Helen Reddy: She Is Woman (Part 2)
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And I'm just gonna, for the rest of time, make everybody ponder this and think about it, but Angie's the one who won. You know why? Because she has a sex slave.
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Hello, there's a song that we're singing.
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Come on, get happy.
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A whole lot of love in this what we'll be bringing
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will make you happy.
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Hello, listeners. Welcome back to part two of our tribute to the one and only Helen Reddy. In today's episode, we chat more songs, more fame and about Helen's lasting impact. Please enjoy part two of Helen ready she is woman,
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so the next Helen ready song, also from 74 is my very favorite. Helen ready song, no question, no contest, and that's you and me against the world. Tell me again, Mommy.
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You
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You and me against the
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world. Sometimes it feels like you and me against the world. This is my very favorite, because it will always remind me of my mom, and it even did in 1974 like little five year old Michelle would hear this song, and I would think about my mom, even if she was standing right next to me, probably because she said, this is like our song. I mean, the song opens with Helen reddy's daughter, Tracy, and she says, Tell me again, Mommy. And I always just kind of thought that was me. And then at the very end of the song, she says, I love you, Mommy. And she says, I love you too. And the lyrics, you and me against the world. Sometimes it feels like you and me against the world when all the others turn their backs and walk away. All of this you guys, was so our life. My mom was a single parent for most of my life, and I know, yes, I had a stepfather for much of my life, but even when we were with him. It was always like me, my mom and my sister against the world. Like it was always like that. So I've always just felt this song, and my mom would play it all the time. And then there's the verse that just broke me when I was five, like even little Michelle, I remember so vividly when this part of the song would come on like, I just couldn't listen to it, because I would project like, one day this is gonna happen. And then, you know, sure enough, year and a half ago, it happened, and it hits me so hard, and it still breaks me, and it says, And when one of us is gone and one of us is left to carry on, then remembering will have to do
Unknown Speaker 3:00
that's too much. I can't take. I can't, I can't. It's very I'm actually surprised I got through that, because even just typing that in my notes yesterday, I had to stop, and I had to cry for a little bit. And I remember writing that in my journal about six months after my mom died. I thought of that lyric, and I wrote it in my journal, like as a letter to her, and it just
Unknown Speaker 3:25
so yesterday, I was listening to the song, and I was crying, and then I just had a little talk with my mom, and I said, You know what, mother, we're doing this, this episode of Helen, ready, and I have your album, and I'm listening to the song right now. And this was the song that I always you know, I don't know. And I just said, I just hope you know that we're, you know, we're talking about her, and I'm thinking about you. So I always wonder how, because I couldn't squeak that song out right now, and I always wonder how people she's looking at her daughter, she's in the studio, and how does she sing that song without getting choked up? I know I'm still sniffing. I don't know. You know she, she famously performed it with Kermit the Frog on show in 1978 it's episode 313, I'll put that in the Weekly Reader too. And it's so sweet. And when he's sitting on her lap, and she says, And when one of us is gone, and she grabs his little hand, and he looks up at her and he says, and one of us is left to carry on.
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And it's so sweet and cute, but the part that gets me is the then remembering we'll have to do our
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in there.
Unknown Speaker 4:37
Well, I'll give you some a little bit of history, but so it was written by Kenny Asher and Paul Williams would go on to write for the muck up movies, actually. And it was actually first written as a joke by Paul Williams and Kenny Asher. They had a discussion about their favorite songwriters, and that led to this spontaneous composition Whose tune then they realized it was like.
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A joke, the lyrics and everything they're like, actually that has potential. So Paul Williams, he recorded it first. He's the first to debut that song, and he recorded it on his 1974 album called here comes inspiration. And he sang it as a love ballad, like it was to a lover.
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But Helen reddy comes along, and she actually considered the lyrics too paternalistic to be convincing for a woman's like declaration of love to a man, so she interpreted it from the very beginning as more of a mother singing it to a child. And so to make sure that everybody got that, she brings Tracy in and has Tracy do the spoken part at the beginning the Tell me again, mommy and little five year old Michelle says, mission accomplished. Helen ready, because that's, that's all. I always thought that was me, like, even though it was like, Oh, I don't think I went into the studio and recorded it. Just was me, and it was my mom singing it to me. And
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anyway, mission accomplished. And the charts felt the same way, because it peaked at number nine in September of 1974 and then, of course, reach number one on the what the adult contemporary chart, and it became one of her signature hits. Yeah. I mean, listen, I had a lot of Carol and me as a child too. I don't know what we can call my inner Carol, because that was my jam. You guys. You guys know Marlene. Okay, I'm Marlene. You guys know that for my for my Christmas present the 1970s six, seven, I got the album you light up my life by Debbie Boone, like I love that. I mean, let's just take a little pause here, and thank the gods that the three of us have met and are doing this, because who else would get as excited as the three of us to talk about hell and ready? I mean, hell and ready. Of all people, we're not talking like, you know, I don't know the Bee Gees, which we have talked about, but we get just as excited about hell and ready as we have about the Bee Gees, and it's so just think you got the universe, whatever you want to call it, that put us in each other's, whatever worlds in our orbit. I also am really grateful and thankful, because even though we've talked about this a lot, how all of these conversations and these memories connect us to things in our past, and for, you know, the first three and a half years of the podcast, I would kind of be like man, man. My mom is, you know, complicated relationship, and, you know, complicated childhood, and bam, bah, chaotic and whatever. And then, you know, you lose someone, and you realize, oh, and so I'm just really grateful that I have you guys to have these conversations with, because it absolutely keeps her present in my life and and it it erases a little bit, I think, of the complicated feelings I was having with her and our relationship the last you Know, 1015, years of her life. So it kind of takes me back to those times before all of that, and it's good, that's what needs to happen. And I wonder how many people are crying right now because they were you, because she's singing this song at a moment when the divorce rate is rising, and little Michelle was one of those first people. She was the canary in the coal mine, right? And there are other people that, yeah, after you how many other people out there were holding on to this song in the same way? I mean, it has to be scores of Sure, it has to be millions of people. If you look at the lyrics, there's really only those two verses. There's really just, there's not a lot to this song. She does, you know, just to, like, twist that, you know, knife in my belly now or in my heart even more, we get that. And when one of us is gone, verse twice.
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So I'm like,
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No, I will say, you know how they say like, oh, when someone you know passes, they're all love and light. They're not about, you know, like all the bad things that happened or the conflict. And I feel like sometimes these conversations we have take me back to that too. Take me back to just remembering when it you know, I mean, when little Michelle was, you know, my mom was my my world, my best friend, my world, my light, my everything, and so,
Unknown Speaker 9:17
yeah, so it was you and she against Ben world. I mean, it's literal, it's literal. Let's just say it's literal. You
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you,
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mommy, our next song could be.
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A whole episode. This
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isn't my number one. It might be my number one. I don't know our next song is. It was offered to Cher, and Cher turned it down because it was too dark. And I notably Cher was also offered the night that the lights went out in Georgia, and turned it down because it was too dark. So how dark must it be? Helen, ready for you to sing, Angie, baby, you live your life in the songs you hear on the rock and roll radio,
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and when a young girl doesn't have any friends, that's a really nice place to
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go. Folks hoping you'd turn out cool, but they have to take you out of school. You're a little touched, and your baby,
Unknown Speaker 10:48
is it a murder ballad, maybe, or maybe not, maybe not. I don't know. It's like a hallucination. It's a poke dream. It's something.
Unknown Speaker 10:59
Yeah, I have no, I have no actual memories of this song on the radio, even though it was a number one hit, but my experience again with it comes 100% from that greatest hits album that belonged to my mom. And I was a little mesmerized by it. I had no handle on the lyrics, really, but I still felt a little spooked in a in a I can't stop listening kind of way. It's a song that sort of wraps its tendrils around your heart, or no more, like your psyche. It wraps the tendrils go around your psyche, for better or worse. And because, as you know, this is a story song that is as dark as it gets. And to start off this discussion, we're going to do a little spoken word performance instead of playing the clip of the song right now, I just want to read it to you in its entirety so you can get the full scope of the story. Because it's only when read or heard in this way that you can fully take in the absolute Stephen King esque quality to what she's saying. So here is the story of Angie baby.
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You live your life in the songs you hear on the rock and roll radio, and when a young girl doesn't have any friends, that's a really nice place to go. Folks hoping you turn out cool, but they had to take you out of school. You're a little touched. You know, Angie baby. Lovers appear in your room each night, and they whirl you across the floor, but they always seem to fade away when your daddy taps on the door. Angie girl, are you all right? Tell the radio Good night. All alone once more. Angie baby. Angie baby, you're a special lady living in a world of make believe. Well, maybe stopping at her house is a neighbor boy with evil on his mind because he's been peeking in Angie's room at night through her window blind I see your folks have gone away. Would you dance with me today? I'll show you how to have a good time. Angie baby, this is when it gets really creepy. When he walks in her room, he feels confused like he walked into a play, and the music's so loud it spins him around till his soul has lost its way. And as she turns the volume down, he's getting smaller with the sound. It seems to pull him off the ground toward the radio, he's bound never to be found.
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The headlines read that a boy disappeared, and everyone thinks he died, except a crazy girl with a secret lover who keeps her satisfied. It's so nice to be insane. No one asks you to explain radio by your side, Angie baby, you're a special lady living in a world of make believe. Well, maybe
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the first two verses are fine, like, I have no issue with the first two verses. I get it like that, just like, makes sense. Then that neighbor boy comes, and everything just turns upside down. Upside Down is right? And the thing that people really seem to argue about,
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because they do, they're just go on the interwebs, there's so much argument about this song, is, well, first they want to know what happened to the boy like but also, well, he she keeps him as a sex slave, clearly, somehow, everyone thinks clearly, but everyone thinks different. But also, is the song to be taken literally, or is it a metaphor? Is he dead? Did Angie murder the boy with evil on his mind? Or did he get sucked into the radio for real? Does she have special powers, or are the powers all in her diseased mind, because very be remember she says, living in a world of make believe. Well, maybe, maybe, maybe, or is it real? Is she? Is she
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ABC TV, movie of the week?
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Those weird people?
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Really like
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the Trilogy of Terror. It's the Trilogy of Terror with the little dolls, exactly. Yeah, this is all you have to do. Like, go on Reddit, go on whatever. And, yeah, you know, we're gonna talk about different, you know, videos and conversations and whatever that are still happening in 2026 right now. So to the writers of this song, well done, right? Well done already. The way you sing it good, that's right, makes people talk. Yes, good music, good literature, good performances, good play, good visual art, makes people think and makes people talk, and that's what the song is still doing. So you can love it, or you can hate it, but you can't deny that it's good art. Yep, that's right, yeah, that's because we're talking about it. Some people have compared it to Hotel California, because what happens when you go inside and you can't leave? You can't What do you mean? Like, is this a metaphor, or can you literally not leave the Hotel California? And Helen reddy isn't saying she's like, I just like to hear what those interpretations are. I mean,
Unknown Speaker 16:07
it's, it's, you know, a man who is going to take advantage of a young woman who is not only home alone, but possibly disabled, and instead, the tables are turned on him, and he is the victim of maybe her special powers, maybe. And some people want to assign, again, a feminist, a feminist angle to it, thinking that this is a statement about sexual assault at the hands of men and women who fight back and get revenge. But I actually read the opposite, because women who took revenge against their abusers in this era, always have to be called crazy. They're hysterical. They're touched and and not instead of being justifiably terrible, terrified and full of rage, maybe that was the game you had to play in the 1970s in order to have somebody taking revenge against somebody abused against, you had to hide it under, well, she's crazy. She's crazy. I've got a couple of points. I mean, one being, I also think good art is something that doesn't have an answer. It's like, it's the answer is the person who's listening and their life experiences. So it really can be
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interpreted in a lot of different ways. And so I think that's important. And two, I want to know, did she write this? Who she did not, in fact, what was written by No well, then a whole nother spin on it. I know it wasn't a female writing it. How can it wasn't the motivation Alan O'Day, who has sort of a penchant he's he has not. He's written about sort of quasi supernatural things before, because he had a number one. Is it number one? I think a number one hit. Maybe again. Don't Google it in 1977 called undercover Angel, Midnight fantasy.
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Oh my gosh. Okay, I love that
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shot. Oh my gosh. So yesterday, yesterday, we could take this out, but yesterday, I was at the dermatologist, and they're playing the 70s on the thing, and I had to, you know, you have to put on a little gown or whatever. And so she's like, you know, take your clothes off. And, you know, put this thing on there, the person. And then undercover Angel started playing, but no one was in there. And I thought, Oh my god. First of all, I'm singing, but I'm undercover because I just took my clothes off, Angelman, and I kept singing the whole thing. Luckily nobody was in there. And now you said it again. I mean, it's like, This is so weird.
Unknown Speaker 18:42
No, we're we're pop culture witches. Alan O'Day, yes, and he has said that that he wanted to write a song about someone who was growing up with radio playing in the background of his life. He was a very sickly child. He spent a lot of time in bed listening to the radio. He just wanted to emphasize that there is a song for every emotion at your fingertips on the radio there. The radio is there for us. It really speaks for us in a way that nothing else does, especially when you're alone. And he wrote the song when he was he was on vacation in Palm Springs, and he actually asked the motel owner. He was like, I need somebody to help me here. I can't figure this out. And so he asks the motel owner to give him feedback on the song, and she kind of becomes his co writer a little bit. And she was sort of unintentionally, one of the drivers of making this story as dark as it was, but she was also the one to put the brakes on it when Alan O'Day wanted to go even darker. And she said, this is a quote. She said, No, she's been through enough.
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Let her be. And then, just to put the cherry on top of that whole story, I read that story about him writing it in Palm Springs. When I'm sitting in the Palm Springs airport, I don't even know what to do. I know, have we checked the date today to see if.
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Today was like, ready his birthday, or this
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really was released, and we haven't touched yet on the mental health aspect of it. And in our current age like today, this is what a lot of people on Reddit say. Everyone is like, well, we can see this is clearly a statement about mental illness. But I disagree, because first, there was no advocating for mental health in 1974 and the lyrics use the words like touched and insane, and most conversations about it refer to Angie as as crazy or depraved, which truthfully makes me really uncomfortable, because I do think this is a woman like, why was she taken out of school in the lyrics, it's because she's not cool, but I think that's just really lazy songwriting. Well, no, they say because she's touched, not why she's Yes, they do say she's touched, but in the rhyme scheme, it says the folks want her to be cool, right? But they had to take her out of school, okay? That's why, because you always have to rhyme, anytime you need to rhyme any school, 100% of the time. It's cool, right? But we all know like, Why do you get taken out of school? You're having some sort of difficulty. Did you have some kind of mental breakdown? Does she have some sort of psychosis? And where my mind goes is, was she dangerous to other students? Why is she taken out of school? This is an important part of the story, and people go back and forth on it. But again, I'm just really uncomfortable when you have, if you, let's say you do have psychosis, maybe you are severely depressed and you can't get out of your bed. Maybe you can't, and she's just dancing in her mind, right? She's laying in bed all day, she's got the radio, and she's dancing in her mind, and that's somebody who's truly suffering, but instead, you call her crazy, insane, touched and very uncomfortable. I don't like it. Well, I think that, yeah, I guess once again, we can go on Reddit. I think it's more of a, you know, a supernatural story, and she's got the last laugh. You know, people think she's all those things, but, well, you know, maybe I do have some special little powers, and this is what I'm going to do to you. And that boy, you know, he was peeking in her room. He shouldn't have been doing that, and he probably played her at school. That's probably one of the reasons she left school, because she probably got something that's not school. Yeah, that's why she's taken out of school, because she is being preyed upon by the boy with evil on his mind. Yes, that's exactly what it is, and her parents are just not clued in enough, like they're well, get it sorted. But nobody ever does.
Unknown Speaker 22:28
She has, like, big glasses. She carries her books like this.
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Nobody can see. It's like Carrie. It's like the movie. It is. It's Carrie. This is a companion tape, Carrie, yes, yes, it is yes, it is okay. Do you want to hear some of the revelations of people on like, their comments all over, and everybody has a theory. And I think it's funny, because so often people's theories are based on things that are definitely not in the song, which, well, that's like me. I've written some extra things. Yeah, he was mean to her at school. Yep. So let me just share some of these with you. And I do like the mystical part of it, like, Did she really suck him into the radio? She keeps him there. Is he like trapped in the radio? But I also like the idea that maybe she killed him. Okay, so here's what some people say. It's somewhat creepy in the sense of the slight depravity of Angie. I'm inclined to agree that Angie is a trauma survivor. She's got all these secret fantasies, but she's too afraid to act on them. But then this teen guy arrives and she succumbs to her fantasies while they are both high, and he dies walking home from her place.
Unknown Speaker 23:32
No walking home. What do you mean? I like the idea that people have been calling her crazy. They've been calling her insane, so she and then this stupid guy's peeping at her, so she's like, You know what? I'm gonna show all of them, I'm gonna put do some sort of magic. You know, she's probably maybe a little witchy, and I'm gonna keep him as my sex slave, because I can, because I'm this cool. Yeah? I mean, even though we're told she's not cool, and I'm just gonna, for the rest of time, make everybody ponder this and think about it, but because
Unknown Speaker 24:05
she has a sex slave, Yep, yeah, that's why I think, yeah. Isn't there like, a Twilight Zone episode or something I imagine, like seeing somebody get shrunk down and they're like, kept in a cage, and they want to get out, but I don't know where I have, okay, here's another one, okay, where it says The Boy Next Door comes in her room after seeing her through her window blinds, it appears he wasn't invited, and because of her condition, she immediately started picking up items in her room, and she went berserk on him until his life was no more. Maybe her father was gone when it happened, but she was smart enough to drag his body where no one would think to find him? No, no, you know what people are trying to be, true, realistic, true crime.
Unknown Speaker 24:46
Yeah, very, very little magic. We don't know. She could be a witch. We don't know. Yeah, I think, yeah. Okay, here's another one. I think that she did kill him and she disposed of the body, but she kept him.
Unknown Speaker 25:00
Memento, something that would be identified as the boys. Angie listens to the radio and removes her Memento and drifts into that fantasy world of hers where her secret lover keeps her satisfied. The line it's so nice to be insane, no one asks you to explain the radio by your side implies that the radio is key to her life and also to what happened to the boy? Should anyone ever take a close look at her radio and find her memento? Well, they don't have a lot of questions. It's similar to the way serial killers keep Memento so that they can relive the fantasy the item gives them. I'm a little worried about projection with this one. I'm like, Do you have a book? I was just about to say, yes, it's so funny. They get so ingrained, like they think that they're so disgusted with everybody else's theories, because obviously their theory is the right one. And this person said in all caps, there is no actual guy, and therefore no one actually dies. Angie is a loner who constantly listens to the radio, increasing the volume on her favorite songs and dancing with fantasy lovers. In one particular fantasy, she has herself dancing with a boy who, in her mind, has spent time spying through her window before he gets up the courage one night to knock on the door and offer to be her dance partner. Once a song comes on the radio that she won't dance to. She turns her bone back down. That's just her routine, not needing anyone, not needing anyone, until the next danceable tune gets played. Just making it up. Just making it up. Yeah, so there's so many things I want to say about what just happened. One, yeah, they're just making it up. And what do these poor people have going on in their lives that they have so much time to like, write a whole like screenplay to this song? Secondly, we have to do an episode where we find some topic and we just read the comments as traumatic eating from Reddit. Because, I mean, Kristen is she's angry in that response, so there's no way we knew that the person who wrote it was angry. But that is not what happened. This is and you should see her expression on her face. It's just, it's all caps. And then here's somebody else who's like, well, since the boy isn't real, none of the effects described are actually happening. The line toward the radio he's bound describes his sudden awareness that the dancing has ended as quickly as it began, and that the radio is more important to Angie than he is. In Angie's mind, he vaporizes into nothing as quickly as he appeared. That's the way it is with all her dance movers. I mean, do people just sit there and give this much like rain? Yeah, time.
Unknown Speaker 27:39
Okay, here's the last one, there are no actual newspaper headlines. This is referring to the fact that she goes to her alternative school. How do you know it's an alternative school? She goes to her alternative school. The next day, she creates her own verbal headlines by telling friends about a peeping Tom who came over to dance with her while her parents were gone. Since Angie has quite the reputation for making up wild, far fetched stories. Her schoolmates often play along by asking probing questions just to see what she'll say when they ask what happened to the boy. She says he's dead without explicitly admitting it. She implies that she killed him, but she never says, I'm like a black widow spider. She tells them, enforcing everyone's opinion that she's a nutcase with a vivid imagination that likes to toy with people's heads. Okay, none of that happened. That is Angie baby fan fiction that is their own. Yes, story. I mean, at the end of the day, it really is like a Stephen King short story, or, like you said, a made for TV movie like Sibyl, or the one with the crazy doll in the shower, or Helen Hunt jumping out of the plate glass a window high on Angel Dust. And now we invite all of you to come up with your own interpretation. That would be what happened to the boy. Yes, is he dead? Is this a murder ballad, or is she witchy? One last thing to mention, and that is that? In 1976
Unknown Speaker 29:02
the guy who did the animation at the beginning of Greece, do you remember when they're like, squeezing the toothpaste or the Brill cream and putting, you know what I'm talking about, that whole animation sequence, that guy made an animation sequence for it's so good, though. It is demented, everything I would have imagined when I listened to the song. So good looks. You can tell exactly. It's the same artist. It looks exactly like the opening. I think that too. It's, it's a, yes, it's a hallucination. It's what it looks like when you watch it. In fact, there's even one guy, and I want to say it's the dad, but I don't
Unknown Speaker 29:40
frankenberry. He looks like the guy on the front of the frankenberry box. He has like, this long, square chin. Yeah, it's so good, yes, yeah. And one guy has one very large ear. I don't know what the point is of having one very large ear. It seems like it's important, but maybe it's not. It looks a little bit like Schoolhouse Rock. It that that vibe is just.
Unknown Speaker 30:00
Level. And there's some look, there's some phallic imagery in there too. You can't, you can't miss the phallic imagery. I just want to share a Helen reddy grease tie in. Okay, is that she Helen Reddy was instrumental in supporting Olivia Newton John when Olivia Newton John got here and her career, and it was at a dinner party at Helen reddy's house where Olivia Newton John met producer Alan Carr, who offered her the starring role in the film version of the musical Grease. Thank you, Helen ready. Thank you without because no one else could have played that role. There is no other Sandy, which is why I'm never gonna see it on stage. I'm sorry. Never gonna do it, yeah, or grease too. I know I didn't either have strong feelings.
Unknown Speaker 30:40
Please leave it alone. Just leave it Okay, now we're moving into 1975
Unknown Speaker 30:55
and we have another empowerment themed hit for Helen reddy in ain't no way to treat a lady that ain't no way to treat a lady. No way to treat
Unknown Speaker 31:06
your baby, your woman, your friend.
Unknown Speaker 31:11
It was her sixth and final top 10 hit, and it hit number one on the easy listening chart. Of course, all of this earning Helen ready a Grammy nomination for Best Pop Vocal Performance go Helen Reddy. And at the same time, Helen Reddy is sort of reaching beyond her recording career, and she lands a role in the disaster film airport 75 we Gen Xers may not remember airport 75 as much as we remember the movie airplane from 1980 but this, there's an important connection here, because the singing nun in airplane who is serenading a very sick Jill. Whalen slash, Vicki stoobing, remember, and she's on the she's on the gurney. She's got, like, the oxygen when she whips, when she whips her IV out, she starts going, yeah, she makes fish face because, because there's a singing nun who's singing to Vicki Wayland. Vicki, Whalen Vicki, stoobing, whoever, and knocks on the guitar neck, pulls out her oxygen tube, and she's like suffocating to death. Anyway, that character in airplane is based on the character that Helen reddy played in airport 75 she's a singing nun serenading the very sick Linda Blair. And she actually won, she won a Golden Globe for this very tiny role as the she's the Most Promising Newcomer Golden Globe Award. So she's really kind of hitting her peak here in 1975 Okay, on to the song. So this is a mild ain't no way to treat a lady is a mild mannered Get the fuck out to a self absorbed lover. Essentially, it was written by a woman named Harriet shock, who has said she wrote the song while in the process of leaving someone for one of the last times that she left him for the last time, one of the last times that she left him for the last time. So and this is why you hear in the lyrics, I guess it was yourself you were involved with. I would have sworn it was me. I might have found out sooner, if you'd only let me close enough to see that ain't no way to treat a lady, no way to treat your baby, your woman, your friend, that ain't no way to treat a lady, but maybe it's a way for us to end so this is really a song about recognizing your own worth and drawing a boundary. And again, I said this was another empowerment anthem, because this really seemed to be a lot of what Helen reddy sang about. And the singer of the song has said, you know, you're just like jumping all over this feminism thing because of, I am woman. And she insists that it's not a statement, but really about it's more of a personal experience that she herself had. But then at the same time, she says, this is a quote from her I find that the more personal and specific a song is, the truer it will be, and therefore the more universally it will be received. Hashtag, Taylor Swift, I she goes on saying I was saying as specifically as I could something I had a burning desire to say to one person, and apparently other women wanted to say that to their people. I received a number of calls from women telling me it was just the kick they needed to get that divorce. This was certainly not my intention when I wrote the song, but I can only hope that my song served as a catalyst to move my friends out of a bad situation into a new freedom. Yeah, it mirrors what was happening in her own life, like, yeah, right along with it, even if you know her husband was abusive, eventually had some really major drug problems. The fact is that while she was also singing these empowerment songs and wanting to say what this song was saying to Jeff. Sorry. Listeners, Carolyn has a dog, and you might hear the dog crying, but the dog is fine, just so you know the dog, it's relatable. Yeah. At the same time in real life, she's not quite there yet, and she doesn't have as excited as she is to have this credit card of her own she does.
Unknown Speaker 35:00
Doesn't ever know what's going on with their money, any of their bills, things that are getting paid. She's just living her life, which unfortunately comes to bite her in the butt later. Yeah, it's really sad. So it's kind of ironic that, yeah, the theme of a lot of her songs, and this female empowerment and what she really believed in, she wasn't quite living that 100% in real life. And you look at how she had to make I mean, this is how the system works, right? She's not done anything wrong here, but in order to get where she needed to go, she needed that man, and it's not like she depended on him. She was trying to do everything by the rules, but the rules don't allow a woman to do it by herself, so she needs to depend on him. And he's like, I'm sure he's like, patting her on the head. Like, don't you worry about it. The money's my job. I'll take care of it, right? And she's like, the first time that he's called Mr. Hell and ready. Yeah, does he appreciate that? I don't know exactly,
Unknown Speaker 35:55
but maybe
Unknown Speaker 36:00
it's a
Unknown Speaker 36:02
way for end. I was majorly hoosker Dude, you guys, when I realized that another song that she sings, that Helen reddy sings, and really is the tail end of her pop career. It's her last one that really charts. I thought actually Barry Manilow sang, but it was first released somewhere in the night by Helen Reddy,
Unknown Speaker 36:21
somewhere in the night. Actually probably the first time I heard it, so when I heard it later with Barry minlo And I knew all the words, I was probably so excited, but I didn't know in my brain that I knew it very confused. I only know this is a Barry Manilow song. I know she released it first and kind of established the song, but then Manilow obviously did it later, and I think if you hear her sing it or watch it on YouTube, you'll like, be hoosker Dude or who screw dude, like, you'll Yeah, I want to get out. Yeah. And it also did very well on the adult contemporary chart. But unfortunately, of course, we are seeing at this time, a switch to kind of more of our Disco because this is kind of where we see her career kind of fading out a little bit, and she's trying to reinvent herself in other ways. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 37:24
as everybody did, everybody did, yeah. And if we neglected to mention this next song and performance and movie, I know that most of y'all would just come right at us. Yeah, we would be so of course, we need to include the song candle on the water,
Unknown Speaker 37:52
which was
Unknown Speaker 37:55
written for the movie Pete's Dragon in 1977 that Helen reddy starred in. It was her first leading role in a film.
Unknown Speaker 38:03
I just watched it two nights ago, or try to watch it. I'm trying a little bit. I know I saw it in the theater, and I thought I had the soundtrack, but it it was hard to watch until I started fast forwarding to the Helen ready parts, because she's just darling, and she plays Nora and her, I just love her dresses, and she's just so sweet to Pete. And there's just a lot that's hard, you know, it's just, it's, it's silly. I liked it as a kid.
Unknown Speaker 38:35
Invisible Dragon, and then he comes back. It's done very you know, they thought it was the coolest technology. How they did Mary Poppins, pretty bad. Yeah, so candle on the water. Obviously, it's a Torch Song, and it's the song that Nora sings to her fiance, Paul, who has been lost at sea for over a year, but whom Nora believes will one day return and spoil alert. He does. And this is one of the funniest things. We just kept Brian was watching with me. We kept fast forwarding, and then we're like, I was like, I know Paul returns, but I'm forgetting that scene, so I have to go. And it's like the last minute of the movie, and he's got a mustache, and he's very handsome, and he comes off the boat, and he's like, Nara,
Unknown Speaker 39:13
and she goes running to him and jumps on him, and it's so cute. And he goes, she's like, but where were you? I looked, and he goes, my ship sank. I was the only one to survive, and I was taken to a hospital where I had amnesia.
Unknown Speaker 39:26
Out of the blue, and he just keeps going. It's just the the diary keeps going, yeah, he goes and but then out of the blue, My bed was tousled, like in the middle of the night. And then, like you, you go to Pete who, like, looks over at the invisible, you know, Elliot like nice job. He goes, and when I landed on the floor, it like I bumped my head again, and my memory came back.
Unknown Speaker 39:51
But you guys, it's a really big movie. I had forgotten. We've got Jim Dale, you know, Thurston hell the third. We've got Mickey Rooney plays land.
Unknown Speaker 40:00
Which is so funny, because, you know, they run a lighthouse. Lampy is her dad, and he's so, so good in it. You have red buttons, you have Shelly winters. You have,
Unknown Speaker 40:10
I'm sorry I said Jim Dale. I meant Jim Backus. You do have Jim Dale on it, but I was talking about Jim Backus when I said, we're talking about, when I said, Thurston, hell. The third interesting Jeff Conaway, you know Kenickie, right? And this is only a few years before Greece. And if you watch it, and you watch the beginning, the people who you know, Pete's an orphan, and he's got these four, you know, the Scooby Doo characters, the Apple Dumpling gang, where they're just bumbling, but they're scary. One of them is Jeff Conaway, and I would have never recognized them, because, you know, they have soot all over their face, but it's just literally like, you know, Elliot is invisible, and Elliot swings his invisible tail and knocks the bumbling criminals into the what I think looks like quicksand. I thought it was quicksand, and I know I could just hear all the kids just shrieking with laughter and all that stuff. But yeah, so the song, candle on the water is a beautiful, beautiful song. If anything, just go watch the video of it. The song actually works on two levels, because on the surface, Nora is singing to Paul that she still believes he's out there. She's standing on top of the lighthouse. I'll be your candle on the water and and she knows he's out there. She'll never give up on him. But she's also sort of singing to Pete, the little orphan boy that he doesn't have to keep running forever, because there's a lyric that says, Don't give up. You have somewhere to turn. And it was, I think this is interesting. The song was originally intended to be the only song featured in the movie, but when it was met with such a claim, like when they're filming it, the decision was made to turn the whole movie into a musical. And that's the best part to me, of the movie. The songs are really fun. There's a scene at the, you know, maybe about 15 minutes in. It's the first scene that we see Nora Helen ready, and they're in this bar, and it's very much like the, if you've ever seen the Beauty and the Beast stage show, or
Unknown Speaker 41:57
it's very much that all the dancing, and then at the end, they're all just covered in suds, like it looks like the inside of a car wash, because the suds are everywhere, and they're all dancing on the tables, and it's it's really fun. And she has a couple of other songs too, and she's just lovely in the movie. And I for sure remember her from that movie. And I thought it's shocking that I don't still have that album, because I have old albums, like Heidi, how do I not have my Pete's Dragon album? But mine belonged to my sister, so I know that that just was not going to come with me. It is very 1977 There you go. So, like, that's why I was having a hard time with it, because I was like, this is, this is hard to watch, but 100% as an eight year old, I was all in, yeah, it's classic, 70s, Disney.
Unknown Speaker 42:43
I'll never
Unknown Speaker 42:50
let you never let you go.
Unknown Speaker 43:00
You.
Unknown Speaker 43:07
So you guys, by the early 80s, Helen Reddy was pretty much leaving the area of singing. She did some cabaret shows, some things like that, and she did dabble in acting, just like Michelle just said she had Pete's Dragon. And then in the 80s, we'd see her, and the 90s, a little bit on murder. She wrote Diagnosis Murder. You know, she'd be guest. She has a great Love Boat episode, yeah, Love Boat, there's she was still doing stuff, and she kind of had to be, because her jerky husband, he lost all their money
Unknown Speaker 43:40
gambling and just the lifestyle that he led. And it was really sad that she had no knowledge of any of this while it was happening, but yet, had to pick up the pieces. So they obviously eventually get divorced, and right around the early 2000s is when she says, You know what, I'm just done with the whole Hollywood, all of that, that scene. I'm not a performer anymore. I'm going to go back to Australia. She actually goes back to school, and she earns a degree as a clinical hypnotherapist and motivational speaker, which is something she'd always been interested in and had dabbled in. She had taken a couple of classes at UCLA. So I love knowing that she'd had this desire to do something in this dream, and she in her, you know, 60s decided, Okay now, and she practiced, actually. So it's an and it's it so often you see people and you have this assumption that they're just clinging to fame because that's all they've got, right? Clearly, she had more than that to offer that's amazing. So she rents an apartment that has this beautiful view of the Sydney Harbor, and she's doing an interview with somebody when she's living there, and she comments on how much she loves her apartment, and she lives in fear that one day, the rent is going to go up and she's going to have to move out, or they're going to sell, sell the condo, or whatever, and the person who actually owned the apartment that she.
Unknown Speaker 45:00
Renting. Someone who lived in New York had no idea that it was the Helen Reddy. He knew someone named Helen Reddy was renting it, but he they didn't know that it was the Helen ready. I ready said, We're never going to raise your rent. Like, like, that was the thing. Like, basically, you are, you are locked in to what you can afford, you know? And she was just so grateful because she was just living off royalties of her songs. Yeah, at that point exactly, and she signed some bad deals. I mean, she'll admit, like, you know, she was being guided by maybe someone that wasn't actually looking out for her best interest. So it's just a story here again and again and again, right? Unfortunately. But it is interesting to note that she does move back to Los Angeles, and that I loved knowing this that in 2017 so we know when that was
Unknown Speaker 45:48
the women's march in downtown Los Angeles. She appears. She is introduced by actress Jamie Lee Curtis, and she sings an acapella version of I am woman. What did
Unknown Speaker 46:02
she Oh, my God, what a moment I know. Can you imagine? Sadly, in 2020, she passed at the age of 78 of dementia and leaves an incredible legacy. And so she has she had two children, she had Tracy, and then she had another son, and she has a granddaughter who is also a singer, and in this biopic that I watched, sings a song that's included in within the film. And then when the credits roll, and it's really good, it's called Revolution, and we'll put a link to that as well, because I love that go.
Unknown Speaker 46:42
The voice is clear voices.
Unknown Speaker 46:50
It comes a change for institution
Unknown Speaker 46:58
to make our Mama's proud. Of us proud.
Unknown Speaker 47:04
I think it's funny that because Helen reddy seems to fly under the 70s radar, like the radar of 70s culture. But when you say her name, people have big feelings like big, big feelings that make you realize, no, she didn't fly under the radar. It's a big Husker do moment for a lot of people, when you say, Oh, do you like Helen Reddy? And they're like, Oh, I haven't thought about candle on the water since 1977
Unknown Speaker 47:31
so I think maybe she burned really hot and then sort of dissipated out of our consciousness, in a way. And it could be because her, and you alluded to this a little bit Carolyn, it could be because her rise was boosted because of the relentless work of her, of her husband, and then when they divorced, he took that boost with him and maybe even purposefully got in the way of her continued success. She has used the word blacklisted, and I believe it, and we've heard that before about other female artists, right? Irene Carolyn comes to mind women we loved fiercely, and then they disappear because they pissed off a man. And I can't help but see the painful irony in that. For Helen Reddy, she's regarded as a feminist hero because of the songs that she sang and the fictional women that she championed, only to be muted because of the anger of a jilted lover, and so then it's our job to keep her memory alive in the way that she deserves that voice. It was so singular, right? And we will never not have I am woman. Hear me roar in numbers too big. Do ignore that was her. That was her, and it's still impacting our culture today, and we will never forget her. Thank you so much for listening today, and we will see you next time.
Unknown Speaker 48:53
And if you love taking this trip down memory lane with us and reliving those wonderful songs from Helen Reddy, don't just hum along or sing along with us. Can do something more. You could rate, you could review and share our podcast. Let your friends know that there's a seat saved on the couch for them too, and help us keep these pop culture memories alive one anthem at a time. But before we go, we have to send a massive Technicolor thank you to our incredible Patreon supporters. Honestly, you guys are the Elliot to our Pete,
Unknown Speaker 49:25
the magical invisible force that keeps this whole operation flying. Because of your support, we can keep preserving the pop culture nuggets that shaped us, not to mention keep our mics on those utility bills. They'll get you'll get. You. You guys today, we're giving a special thank you to these patrons. It's Cherie or Sherry, C, H, E, R, I. So hey, shout out, Cherie or sherry. Christina. T, well, now, you know, I don't they. It's just their email address. So it's T, well, so if that's you, thank you. I.
Unknown Speaker 50:00
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Unknown Speaker 50:21
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Unknown Speaker 50:30
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Unknown Speaker 50:48
The
Unknown Speaker 50:49
information,
Unknown Speaker 50:57
opinions and comments expressed on the pop culture Preservation Society. Podcast belongs solely to Carolyn the crushologist and hello Newman, and are in no way representative of our employers or affiliates. And though we truly believe we are always right, there is always a first time the PCPs is written, produced and recorded in Minneapolis, Minnesota, home of the fictional wjm studios and our beloved Mary Richards. Nanu. Nanu, keep on truckin, and May the Force Be With You. You.