Track of the Day: “Androgynous” – The Replacements

It’s easy to act mature when writing songs. It’s even easier to be juvenile and silly. But few groups could manage to be both quite like The Replacements.

Most of the album “Let it Be” can be divided into two groups of songs. There are the raucous punk songs from a band that refuses to be taken seriously, including “Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out,” “Seen Your Video” and the KISS cover “Black Diamond.” Then, there are the true steps into mature, heartfelt song writing, such as “I Will Dare,” “Sixteen Blue” and “Answering Machine.”

To this day, I’m not sure which category “Androgynous” belongs to, but I love it more for this reason.

It’s full of contradictions. The song’s arrangement is sparse and loose, like most of the Replacements’s best songs. Primarily, it’s just singer/songwriter Paul Westerberg playing some rudimentary piano chords and singing about a couple who fall in love wearing each other’s clothes. You’d think it’s one of the funny songs.

Then, consider how The Replacements never really used piano primarily on their albums before. It would be a new direction for the band, focusing more on playing a pop song instead of rushing through a punk song.

And then there are lyrics. I still chuckle at Westerberg’s first line, “Here comes Dick/He’s wearing a skirt.” Again, you’d think it was one of their joke songs. But that’s not entirely true.

By the end of the song, before the third chorus when Westerberg labels Dick and Jane as “future outcasts” when they dress like their gender, he’s saying something about the nature of fads and the stereotypes that come with them.

He’s looking down at people who would judge them for looking the way they do when all that matters is that they love each other. It’s subtly one of Westerberg’s deepest songs.

Above all else, “Androgynous” is one of the catchiest tunes Westerberg ever penned. Putting it on with a group of friends seems to magically encourage people to put their arms around each other and sing along, “Closer than you know/Love each other so/Androgynous.”

At that point, whether or not the song is joke or a statement doesn’t seem to matter. That’s probably the song’s best quality – it can be exactly what you want it to be.