Transcript:
When Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys first heard "Be My Baby" by The Ronettes while driving and listening to the radio; he became so entranced by the song that he felt compelled to pull over to the side of the road and analyse the chorus.
Imagine that - hearing a song so great, that it stops you in your tracks.
He immediately concluded that it was the greatest record he had ever heard. He became obsessed. Even more obsessed than that guy who put “The Boys are Back in Town” on the pub jukebox every single night. This was no joke, no passing fad. Wilson took obsession to another level. He bought the single and kept it on his living room jukebox, listening to it whenever the mood struck him. Copies of the record were located in his car and virtually everywhere inside his home. Wilson's daughter Carnie, born in 1968, stated that "every day" of her childhood began with her awaking to a playback of "Be My Baby". It has been said that Brian locked himself in the bedroom of his Bel Air house in the early '70s, alone, curtains drawn shut, catatonic, listening to 'Be My Baby' over and over at aggressive volumes, for hours, days, weeks…
Wilson himself admitted, “I really did flip out. Balls-out totally freaked out when I heard it. It was like having your mind revamped. It's like, once you've heard that record, you're a fan forever.”
Phil Spector - the writer of “Be My Baby” was aware of Wilson's obsession with "Be My Baby" and joked that he would have enjoyed "a nickel for every joint" Wilson had smoked in an effort to understand the record's sound.
Wilson wrote “Don’t Worry Baby” as a response to “Be My Baby”, but one suspects this didn’t quite get it out of his system.
Perhaps, when he was a boy, Callum Hudson-Odoi became just as obsessed with Arjen Robben scoring the same goal over and over and over again.
You know the one. You can see it now. The one where he gathers the ball on the right wing, jinks inside the left back, zig-zags towards the edge of the penalty area, side-steps a challenge to get the ball on his left foot, then curls in from the corner of the box.
Such things cannot be stopped. They are inevitable. When the cosmos decrees such things will happen, there is simply nothing to be done. Just accept the way of such things.
Just like a bamboozling Hudson-Odoi run, we can twist and turn ourselves in circles over how to feel about full time on Saturday, and the final game against Burnley.
Are we safe? Yes, but no…not quite, well, kind of…I mean, yeah. Pretty much. Not even we can…(I’ll leave that sentence ending in ellipsis…)
But admittedly, no…not quite.
But as we traipsed away from Goodison Park, surely we’d have all done a Robert Johnson type nefarious deal to avoid having to go to Turf Moor and win on the final day of the season. We no longer have to do that. All we need to do is be just about as competent as we have all season. Even we can do that.
On the other hand, while Palace away this time last year was - to quote Brian Wilson - balls-out party time, being (largely) safe on the final day of the season feels quite simply like a huge relief. A big fridge off the shoulders. A universe moving exhale. An immediate desire to tick it off and move on. File it, stick it on a shelf and crack on with cutting the grass or hoovering up or feeding the cat or taking the bins out.
The reasons for this are plenty and will be raked over for the duration of next week, and maybe the whole of the summer. We will have time to work out what it means - the meaning of it all - when the cosmic dust settles.
There are so many weird things about this season - this football club even. The weirdest being that this team - some of these players - are the best we’ve had for around thirty years. The pace of the games we see, the quality of some of the players both for us and the opposition, the tactical nous on sight in most Premier League games this season…it’s a long long way from Danny Sonner, Gary Jones, Adam Proudlock, Andy Meville, Andy Impey ….I mean, I could go on all day here, let’s be honest. I’ll leave this list there and let you have a moment to yourselves to list your own personal Forest pariahs. But despite this, it doesn’t feel like it should. Or to invert Sophie Ellis-Bextor, ‘If this ain’t second season survival, why does it feel so….meh?’
Maybe, come Sunday at Turf Moor when the sun will be out (it won’t - you’ve been to Burnley haven’t you? The sun never shines there. A miserable, Mordor-land enveloped in darkness, a wasteland of horizontal rain and biting winds that grind you to dust…) we’ll all feel differently and we can look forward to Ipswich away, rather than Preston on a Tuesday night.
But till then, we can just stick “Be My Baby” on repeat while watching and rewatching Callum Hudson-Odoi gather the ball on the right wing, jink inside the left back, zig-zag towards the edge of the penalty area, side-step a challenge to get the ball on his left foot, then curl in from the corner of the box, again and again and again and again and again…
Forest 2-3 Chelsea 11 May 2024