Oh, Michelle

Michelle at Fat Nutritionist wrote a terrific post today skewering the typical “Holiday Eating” articles.   She also, fatally, mentioned both Maggie May* and Michelle.

So of course this popped into my brain**:

Like many songs, it has a story behind it.  Unlike many songs, I actually have heard the story behind this one at a concert.   Seanan McGuire (singer/songwriter/blonde) was chatting with Michelle Dockrey (also a singer/songwriter, though not of this song; redhead; Michelle is also known as Vixy) on IM.   And Vixy was not feeling well.  In fact she was feeling very, very ill.  Vixy told Seanan how terrible she felt, and how it was probably some sort of Martian Death Flu or something similarly horrible, and after she died, Seanan, as her best friend, must immortalize her in song.

And you know how, in IM, you can see when the other person is typing, but not what they’ve typed?   Well, as Vixy tells it, she could see “Seanan is typing” for what seemed long a long while….and Vixy asks, “You’re writing it right now, aren’t you?”

And then came the first part of the song.  The chorus is:

Oh, Michelle, what the hell

Were you thinkin’ — were you drinkin’?

Did you really not believe things could go so, so wrong?

Oh, Michelle, how the hell

Can I tell your friends what happened?

I can barely scratch the surface in this song.

Full lyrics are here.

So, just in case Michelle (Fat Nutritionist Michelle) ever wanted a change from the Beatles Michelle, she now has Seanan’s Oh, Michelle to give her a change.  Or something.

*For maximum confusion I tend to “hear” the Melissa Etheridge version (I think from her Unplugged concert) combined with Rod Stewart’s.

**I tried to post it over there, but it didn’t embed, and anyway telling the story seemed like hugely threadjacking, so.