music clip of the day

two takes

“I’m Your Puppet” (D. Penn & S. Oldham)

James & Bobby Purify, TV show, 1966

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Dan Penn (guitar, vocals) & Spooner Oldham (keyboards), TV show, 1999

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This is one of the sadder, and stranger, love songs I know. “I’ll do funny things if you want me to”: someone who’ll “do funny things” on command but isn’t, as far as we can tell, otherwise funny is someone who’s desperate to please. And that, to me, is what this song’s about more than anything else—desperation. This is a guy who’ll “do anything.” He’s “hanging on a string.”