I recently came across a performance of I’ve Got You Babe done by Sonny and Cher in 1987:

This performance was approximately 12 years after their divorce (if you’re not familiar with Sonny & Cher, they were a husband-and-wife singing duo in the 1960s and 1970s). This makes many of the lyrics quite ironic.

They say we’re young and we don’t know
We won’t find out until we grow

You were young and didn’t know.

Well I don’t know if all that’s true
Cause you got me, and baby I got you.

It was true.

[HER:] They say our love won’t pay the rent
Before it’s earned, our money’s all been spent

To be fair, here, their love did pay the rent. They were a very popular singing duo. But like many things in this life, it did until it didn’t. After their divorce, they ceased to be popular.

They would each eventually recover in their own way, but their attempt to continue singing together failed. There’s an interesting subject here about popular figures selling an idea, not themselves, and when the idea turns out to be an illusion, the figures cease to be popular. It’s an interesting subject that popular people often have to deal with—that it’s not them that their fans love, but who they are when they perform. And yet, who else could their fans love?

Fame is a very curious thing, because while not bad in itself, in this fallen world it makes all sorts of very empty promises.

[HIM:] I guess that’s so, we don’t have a pot
But at least I’m sure of all the things we got

Yeah. That turned out to be mistaken certainty. There’s a great line in either C.S. Lewis or Chesterton which I cannot find again, which was itself quoting something that was, if my memory isn’t deceiving me, a line given to a fictional pagan:

In this way can man best the gods: he can keep his promises.

The Greek and Roman gods set a very low bar for behaving better than them and yet so often human beings fall below it all the same.

Anyway, back to the song:

[HIM:] I got flowers in the spring
I got you to wear my ring

That’s a start. Alas, the promise implied in wearing the ring turned out to be a false promise.

[HER:] And when I’m sad, you’re a clown
And if I get scared, you’re always around

Well, not always.

[HER:] So let them say your hair’s too long
Cause I don’t care, with you I can’t go wrong

Eventually he cut his hair and, according to her divorce filing, she went wrong with him. (Cher alleged involuntary servitude for his withholding of money they made together.)

[HIM:] Then put your little hand in mine
There ain’t no hill or mountain we can’t climb

But long before the end, they couldn’t climb any hills together. Let alone any mountains.

[HIM:] I got you to hold my hand
[HER:] I got you to understand
[HIM:] I got you to walk with me
[HER:] I got you to talk with me
[HIM:] Igot you to kiss goodnight
[HER:] I got you to hold me tight
[HIM:] I got you, I won’t let go
[HER:] I got you to love me so

[BOTH:] I got you babe
I got you babe
I got you babe
I got you babe
I got you babe

They did. Then they didn’t.

It’s a truism of human life that promises are easy to make and hard to keep; the trick to making a lot of money as an entertainer is to sell the illusion that you’re keeping a promise when all you’re doing is making it. (That enables you to make mutually exclusive promises, increasing your revenue.)

And then figuring out a new shtick when people find out that all you were doing was making promises you weren’t going to keep.

For some reason I always connect this song with Cher’s much later song If I Could Turn Back Time.

There’s no actual connection between these two songs, of course. If I could Turn Back Time was released in 1989. Sonny and Cher had long-since moved on from each other and by this time Cher’s public persona was utterly disconnected from Sonny’s. Moreover, given her desperation for fame (fun fact: Cher was 43 at the time the music video was filmed and it was her creative decision to be semi-nude), it seems unlikely that Cher actually had regrets about not fulfilling her personal responsibilities.

And yet. And yet, the songs do go really well together as a pairing. One of those odd coincidences of life, I suppose.