Song of the Week: "The Sweater" by Meryn Cadell (1991)

Those of you who went to Crazy Go Nuts University and hung out in Clark Hall Pub in the early 1990s are probably familiar with Meryn Cadell’s spoken-word piece The Sweater of her album Angel Food for Thought, a number I used to play near the beginning of my DJ shifts before the dance floor really got rocking. If you don’t recognize the title, you might recognize the opening sentences that followed an opening organ riff sampled from the theme to Un Homme et Une Femme…

Girls, I know you will understand this, and feel the intrinsic, incredible emotion. You have just pulled over your head the worn, warm sweater belonging to A Boy.

Unlikely as it was, the number proved to be a hit; some people even got on the dance floor when this number came on. For a while, I’d always get a request from some young woman to play the song, and I recall people asking me to put it on a mixed tape for them.

(For the younger readers: Back in the stone-age days of the early 1990s, the most practical way to share music was to pass around recordings made on a spool of thin plastic called “tape” contained in a plastic casing called a “cassette”. We also thought that ADD was caused by evil spirits.)

The Sweater also got heavy rotation on Accordion City’s alt-rock station CFNY (now “102.1 The Edge”, a mere shadow of its former self) and MuchMusic. Thanks to the magic of YouTube, you can watch the old video:

So where is Meryn Cadell now? According to Torontoist, Meryn’s now in Vancouver, working as a university professor, happier than ever and…a man.

This Torontoist interview is the inspiration for this week’s Song of the Week, The Sweater [4.8 MB MP3], which will be available for a week, and then will evaporate. (Well, there’s also the matter of my not having a copy of Monty Python’s Penis Song handy.) Enjoy the song, and welcome to the club, Meryn!