"Nice and Easy"

Recently, I caught an episode of the NPR program Fresh Air that was playing Terry Gross’s old interview with the songwriting duo Alan and Marilyn Bergman, on the occasion of Alan’s recent death at age 99. The interview was from 2007, when Marilyn and Alan were “only” 79 and 80 years old. Right at the beginning, they played a section from Frank Sinatra’s version of “Nice and Easy,” a song the couple wrote for his 1960 album of the same name. The words were as follows:

It's gonna be so easy
For us to fall in love
Hey, baby, what's your hurry?
Relax and don't you worry
We're gonna fall in love
We're on the road to romance
That's safe to say
But let's make all the stops along the way
The problem now of course is
To simply hold your horses
To rush would be a crime
'Cause nice and easy does it every time

Perhaps these words are well known to some of you reading this article, but I don’t remember hearing them before. I enjoyed their innocence, how playful yet sensible they were. What a cheerful, wholesome thing it would be for a man to put a woman at ease like this, expressing full confidence regarding his intentions, and optimism that things are going to work out, but exerting no pressure, not hurrying anything, savoring the gradual process leading up to the union. It’s so different from many of the pop songs that have come out in my lifetime, which are just driving straight at sexual relations, even if they also include avowals of long-term interest and wanting to build a life together (and they often don’t). So it put me in a good mood and prepared me to enjoy the rest of the interview. Then this happened:

A. BERGMAN: Well, when you write for somebody like Frank Sinatra… he has a definite character. And we felt, because they wanted something that was easy swinging, that ‘nice and easy’ - the phrase, that ‘nice and easy does it every time’ would be good for him.

M. BERGMAN: It also had a kind of subtext to be a little sexy, which certainly also was part of Sinatra.

T. GROSS: This is one of those many songs about sex that isn't literally about sex, but it's absolutely about sex.

(LAUGHTER)

M. BERGMAN: Yes, it is.

(LAUGHTER)

M. BERGMAN: Yes, it is.

I was taken by surprise, and indignant. What were these people–this famous, sophisticated interviewer, and these two delightful old folks saying? They were suddenly laughing like naughty teenagers about a song I’d just been enjoying for its innocence. It was so unexpected. And of course, I immediately thought, “Well, show-biz has always been show-biz, and fame has always been an aphrodisiac and an excuse for bad behavior, and I think Sinatra was kinda a womanizer, at least when he was young. The world has always been thus.” But that wasn’t a good enough explanation. All that is true, sure, but those are still innocent lyrics. Words and sentences have meanings. They can’t just mean whatever someone alleges they do 47 years later, even if the very lyricists join in.

Can “nice and easy,” by itself, be double entendre? Well, of course. Anything can, if you put a certain knowing sneer into your voice when you say it. It could absolutely be applied to the carnal act; and one online transcript I found of the song suggests that Sinatra might have lingered on those words and repeated them in certain ways, in some of his performances, so as to create that effect. But if he did, he was contradicting the very song he was singing. Isn’t it all about waiting? Doing things at their proper time? Not hurrying to the end, but “enjoying all the stops along the way”? And the end goal, as the song says multiple times, is “to fall in love.” “We’re on the road to romance.” According to the song, these people aren’t even “in love” yet. So if we buy into the theory that it’s “absolutely about sex,” and interpret the lyrics as a come-on, it can only mean casual sex between people who don’t love each other, and the singer can only be a fast-talking heel. “Well of course I don’t love you yet, Babe. Serious stuff like that takes time. But give me everything I want right now, and I’m sure I’ll come around eventually.”

This does describe a theory to which many subscribe in our benighted day, in which sex is cheap and unremarkable, the stuff of hook-ups, just having a bit of fun, while love, on the other hand, is something mysterious and barely attainable, the stuff of poetry and fairy tales, something to be hoped-for in the future, but which (like fairies) might not actually exist. As long as both partners understand this, and don’t expect anything more out of a sexual dalliance, supposedly nobody gets hurt. Maybe show-biz people circa 1959 were ahead of their time and already assuming this dreary, self-fulfilling view; but the audience they had to please wasn’t. They couldn’t write that way. More likely, the song’s meaning morphed in the heads of its authors along with the shifting mores of the sexual revolution and its fallout, so that it could mean something different to them in 2007 than it originally had. Either way, shelving the question of authorial intent, this is just not what the song says.

When the singer asks, “Hey, baby, what's your hurry?” then cajoles, “Relax and don't you worry; we’re gonna fall in love,” there’s no way to mistake this as a reference to seduction, foreplay, or any act that could be concluded on the same day. The message isn’t, “Proceed slowly until we reach the point of orgasm,” but “Proceed slowly until, some day in the future, we fall in love.” What kind of hasty behavior is the man discouraging? Wanting to go out every weekend? Wanting to talk on the phone every day? Wanting to discuss the color of the living-room drapes in the house they’ll share together as man and wife, or what they’ll name the children? The lyric works nicely for all these possibilities, especially at the early stages of the relationship. Only a certain adolescent madness, or absolute cynicism, could recognize that all those things could qualify as undue “hurry” or premature “worry,” and yet assume that the most intimate of all human contact, the act that constitutes marriage and creates those yet-to-be-named children, is somehow still on the table as a reasonable component of a leisurely courtship.

When the man sings, “The problem now of course is, to simply hold your horses,” he’s clearly counseling restraint, the kind that takes determination and strength. Some passion or urge is trying to get the better of you, he says, something spirited and strong, like a team of horses pulling a carriage. You have the reins in your hands, don’t drop them. It’s hard, but it’s worth it. If you let them gallop the way they’re yearning to, you’ll be off to the races, out of control of the situation, missing “stops along the way,” perhaps crashing or getting thrown from the carriage. How can this metaphor be thought to apply to every form of eager excitement that goes with falling in love, except for the one that’s most exciting, most ungovernable, and most likely to lead to a shattering crack-up? I’m not suggesting that the Bergmans wrote a moralizing or seriously admonitory song. “To rush would be a crime” is obviously hyperbole, not a warning that the partners might incur guilt or even pain. But for sure it does mean, “That would be a shame. If we get carried away, we’ll regret it.”

Do I feel silly, treating the lyrics of a lighthearted swing tune as a text for serious analysis? A bit, yes, but not as silly as the writers should’ve felt for betraying their own poetry in such a shameless fashion. If these words are meant to capture the quaint but exceedingly sensible idea of waiting for marriage, or at least for love, and to do so disarmingly, a bit roguishly, they’re fantastic. The Bergmans knocked it out of the park. But if they’re meant to be “absolutely about sex,” they’re just incoherent. They make no sense either in what they say or in how they say it. So why did the authors go along with the debasing of their own poetic achievement, agreeing so readily, even giddily, with the interviewer’s knowing–and simultaneously ignorant–insinuations? Had they forgotten their craft in their old age?

I think they were just trying to have their cake and eat it too. Anyone can tell what the logic of the song is, if they just listen once or twice. It charms, it succeeds, because it is innocent and because it makes simple moral sense. But then once it had succeeded, if the “smart set” wanted to wink-wink, nudge-nudge, and assign it contradictory transgressive value in addition to the wholesome, they weren’t above double-dipping. Just as long as no one challenged them to explain any of that.

Which leaves us with the question why we have a cultural elite who are willing to congratulate each other for such nonsensical things in the first place. My best guess is that the chain of thought (such as it is) goes like this. 1) To insist on waiting for sex is old-fashioned. 2) Old-fashioned behavior is unenlightened. 3) Therefore enlightened people do not insist on waiting for sex. Or if they actually do in their own lives, they should at least pretend otherwise in the company of other enlightened people, lest they be thought regressive. Opposing something because it is restrictive and old is intrinsically adolescent. Hence the sniggering.

If you want anything approaching wisdom, or even sanity, on the subject of sex in Western Culture today, the Church is the only adult left in the room. By which I mean, of course, the churches that have not surrendered to the Zeitgeist, agreeing suicidally that Modern Culture can’t really be held to an Ancient Book anymore. I mean the actual Church, faithfully confessing and holding to the Word of God. Some doctrines require faith because they don’t make sense to reason, e.g. the Holy Trinity, or because the sense they do make seems arbitrary to critical minds, e.g. the promise that because Jesus allowed Himself to be crucified, I don’t need to go to Hell anymore. The Christian teaching reserving sex for marriage is not one of these. It’s just plain wisdom. To argue that it’s not wise, because it’s impracticable, because people are fools and will never heed it, is just intentional capitulation to foolishness. Kids will be kids, and so will adults, and our octogenarians will just shake their heads and laugh. But their song testifies against them. It’s wiser than they are.

Eric Phillips has a PhD in Early Christian Studies (Greek & Latin Patristics), and pastors Concordia Lutheran Church in Nashville, TN. He contributes to Just & Sinner as the Weidner Institute Fellow of Historical Theology.