Suicide Blonde – INXS

Link to song

This song takes me back to my childhood. Not that I understood it at all, I might add. But this song is so important to me because it reminds me of my mum, the way she used to be.

She would play this all the time when I was little, and she would laugh at me when I made up a spectacular and shameless dance routine for it, as kids as prone to do. With a belated sense of horror I recall how my hips would execute a harsh and pointed thrust backward and forward on every repetition of the words ‘suicide blonde’. This was also a move I wowed the crowds with at my dad’s wedding when I was 4 years old if I remember correctly… I think I will move on before I attract every neo-Freudian from here to China.

Anyway, I have nothing but good memories of this song, and of my mother when I listen to it. No matter how my relationship is with her, or what my feelings are towards her, at that moment, this song erases all ill feeling. At least for those 4 minutes.

I don’t know how often my mother took advantage of my apparent lack of inhibition with this song, but it was never malicious, she just adored me and our time together. I miss those days sometimes; I think in reality I just miss that version of my mother. The one that laughed and smiled and was good natured.

I don’t listen to this song any more, I never really feel an inclination to put it on in my adult life. But the funny thing is, wherever I go, if this was playing, I don’t think even my adult sense of self-preservation could stop me from re-enacting those steps and reliving those fond memories.