26 June 1982
Karma, as the Catholic clergy probably don’t say; last week’s ode to buying your first condoms is replaced at number one by a woman telling another woman to be glad she’s a stay-at-home housewife and mother. Our narrator even calls out her own “subtle whoring”, a stringent line on unmarried sex that makes even Dana’s Papal number one seem like à la carte Catholicism.
With depressing predictability, this self-styled woman-to-woman chat was written by two men, which you may also have surmised by Charlene addressing the other woman as “Hey lady! You, lady!” Far more astonishingly, ‘I’ve Never Been To Me’ was released on Motown, though it’s not on the 4-disc Motown compilation on my shelves.
Not that I’ll be addressing a sternly-worded letter of complaint to Detroit or anything. This record’s sexist thesis is buried under excessive TV mini-series melodrama: exotic locations, opulent lifestyle, being undressed by kings and the like. Perhaps the popularity of escapist lifestyles-of-the-rich-and-shameless US soaps like Dallas and Dynasty was what put a fair wind in Charlene’s sails. Still, ‘I’ve Never Been To Me’ is the AOR-ballad equivalent of that tired old George Best “where did it all go wrong?” anecdote but without the searing insight or good taste.
