All Over

While I was doing the grocery shopping today, I could tell by the music playing that Sunday afternoons were exactly when the grocery stores expected people my age to be shopping. They were playing “You Got It All” by a group called the Jets, whom I’ve never heard about since then. I’ve now learned that Britney Spears did a cover of it in 2000 on her Oops! I Did It Again album. This song that usually prompted me to change the station back when I heard it on the radio in the 1980s. It wasn’t just that it was slow and boring with an aimless melody, though that was most of the problem. It was that plus the fact that the song was apparently written by someone who thought it was classy to compare your new boyfriend to your old one — with lines like “You’re all that he’s not” and “Don’t let him worry you so.” Being compared to an old boyfriend, even favorably, makes me squirm.

The one redeeming feature of the song was the smile it gave me when circumstances conspired to make me listen to the chorus. Or at least, I think it was the chorus. Melodically, it was hard to distinguish it from the rest of the song, but the words were repeated. It went like this:

You’ve got it all over him.
You got me over him;
Honey, it’s true, there’s just you.
You must have been heaven-sent,
Hearing me call, you went out on a limb.
And you’re all that he’s not,
Just look what I got,
‘Cause you got it all over him.

“You got it all over him,” I would think. “And now he has to wipe it off!”

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