An Argument For The Excellence Of Neneh Cherry’s Singing Trouble Man

 Trouble Man 

Marvin Gaye

I come up hard baby, but now I'm cool

I didn't make it sugar, playin' by the rules

I come up hard baby, but now I'm fine

I'm checkin' trouble sugar, movin' down the line

I come up hard baby, but that's okay

'Cause Trouble Man, don't get in my way

I come up hard baby, I've been for real, baby

Gonna keep movin', gonna go to town

I come up hard, I come up gettin' down

There's only three things that's for sure

Taxes, death and trouble, oh

This I know, baby, this I know, sugar

Girl, ain't gon' let it sweat me, babe

Got me singin', yeah, yeah

Woo

Come up hard, baby, I had to fight

Took care my business with all my might

I come off har- come-off-hard, I had to win

Then start all over and win again

I come up hard but that's okay

'Cause Trouble Man don't get in my way, hey, hey

I know some places and I've seen some faces

I got good connections, they take my directions

What people say, that's okay, they don't bother me, no

I'm ready to make it, don't care what the weather

Don't care 'bout no trouble, got myself together

I feel the kind of protection that's all around me

I come up hard, baby, I've been for real, baby

With the trouble mind, I'm movin', goin' to town

I come up hard, I come up gettin' down

There's only three things for sure

Taxes, death and trouble, oh

This I know, baby, ooh, this I've known, baby

Ain't gon' let it sweat me, baby 

Woo

Oh Lord, baby

Ooh, I've come up hard, but now I'm cool

I didn't make it, baby, playin' by the rules

Come up hard, baby, now I'm fine

I'm checkin' trouble, sugar, hey, movin' down the line, oh

Two different versions:

Trouble Man, Marvin Gaye, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kduvcqx-BU

by Neneh Cherry, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PufNx9X-lsc

8/1/22

“My argument to someone for Neneh Cherry’s version as able to stand on the same level of excellence as Marvin Gaye’s:

“ I’m making a different point, if I’m understanding you.

Job cries out in anguish.

This song is also about anguish, Trouble Man, and about dealing with it and struggling to get past it. It’s about the struggle against it, which is rooted in the recognition of what that trouble has been, will be again and always will be. And in that recognition there is pain. 

… I come up hard baby, but that's okay

'Cause Trouble Man, don't get in my way…

…I come up hard, baby, I've been for real, baby

With the trouble mind, I'm movin', goin' to town…

What Neneh Cherry uniquely conveys in her reading is what that anguish is like, that coming up hard, for real, that “trouble mind.”

And she captures effectively too the complicated hope tinged with desperation that troubled man can stay ahead, stay out, of trouble in the sped up part of the song

…I know some places and I've seen some faces

I got good connections, they take my directions

What people say, that's okay, they don't bother me, no

I'm ready to make it, don't care what the weather

Don't care 'bout no trouble, got myself together

I feel the kind of protection that's all around me…

You can hear the hope, hustle, jive and desperation in these lines, which in being sped up quite dramatically convey the need to move quickly to stay ahead of everything that’s trouble and troubling, which will always be chasing him. These lines can’t be seen as separate from the pain of the trouble and its constant potential to inflict itself.

He’s reassuring himself as much as he’s reassuring “baby,” “sugar.”

The tentativeness and impermanence  of his now being cool is evident in his need to keep “movin' down the line, oh.”

So, in sum, it’s the coming up hard, the trouble, what’s been for real, the certainty and inescapable constancy of death, taxes and trouble, the need each time to start all over and fight to win again, his trouble mind, it’s all of that aspect of the song, in tension with his determination to keep beating it all time after time, that she uniquely conveys in her singing with, as I originally said, a Job like resonance.

Or so I argue.”

A Note On The Objection To Saying “Only Women Can Become Pregnant”

 “Only women can get pregnant” is apparently objectionable.

The argument is, to say so denigrates women who’ve transitioned to men, but men who can become pregnant. 

However, does such true transitioning require a vaginectomy and a metoidioplasty?

Why not?

If it does, can’t we say these trans men cannot become pregnant, just as born men who stay men cannot?

Does that meet the objection? 

The argument might be, there are born women who cannot for whatever biological reason become pregnant: does this mean they’re not women?

But doesn’t this argument suffers from logical inversion? 

To say only women can become pregnant is not to say women who can’t become pregnant aren’t women. It’s only to say only women can become pregnant, which is the original proposition under scrutiny.

It logically leaves open the claims that men can fully transition to become women and women can to become men, which both form a different issue.

Here, only the objection to the claim that only women can become pregnant is under scrutiny. 

Season 3, Episode 6, Brit Box’s Silk Finally Completely Jumps The Shark

I’ve been enjoying Silk but it’s jumped the shark in Season 3, Episode 1. 

To boil it down, a schizophrenic kid compelled by voices in his head goes berserk in a “kettle”—UK phrase for cops hemming in a crowd—and pushes a cop hard who falls back and cracks his head on a lamppost and dies.

Defending the kid for manslaughter and finally becoming aware during the trial that he’s compelled by voices in his head, his barrister, Martha Costello:

1. doesn’t tell the court the kid is mentally and that she needs to assert that defence; 

2. she instead continues to defend him on the merits, even though she knows he’s done the deed, chancing the possibility of a guilty verdict; 

3. she does this on the theory that the kid’s worst possible fate is to be found guilty by reason of insanity and then have to spend time in a mental institution: apparently, the possibility of life in prison is a better option;

4. further, she puts theories and suppositions to the jury that she knows are false (as opposed to strictly ensuring the prosecution proves each element of the charge beyond a reasonable doubt;

5.  she makes a ludicrous closing statement to the jury that has little to do with the evidence and more to do with an irrelevant story about another of her cases, the outcome of which she falsifies;

6. her rationale for all this bizarre defence work is “bugger the rules, I’m more than just a lawyer in what I’m doing in court for my client”—my paraphrase.  

Then, of course, the kid is found not guilty on the merits and is reconciled with his father ready to get on with his life as though his insanity had just, poof, disappeared. 

Absurdly disappointing!