Mad About The Boy

Dinah Washington - Mad About The Boy.

This song has graced God knows how many smooth jazz compilations, which is terrible because that almost automatically implies that it's going to be 'chilled-out' or 'smooth'. The jazz backing isn't exactly the work of musical mavericks, it's true, but it's hardly dull. However, Dinah Washington's voice and style of singing are what lift the song to 'timeless' level.

The woman who inspired Amy Winehouse and Aretha Franklin, she was apparently known for her perfect diction, powerful voice and emotive singing. In this song, from the very start, anyone who has heard even ONE Amy Winehouse song can see how strong that influence is. Amy obviously wants to become her... Despite owning both her (Amy's) albums, I must concur that Dinah blows her away quite effortlessly with this song, though I was hoping it wouldn't be so. Apparently Noel Coward wrote this song (for a lover?), but Dinah makes it hers in a way that belies that fact and would have you believe that she had written it herself.

An air of imminent heartbreak hangs about this song; that's why I love it. How often nowadays do you get simple lyrics being infused with such a dizzying, yet carefully controlled explosion of feeling? When she sings 'I'm so ashamed of it, but must admit / The sleepless nights I've had / About the boy,' I myself feel the painful and tumultuous pangs of first love once more.

'Lord knows, I'm not a fool girl / I really shouldn't care,' has me blushing and looking around guiltily as if unsure of what I'm doing. The whole fourth verse is richly redolent of teenage crushes gone bad and broken hearts. I haven't even had much experience of that (roughly none in the latter instance) and yet she brings it home to me.

I'm mad about the boy
I know it's stupid to be mad about the boy
I'm so ashamed of it but must admit the sleepless nights I've had
About the boy

On the silver screen
He melts my foolish heart in every single scene
Although I'm quite aware that here and there are traces of the cad
About the boy

Lord knows I'm not a fool girl
I really shouldn't care
Lord knows I'm not a school girl
In the flurry of her first affair

Will it ever cloy
This odd diversity of misery and joy
I'm feeling quite insane and young again
And all because I'm mad about the boy

So if I could employ
A little magic that will finally destroy
This dream that pains me and enchains me
But I can't because I'm mad...
I'm mad about the boy.


A strangely wise song about the fatalistic type of love that makes you lose your senses of reasoning and perspective. The acknowledgement and comprehension of the fact that it's a potentially unhealthy attachment ('misery,' 'insanity,' 'mad' 'pains and enchains'), that can only come with romantic experience make it more affecting, ergo its well-deserved classic status. Noel Coward is to be congratulated on his sublimely simple lyrics, and Dinah Washington for her superb rendering of it that makes the lovelorn character at the heart of it seem more pained, and less straightfowardly shameful than would appear just by reading the lyrics.