I Never Even Told You

For Christmas last year, my mom got me the Mask of the Phantasm soundtrack. And with Shirley Walker’s masterful scoring, it’s one of my favorite CDs. It’s fun to listen to it and pretend that you’re, I don’t know, beating up guys, or something.

Then for some goddamn reason, the credits for that movie contain such a dumb song. I couldn’t imagine something being more out of place.

The song is “I Never Even Told You.” It’s not a work of Shirley Walker, but of Glen Ballard and Siedah Garrett. Glen Ballard, as it turns out, is the producer of Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill. According to Wikipedia, he started playing piano as soon as he could crawl. I think any kid that has a piano in their house starts pounding away on the keys as soon as they can crawl. Hell, as soon as someone holds them near the piano. So I guess you didn’t start as early as you could’ve, eh Mr. Ballard? It also says he wrote his first song when he was and was in local rock bands beginning in grade five. Playing a lot of seedy nightclubs and shit probably. He’s produced a lot of records and worked with Michael Jackson.

Siedah Garret has been nominated for a Grammy and an Acadamy Award. She too has worked with Michael Jackson.

Which just goes to show, two people who worked with Michael Jackson can still make a terrible song for a Batman movie.

The song is sung by this chick:

Who, in case you don’t recognize her, is the chick from Wayne’s World.

Her name is Tia Carrere, but her birth name is Althea Rae Duhinio Janairo. How they got…Tia Carrere out of that, I’ll never know. That’s not even “well, I’ll change my last name.” That throwing out so many letters and just starting from scratch.

(I’m listening to this soundtrack as I write this. Take note: About a minute into track 6, it suddenly gets very very loud and it is incredibly startling especially when your mind is focused on writing something.)

Oh hey this is interesting: Carrere posed nude for the January 2003 issue of Playboy magazine.

Anyway, this song. It lies somewhere in the realm of Michael Bolton saxophone ballad and 90’s pop version of big romance ballad from a Disney movie (see: A Whole New World.) The 90’s really had all kinds of terrible saxophone-riddled songs. Were they trying to bring back jazz? Was it supposed to be the year that reed instruments finally made it big?

The chorus of the song goes something like this:

I never even told you
I thought you knew
I never even said a word
How I feel about you
I never even told you
I thought you knew
(Thought You Knew)

Which, man, can’t you just see Bruce sitting in his bedroom, writing in his journal, and this song comes on and he’s just all kinds of tearing up? That’s what I picture every time I listen to it. Which is everytime I get done listening to the Shirley Walker score and it comes on and I don’t immediately change it to a different song. Ben suggested taking it off my mp3 player entirely at one point, but I can’t stand the incompleteness of that.

I think my favorite part of the song though would be

My chances are lost
Like tears
Tears in the rain
Just washed away…

Yes quite right. Like tears in the rain. What a powerful simile. It’s right out of 9th grade English.

Ah jeesh, the ipod just got to the end of score, now I’m listening to this song again. I think that’s my cue to wrap things up. On Wednesday there’ll be some Batman Beyond, on Friday some Static Shock. Until then, here’s a trivia question:

Which song has the most to do with Batman?

A. I Never Even Told You
B. Kiss from a Rose
C. Yakety Sax.