'"Anchorage" is a song by Michelle Shocked released as a single from her 1988 album Short Sharp Shocked. The song is about the writer taking time out to write to an old friend, who has moved from Texas to Anchorage, and her friend's reply. Although sung, the song retains the feel of the written correspondence between the two. The "sung" letters lyrically describe her friend settling into a life of contented domesticity, talking of her husband Leroy moving to a better job in Alaska, a new baby girl and her son losing a tooth. At the same time she calls for 'Shell to "keep rocking in New York."'
Forgetting the misquotation at the end of the paragraph, but remembering that much of the material in Wikipedia is in effect often written by many people continually 'correcting', the phrase 'contented domesticity' is bizarre in this context, and suggests that the writer(s) has/have no understanding of the song at all.
This song is not called 'Anchorage' for nothing, and the refrain 'Anchorage, anchored down in Anchorage', by its repetition alone, should underline what the song is about: a rather desperate young woman who has given up her freedom in exchange for a life effectively led for her by her husband in particular, but also, of course, her two young children anchor her down further. And the refrain could be the narrator Chel's comment on her friend's predicament, or the sub-text of her friend's letter. She is as existentially dislocated as Alaska - whose east coast adjoins Canada with its west almost touching the USSR - is geographically dislocated from the USA.
She is given no name, as though she is a non-person. Conversely, her husband Leroy (Le Roy = The King, of course), is mentioned by name five times.
This then, is a song of lost self, but also of lost love: the unnamed writer has not only forgotten the name of the song that Chel sang at her wedding, but also says twice in succession ('forget' followed by 'don't recall') that she doesn't remember the song itself. The listener hardly needs to be told that this is because love too has gone.
Oh yeah, I just had to change Wikipedia's 'Anchorage' entry too. I'm sure some person'll alter it, but that's the nature of palimpsests.
ADDENDUM: I don't think I like Michelle Shocked anymore, and don't understand who she is or what she represents. In the light of contradictory statements she's made relatively recently, I think that's all I have to say. (Written 2014, although in no way would I wish this statement to deter anyone from making further comments below.)
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