"I love everybody, especially you."

The Song: "I Love Everybody," Lyle Lovett. Words and music by Lyle Lovett. Track 18 of I Love Everybody, 1994.
How/when acquired: Purchased CD, 1994.
Listen here.

You can't always take Lyle Lovett at face value, but this song works just as well whether you take it sincerely or ironically. In fact, I think it makes a nice lullaby, in 3/4 time:

I love everybody, especially you
I love everybody, especially you
So if you feel lonesome, remember it's true
I love everybody, especially you.

That's pretty much all there is to the song. It closes out an album of mostly quirky songs, older pieces that didn't fit on his earlier albums (including the classic "Creeps Like Me," which I will undoubtedly quote at some point later this year).

Lyle Lovett brought me back to country music. Mary Chapin Carpenter gets some credit, too, but it was Lyle P. who reminded me that country music didn't have to be the loud and glossy stuff being played on the radio. I almost met him once; our eyes met (I swear!) at a PBS reception my friend Sue Lin invited me along to. Ah, Lyle. What might have been.

Wednesdays are Onion Ring Night at my favorite bar (the previously-mentioned Liberal Cup), so I stopped there last night before going to a brush-up rehearsal for Born Yesterday (which got a nice review in today's Portland Phoenix).

An attractive woman who might have been overserved was sitting at the bar, telling her companion, "I just love people. I really do. I love people. They don't always love me, but I love people."

"Don't start conversations with drunk people" is one of my rules for a happy life, so I didn't ask the obvious question: what does this mean? Would she love Hitler? Would she love Jeffrey Dahmer? Would she love Saddam Hussein?

As Lyle Lovett says in another song on his very first album: "God does, but I don't/God will, but I won't/And that's the difference between God and me."