Actually, this has always been one of my favorite songs by John Lennon but I hadn't really listened to it in a long time. Then, the other day at the gym, they played it as I was working out (probably had the satellite radio tuned to a classic rock track station) and it struck me how so much of what Lennon describes in the song sounds similar to what Sanjaya was going through in 2007. Not literally, of course, because I know the subject of the song was his marriage to Yoko, but just the general spirit of it.
In this song, John Lennon, certainly himself no stranger to being considered a controversial figure, and one who (like Sanjaya) endured this sort of weird love/hate relationship with the media, satirizes his whole relationship with the press, touching on everything from the scrutiny of the goldfish bowl effect, to the lying and manipulation of the media, to the downright hypocrisy (how they say one thing to your face; another behind your back and also, how they love to hate you but then love to love you when you're on top again) and in general, the whole pompousness and ridiculousness of all of it, concisely summed up in the apt refrain: "The way things are going, they're gonna crucify me."
And then I got to thinking...just an idea, of course...but wouldn't it be interesting if Sanjaya could write something like this for his own album? What I mean is, something similarly comic and tongue-in-cheek but at the same time bitingly satiric, that would serve as a scathing anthem of Howard Stern, Simon Cowell, the Hunger Strike Girl, TMZ, being razed one month for doing charity; the next month for getting paid, and everything in between...everything that has contributed to the overall craziness and polarizing effect of his life, and somehow put it all into a song like this? I know he has the spunk to do it (we all saw that when he sang of giving us something to talk about "other than hair") but I don't know that he ever would, of course, since his way has more to do with taking the high road and not looking back. Still, I can't help but think it would be kind of fun to hear his own take on "the craziness of being Sanjaya" and dealing with, well, what everyday life is like for you when you happen to be Sanjaya!
The Ballad of Sanjaya. Yeah!
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