Kate Bush. But I just plain don't get Frank.

The reason I fixate on albums is because they serve as appropriate snapshots of an artist's career, they usually represent the "faces" the artist wears over time. If an artist is hot, you can feel that heat, that energy emanating from an album - and sometimes, when you look back in hindsight, you find that heat condensed only into that one star, and died into nothing more.

I think my issue is that I don't think of a voice being good. Yes, voices can or cannot hit notes, but I don't find Frank's voice better than Joe Strummer's, necessarily. Yes, Frank can certainly sing certain songs better than Joe - certain being the key word. The voice depends on the song, not the other way around. When I hear Frank sing "Corocovado", I just think of how much I like Astrud Gilberto's version more. His "I Got Plenty O' Nuttin'", I just think of Louis's. His voice is generally too clean, not evocative enough. It's how you use the voice that's important. But that's just me.

This is all a preamble for how much I freaking love "In the Wee Small Hours" (1955), his take on less than two dozen sad songs based variously in jazz and theater. He's perfect in it. Take Frank's delivery of the line "in the evening, when the lights are low" in "Mood Indigo", his trembling hold on "evening" as he reflects on the darkness of the night, and his release on "low", as if his grasp has finally weakened and he's allowing whatever emotions he was holding onto to fall silently and softly. "Except when soft rains fall and drip from leaves, then I recall / the thrill of being sheltered in your arms" in "I Get Along Without You Very Well" matches, in tempo, the faint fall of raindrops on a windowpane, which the singer is looking through in an abstracted state of mind.

I think his best delivery - one of the best deliveries of lyrics I have ever heard by a vocalist - is in "Glad To Be Unhappy", composed by Richard Rodgers, which begins perfectly - perfectly! - with that cascade of keys on the piano, paired with the so-light-you-almost-don't-hear-it strumming of the guitar, whose sound mirrors a morning drizzle or the weak rays of light a lamp gives in the night time. In many of Frank's songs, he gives the music feet, he wants you to get a-swinging; here, there is true genuine artsy-fartsy effect, as if he wants to pull you into this notably unhip, un-swinging world.

Then begins Lorenz Hart's lyrics:

Look at yourself, if you had a sense of humor you would laugh to beat the band. And look at yourself, do you still believe the rumor that romance is simply grand?

Frank's sure, clean delivery is just right for this song. That "look at yourself" is confident, but juxtaposed to the arrangements is melancholic, is introspective. What isn't captured by the lyrics is that after "humor", Frank slips in a very quick, very subtle "heeeey" which fits so well and so naturally between "humor" and "you" that it's almost invisible, and yet this small "heeeey" is the very visible cracking of our singer's demeanor, of his steely front crumbling. Frank too elongates "band", extending the punchline as if in mockery of himself. After "rumor", there is a heavy pause, as if Frank himself is willing to admit the conclusion: finally he touches the "grand", raising his voice, feeling once more the fine feelings of love, but even this bit of joy is but an island in the sea of his sadness, which imagery is all the more accentuated by the piano interrupting him every so often with a few sparkling notes, like stars, before returning to an ocean of low notes.

Since you took it right on the chin, you have lost that bright, toothpaste grin. My mental state is all a jumble, I sit around and sadly mumble.

"Rrrrrrright onnnnn the chinnnnn", really digging in the pain. "Sit around and sadly mumble", the onset of s's with the two parts of this connective, ending in the downward-looking n's and m's of "around" and "mumble", "mumble" being all the heavier with the two m's, a depression that spirals into itself.

Fools rush in, so here I am, very glad to be unhappy. I can't win, but here I am, more than glad to be unhappy.

Unrequited love's a bore, and I've got it really bad. But for someone you adore it's a pleasure to be sad.

That "fools rush in" is so lush, so full of recklessness, even when Frank sings it so gently, because of the diphthong of "oo" and the subsequent "sh" and "in" sounds; the "oo" is wide and long, a torrent of emotion, and the "sh" and "in" endings are the shh's of the flood. Three words, executed so perfectly. The repetition of "glad to be unhappy" - the only times the title of the song are repeated is in this verse, interestingly - may seem like a cop-out, but Lorenz Hart was very clever by modifying it. Preceding the first iteration with "very", we imagine to ourself the singer's heart is full; then, he intensifies even this fullness with "more than" in the second iteration, such that the words aren't used the same way, they describe a going-to, a progression-towards, so that the singer at the end of the verse is no longer the same person starting it. This is great stuff. This is real poetry, when the writer understands that words are not descriptors of action, but movement itself.

"Unrequited love's a boooooore", sung not garishly, not sleepily, but sung within the perfect interval to understand it's a mental slump, not a physical one. Any millisecond longer on that "bore" and Frank wouldn't get it. "I've got it really bad", he hits the onset of those words so sharply that it sounds like he's walking on them, like he's walking on clouds as he recollects to himself the highness of his love. "It's a pleasure, to be sad", the "pl" here sounds the same as would be enunciated for "plead", that is, Frank is putting a lot of emphasis on the "l" in it. The "pl" in "pleasure" is usually understated, the "-sure" being the part of the word with greater emphasis, the "s" sound doing the work; that "l" is how Frank breaks himself out of the stupor, as if he uses it as a crowbar to wrench himself out of the depression.

Like a strained, baby lamb, with no mammy and no pappy, I'm so unhappy, but oh, so glad.

I actually don't like the last verse that much, so let's move on.

Well, okay, it's worthwhile noting that Frank sings "unhappy" with near-exultation, very fitting for the theme of the song, that there is a contradiction between unhappiness (in love) and happiness (in life). It's the happiest word he allows himself in the singing.

Usually I focus on the technical aspects of the lyrics, as in, the why and what of the lyrics; I don't always talk about my personal relationship with them. With "Glad To Be Unhappy", I need to. On my daily walks, in the hours of the night, when I see the rays of light sprinkle from a lamp, I think of the song's intro. I then sing, "Look at yourself, if you had a sense of humor, / you would laugh to beat the band." I think it's abundantly clear in my reviews of Fiona Apple and Joni Mitchell that I'm a very introspective person, and that "Look at yourself" hits me like a ton of bricks, even when Frank sings it so softly. That "if you had a sense of humor" gets me scowling, because I'm always so grim. "And look at yourself, do you still believe the rumor / that romance is simply grand?" That's a jab, a light one, but it still hurts all the same. With age, I feel more and more cynical about our ability to love, but Frank, in an oddly reassuring way, reminds me heartbreak is simply a normal part of being human.

"Since you took it right on the chin" - Frank's "ch" is so bright and shiny, it's essentially walking by another lamp on my walk. "Ch" is so bright and accentuated, it's well worth nothing that none of the consonants in "you have lost that bright, toothpaste grin" are as sharp, which is reflected by the piano playing. I sing that "chin" with pain, and I sing the second line with resignation, the acceptance a kind of salve for pain.

Again, I'm an introspective man, so the "here I am" really hits me, as in, "I'm here with my sadness, but at least I'm here". "I can't win, but here I am" - that's not true of Frank, but that's true of the character he's embodying, and me. "Unrequited love's a bore" is such an armchair philosopher thing to say, which is why it's perfectly tempered with the workman "and I've got it really bad", effectively saying how useless textbook philosophy is.

I wring out the words in that "it's a pleasure to be sad". I almost get teary-eyed here. Where all of the song is deep-going, this line is like a little star, a little grasp onto hope, that, yes, even in our sadness we can be a bit happy.

In a weird way it's the ultimate New York song. New Yorkers are known for being foulmouthed and unflappable, but we're also lost in this giant urban maze. The American Northeast is extremely bookish, so we attempt to find ourselves in words, as you may have noticed by all the signage in the city. Lorenz Hart wrote a very bookish, very clever, very blue character, and Richard Rodgers furnished it with simple arrangements, contrasting the East Coaster's logophilia with the rawness of their emotions. Then Frank took this skeleton and gave it flesh, gave it color, gave it the lights of Central Park, gave it the autumn rain, gave it the surprising silence that accompanies the city in the small hours. And he did it without saying a freaking word about it. Art is literally limitless.

I don't know much about Frank - haven't studied him yet - so I can't say if he was frequently clever in the songs he chose to represent himself. I think Frank chose literally the best song to build an entire mythos around himself, combining the tough guy and the sweetheart into a person who was, well, human, a human who was real. With this song, to me, he is no longer "Chairman of the Board" or "Ol' Blue Eyes", he's not something so reductive, he's a truly great singer, an artist of the voice, an extremely rare breed of artist that doesn't exist, I think, even now.