When I was growing up, I had a few hobbies. I collected baseball and football cards, hot wheels and matchbox cars, the WLS Chicago chart sheets (picked up at Laurie's Records in the Deerfield Commons), records and tapes. I read Hardy Boys books. I tried rug hooking, that didn't go very far. Swimming, baseball, and listening to music.
Hobbies is 60s pop from the Joe Meek universe. A springboard intro gives way to a chorus of Lalalala, hobbies...then into boys boys nothing but boys, I've had my eye on quite a few...sung with a 'wink wink.' A teen girl aims to catch a boy by telling him, you know that I'll be true 'cause my only hobby is you.
It gets pretty weird when she starts abandoning all of her other crazy hobbies, like dance moves, books, and records. She sings I've got a brand new hobby that I'd like to add you to. I get sort of confused here. If the boy himself is supposedly a unique hobby (and her only hobby), to what new hobby will he be added? I mean, he can't be added to himself, can he? Hmmm? Alas, I have a feeling he's just one boy among many. Maybe she's planning to shut him in a room with other collected boys, like the Monty Python milkmen. "Is that all I am to you, Jenny? A hobby?!"
The music is a delicious malt shop of pizzicato strings, bass, guitar, harmonica and drum flourishes, Jenny Moss's voice all draped in heavenly reverb, with the chorus just behind, radiating shadows.
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