There's a word for how this sturdy little leftover from yet another all-but-forgotten rock 'n' roll's last hope ended up on this list, and that word is "shuffle." It's badly dated in at least two ways, first that it even attempts the topic of abortion at all—does anyone, anywhere, write anything like it nowadays? It's just too loaded, politically if nothing else; if someone has (and someone must have), it's probably been even more marginalized than Graham Parker was in his time, and he was never marginalized for this. The second point where it's dated is in the vaguely sexist direction of the story it tells, taking a calculated position at some distance from the (objectified, if uneasily respectful) center of its attention, and too quickly diving for cover in a kind of good old boys denial of the powerful emotional gravity of the situation ("Well I ain't gonna cry, I'm gonna rejoice / And shout myself dry and go see the boys / They'll laugh when I say I left it overseas"). It's not so much that the singer doesn't understand what's at stake, the stark and poignant tone of the song makes that clear enough, but that that kind of position is still even available to be taken. I'm not sure it's the case any longer that anyone could so openly and cavalierly celebrate dodging the bullet of parental responsibility, which means perhaps some progress has been made here, perhaps without our even noticing. Anyway, the reason I like it now is more because of the associations with the times. Hard to believe now, in retrospect, but there was a brief period when Parker and the album this comes from, Squeezing out Sparks, seemed to point the way to our future. That's all so buried now that only shuffle could bring it back.
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