Fontella Bass - "Hold On This Time"

Despite first appearances, "Hold On This Time" is a song of surpassing dignity. Yes, Bass sings of being cheated on, of being lied to and made a sucker. She admits to having been abandoned and used and then, more or less, having begged for more. The history she recounts is one of continual self-abasement in the course of maintaining a relationship in which she clearly holds the lower hand. On first listen, it may seem that Bass is being pathetically dependent and hopelessly undignified when she admonishes this unrepentant cheater to "hold on" and stay with her. But listen up:

Fontella Bass loves the miserable bastard, and she sees his presence in her life, so long as he is faithful and honest, as a positive one. She is willing to forgive past misdeeds, but by no means to tolerate new ones. She sings her words with firmness and a full voice, without hesitation, but with confidence and resolve. Stay or don't, she says, but no more fucking around. Most importantly, Fontella herself is not fucking around; indeed, she sings with a cocky surety that communicates the knowledge of a self-worth degraded by dude's philandering and contains the implicit threat of a last chance. She asks him to stay not for her sake, mostly, but for his (he's wrong to think she'll always be there to take him back). And she sings that sweet, straight melody so well that this man, whoever he is, recedes into the background, an incidental, probably unworthy inspiration for something rather special.

Shockingly, Fontella Bass is as good at singing as her parents were at naming children.

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