Steven J. Horowitz

I’m not one to spill my emotions for all the Internet to see, but this has literally been the hardest emotional week of my adult life, and I feel like I ~connect~ with this song now more than ever. Not only am I still pretty devastated about the loss of our dear Whitney (I really am, I loved her, like I hope you did too), but I’m going through personal life overhaul and I feel like this song speaks to me so much.

Last night, my awesome frans put up with my boo hoos for hours and took me to karaoke. We arrived and put in songs just before a group of the 1% walked in and bought $50 worth of songs (who the fucking fuck does that?). I chose this song because it’s all I’ve been listening to for the past week and I’m not ashamed of it. Plus, it’s in my range. So when it came up in the queue for me to sing, one of the drunk Wall Street brats exclaimed, “What kind of self-respecting guy would be singing this??” or something of that nature. Me being about six drinks deep at this point, I took it upon myself to walk over to this specimen and put my arm around him. “What was that?” I said. “You’ll see.”

And he did. In fact, by the end of the first verse, the fratholes put their arms around me and were cheering me on. Someone at the end even shouted out, “American Idol right here!” And that felt good. Not just because they think I can sing or whatever. But because even as a music journalist, music itself can become a stream of noise to me and it’s hard to pay attention to the emotional intent of a song and its lyrics. I felt like for once, I got it. Even after having heard Whit’s version of the song for almost two decades, it finally feels like it was written for me. So rarely does that feeling come along. That, is what music is supposed to do. It’s easy to lose sight of that. And as hard as it is for me to go through this stage in my life, there’s at least something good that’s come of it, even if it was just a fleeting moment at a dumpy hole-in-the-wall in Chelsea.