1976
YOUNG HEARTS RUN FREE * CANDI STATON * W B 16730 * UK
Every now and then a song breaks through to become a kind of anthem, or sound of its time, not necessarily a political, or critical anthem, but just one for the hedonistic clubbers and party goers of a given moment. Those folk who don't always check for the heavy social or didactic lyrics but are happy to have any old words as long as they seem to fit some mood or other and, more importantly, the song comes with a great beat and uplifting musical presence. Not that lyrics aren't important at all, those same goodtime folk like to sing at the top of their voices at a party or out on the dance floor along to songs about the disgusting crimes committed by the all powerful boards and syndicates of the world as much as they like to warble with all their lungs about how their baby has done gone and left them for another. The lyrics of Young Hearts Run Free if dissected, would reveal what could be construed as the most didactic sentimental mush, with an all to easy romantic and meaningless moral message that, like it says on the box, young hearts should run free! But put back together again and played loud on the dance floor this song, with all it's sentimentality intact, delivers a powerful punch, simply because a large part of those dancers singing and dancing along to it would be in that sweet and sour position of singing the lyrics as if they would never, ever, do anything but let their hearts run free, while at the same time knowing they are caught in the reality of the prison that was slowly being spun around, not only their hearts but their minds and bodies, by the ideologies of religious, political, social and economic hierarchies. The fact is the lyrics, when viewed from the point of who they were possibly aimed specifically at, are not so throwaway or lacking in value, because these words were probably never intended for the bourgeois middle class girl who, with all the best of a privileged upbringing and education, would be less likely to find herself hiked up with a chavie, or two, in her early to mid teens, for one of many social or economic reasons, like many girls from the projects, ghettoes, and similar housing estates and rent barracks across the western world are. Seen as an anti marriage message the song then becomes a highly political and effective critique of the malicious and cynical estate known as marriage, which is nothing less than an highly effective form of socio-economic control and order, instigated and enforced by church and state.