Joni Mitchell "Cherokee Louise"

I felt awful.  Awful.  Like the worst person in the world.

How could I have done it?  Because, in his mind, it couldn't have been accidental . . .

It was the Monday after Father's Day, and I was perusing my email Inbox.

Mostly junk mail, of course, but usually over the weekend, we might get an email from a station listener wondering "What was that song?" or "Can you tell me more about the event the DJ was talking about?"  That kind of stuff.

But then there was this email that made me feel awful.

It asked, How could you have played "Cherokee Louise" on Father's Day?

Huh?

He was a step-father, who had worked tirelessly to earn the trust and love, of his wife's children.  He was a Dad to them, as much as any biological Dad could be.  And to hear that song on Father's Day . . . it was like a slap in the face.

Huh?

I have to admit, I have never delved too deeply into Joni Mitchell.  She's part of the sound of mvyradio, and, as the station programmer I made sure we had several of her tracks in rotation, but beyond the big hits I didn't know to much about her songs.

So I looked up the lyrics of "Cherokee Louise."

Ughhhhh.

It's a song about a young, teenage girl, who is being sexually abused by her Step-Father.  Not really great Father's Day fare.

We have a couple thousand songs in regular rotation, and play thousands more on an occasional basis.  So on the one hand, I could be forgiven for not knowing the lyrics and meaning of every single song we play.

But it really drove home a point that I think about all the time, when programming the station:

People's level of engagement is vastly different.

For most people, "Cherokee Louise" could play on Father's Day, and it wouldn't have any effect whatsoever on them.  Maybe the never knew what it was about.  Maybe they did know the meaning of the song, but didn't tie it together with the Holiday.  Maybe mvy was just on in the background, and the song floated by, with them unwitting.

But for one guy, the song and the context hit him.  And it hit him hard.

I wrote him an apologetic email, copping to the fact that I had no idea of the song's content, and promising him that we would never play it on Father's Day again.


Hear the song on Youtube.