PAUL ANKA - “Diana”
(30th August 1957)
This one was a big favourite of my Dad’s, so my memory of it is half affectionate and half curdled: I remember trips north to see relatives with him singing lustily along and surly me in the back seat wanting to put my Smiths tapes on.
So it’s hard for me to hear this as a teenage song, even though my Dad was a teenager when he liked it. The busy, scrabbly guitar picking and the almost-breaking voice work as markers for ‘the teenage’ and its fumbling urgency - but that’s something I know about the song, not feel. To be honest “Diana” annoys me - Anka’s “ohhhh please” sounds gormless and he sings the verses too rhythmic, too precise. Maybe I just prefer Dad singing it, ’cause the clockwork guitars work for me fine. 4
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Lena on October 31st, 2006
Oh, Paul Anka the pride of Ottawa! I think he wrote this about his babysitter.
Marcello Carlin on October 31st, 2006
Seventeen years before he had a hit with “You’re Having My Baby”…
As ever with the eximious Mr Anka, I feel duty bound to draw readers’ attention (though I’m sure you all know it already) to this extraordinary Pinteresque soliloquy:
http://www.noisetank.com/integrity/