Seven Year Ache

The Seven Year Itch was the name of a particularly irritating skin complaint; by the mid-19th Century the phrase had become a metaphor for an annoying form of behavior. In 1952, it was transformed into a play in which the lead character, played by Tom Ewell, who worked for a publishing company, was reading a book called The Seven Year Itch which claimed that after seven years of marriage, many men started extra-marital affairs. In 1955, it reached the big screen, with Ewell again in the title role, and Marilyn Monroe as his leading lady. Unlike the play and the film, this song by Rosanne Cash is no romantic comedy. The daughter of Johnny Cash met Rodney Crowell at a party on October 16, 1976, and they married on April 7, 1979. Like most relationships, this one was less than perfect, and after a fight with Crowell at a French restaurant on Ventura Boulevard, she penned this semi-auto-biographical number as a poem; she said it took her about six months to write, but clearly it was worth the labor, because it topped the Country chart in May 1981, as well as reaching #22 on the Hot 100. It is unclear if Crowell was "playing away." Probably not, because he produced the song, the title of which indicates that its subject matter is a world away from the whimsical Ewell/Monroe dalliance.

Cash wrote this song in 1979. When she was looking for ideas for the album, she decided to construct a theme around this song. Based on the concept of lovers who fight, break up, then reconcile, the Seven Year Ache album included songs that dealt in some way with the feelings of falling apart and coming back together as a couple. Most of the songs were written by other artists: "What Kinda Girl?," where she asserts her independence, was written by Steve Forbert; "I Can't Resist," where the couple comes back together, is the only Rodney Crowell composition on the set.

This is by far the biggest hit for Rosanne Cash, whose only other Hot 100 chart appearance is "Blue Moon With Heartache," which bubbled under at #104 in 1982. Cash never went for mass appeal in her songwriting, which makes her stay on the Top 40 an anomaly. "Seven Year Ache," however, proved that she could generate a hit song, which led to more creative opportunities and a step outside of her father's shadow.