1985Released
4:20

Did You Know?

Interesting facts and trivia about Voices Carry. By Songfacts®.

The haunting, captivating "Voices Carry" hit like a sledgehammer in 1985, when songs that expressed such pathos were rarely heard on the radio unless they came from male vocalists ("Careless Whisper" by Wham!, "Shout" by Tears For Fears). 'Til Tuesday's lead singer was Aimee Mann, who later emerged as a formidable solo artist. She wrote the lyric, declaring each line like an entry in a diary. There are very dark undertones in the song, hinting at an abusive relationship: I try so hard not to get upset Because I know all the trouble I'll get The guy wants her to keep her voice down so he can keep what they have going a secret. And while at first he's simply telling her to hush, by the end the song this is elevated to "shut up!" Silenced, Mann ends the song with the line, "I wish he would let me talk." Speaking on the podcast Conan O'Brien Needs A Friend, Mann explained what inspired the lyric: "I wrote it about a friend of mine - a male friend - who was talking about a relationship where the girl didn't want to be affectionate with him in public, like, 'Keep your voice down, don't tell people we're going out.' The reason I related to that story was because of my history."

"Voices Carry" was huge on MTV, which had been around for four years and was all the rage with teenagers lucky enough to get cable. Directed by D.J. Webster, it shows Aimee Mann in her distinctive haircut looking like a starched Pomeranian with a rat-tail. Like Pat Benatar's "Love Is A Battlefield" video, it uses dialogue to tell the story, opening with her oaf of a boyfriend (played by Cully Holland) saying very sarcastically, "I'm so happy the band's doing well. And by the way, what's with the hair?" We see Mann rehearsing with the group, pouring her emotions into the songs. The creepy boyfriend keeps berating her for having a music career instead of being his hausfrau, and to compound his villainy, he even gets rough with her. When they go to Carnegie Hall to watch the symphony, Mann can't take it anymore and has an outburst in the middle of the theater, finally expressing her pent-up frustration. This scene was inspired by the 1956 Alfred Hitchcock movie The Man Who Knew Too Much, where Doris Day screams during a symphony to thwart a murder.

The video put a very different spin on the song, with Mann finding the strength to stand up to her tormentor. "I didn't write it as a feminist anthem, but when it came time to make the video, that idea was in the air," she told Conan O'Brien. "It was very heavy handed." She added that the guy in the video is really not her type. "Come on, give me some credit. I'm not going to go out with this muscle-bound doofus." Mann's man is Michael Penn, a fellow singer-songwriter of great empathy and intuition whom she married in 1997.

Song Analysis

Key, BPM (tempo) and time signature of Voices Carry.
CKey
MajorMode
4/4Time Signature
105BPM

Album

The album Voices Carry is released on.

Released By

The record label that has released Voices Carry.
Epic
(P) 1985 Sony Music Entertainment Inc.

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