“Torn Between Two Lovers” by Mary MacGregor (1977)

One person’s view:  “Pathetic and gross.” – dagwood525 @ Rate Your Music

The public’s view:  2.47 / 5.00, in the bottom 25% of #1 hits from 1977

Here’s an amazing statistic:  We’re up to the 20th entry on this blog and yet “Torn Between Two Lovers” is the only one so far to feature a female on lead vocals.  That’s because I haven’t found any pre-1977 #1 songs by women that are considered awful by overwhelming consensus.  Even the Singing Nun has earned enough grudging respect from critics and listeners to stave off a sarcastic write-up here.  While we can venture a few guesses as to the reason for the gender imbalance, it probably boils down to sexism in the music industry.  It’s far easier for a terrible song by a man to hit #1 than a terrible song by a woman.  This shittiness gap (as the experts call it) persists into the 21st century, thanks in part to Maroon 5, but it is less noticeable than it once was.

“Torn Between Two Lovers” was written by two male songwriters, but it is sung from a woman’s vantage point.  She confesses to her husband that she is having an adulterous relationship.  In songs of this nature, the cheater almost always grovels for forgiveness and tells their partner how much they regret their own actions.  One of the best and most obvious examples of this is Usher’s “Confessions (Part 1 to N)”.  More rarely, there will be a song by a Shaggy who unconvincingly denies all of the evidence of infidelity.  “Torn Between Two Lovers” takes an entirely different tactic:  telling the partner to simply accept the cheating.

Lyrics like this can work if they are accompanied by some defiant justification of the philandering.  For example, the woman might point out that her husband has been screwing around too, and that she’s only doing what is fair.  Or maybe the cheater is the type of person who needs lots of partners to stay happy, and the husband should have known that when he married her.  “Torn Between Two Lovers” is too wimpy to succeed in this way.  It’s mostly just a subtle but emasculating put-down of the spouse.  The singer says that her husband has been an adequate one, but that the other guy is great too and she is not going to give him up.  She hints that the other man is the only one who can satisfy her in the bedroom.  She then tells her husband that she hopes that this unexpected revelation doesn’t cause him to leave her.  I guess she still needs him around to do the dishes and mow the lawn.

Let’s contrast Mary MacGregor’s rendition of “Torn Between Two Lovers” with Amy Winehouse’s similarly themed “You Know I’m No Good”.  Winehouse sounds like a bad-ass, and her attitude makes the scenario more acceptable.  She probably would cheat on any guy, and her boyfriend shouldn’t feel bad because there’s nothing that he could have done any differently.  But MacGregor has a particularly sweet voice that exudes kindness with every note.  Hearing these words from her is like Mister Rogers telling you that he’s moving just so he doesn’t have to be your neighbor anymore.  Oh, but he still wants to come back every few weeks to borrow some of your tools.

To her credit, MacGregor knew that the song was disgusting.  She resented that it became the central focus of her career, and that many people wrongly assumed the lyrics were autobiographical.  But if it wasn’t for her well above average singing talent, I’m skeptical that this would have been a #1 hit.  Were there really that many women who could relate to this storyline and bought the record?  I doubt that any men bought it.

On the other hand, men seem to be driving the views for the performance video I embedded above.  I know this because YouTube says that the most replayed parts of the clip are in its second half, which is when somebody apparently turned up the air conditioning way too high in the room where MacGregor was singing.  I’m more intrigued by the large neon lighted letters that spell out her name.  How much money went into this prop that probably got used only a few times before she faded away as a one-hit wonder?  Were the letters then repurposed for use by another entertainer?  It’s too bad that “Mary MacGregor” can’t be rearranged to spell “Yvonne Elliman” or “Walter Egan”.

You’ll be glad to know that I’ll be spotlighting another female vocalist soon.  Here’s a hint:  the letters in her name can be rearranged to spell “Bob boned ye”.