08.14.2018
UNWANTED NUMBER
“There’s a local game where they whisper my shame
They say, “He gave her his child, he wouldn’t give her his name”
– UNWANTED NUMBER
“Unwanted Number”, is written in the voice of a young unmarried mother who chooses love over judgment.
“Unwanted Number” was written in 1995, one month before Burt Bacharach and I wrote, “God Give Me Strength”, our first co-composition.
Both songs were featured in the motion picture, “Grace Of My Heart”, the vocal group, For Real performing “Unwanted Number” in an arrangement patterned after one of Holland/Dozier/Holland’s social commentaries such as, “I’m Living In Shame”.
When I came to re-consider this song for “Look Now”, it no longer felt to me like the portrait of a victim, rather in the words of someone who could rise above cruel slanders and circumstance, giving love to her child, in the absence of any real example of how to do it.
Unwanted NumberYou should hear the things that they say about me
They’re saying, “She’s no better than she needed to be”
They don’t know that he was kind and warm and tender
Soon there’s going to be another Unwanted Number
How can I tell them?
How can I express?
How it felt to step out of this life and into his embrace
How can I tell them?
How can I explain?
All the love that I never had I found in him
There may be a stain on the family name
But if my Father was here I think I know who he’d blame
Mother says that he just doesn’t care to remember
And all he thinks of me is another Unwanted Number
What can she tell me?
What can I expect?
Of all the painful lessons that she learned
She never earned respect
What can she tell me?
What can I believe?
That she really didn’t hear me cry
Whenever he would leave
There’s a local game where they whisper my shame
They say, “He gave her his child, he wouldn’t give her his name”
They will torture me from January to September
And I will give my love to another Unwanted Number
I will give my love to another Unwanted Number
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