Image from Say Anything… used in accordance with fair use laws for academic analysis

I got out of the shower, threw on some clothes and found Susan in the kitchen brewing coffee. The question burned a hole down to my soul. “If Lloyd Dobler is so cool, why does he play that lame-ass song on his boombox?” Susan knew this reference, do you? John Cusack in the movie Say Anything… stands on Diane Court’s (Ione Skye) lawn, tape deck held above his head, and blasts out In Your Eyes by Peter Gabriel. This might be THE iconic scene, the crown jewel of the eighties Brat Pack romance memories. An image immediately recognizable by anyone born between 1960 and 1985. And it’s ruined by the blandest song imaginable.

Actual Lyrics from In Your Eyes:

In your eyes
In your eyes
In your eyes
In your eyes (in your eyes)
In your eyes
In your eyes (in your eyes)
In your eyes (in your eyes)

Okay, I might have cherry-picked those lyrics from the closing bars of the song, but seriously, they use the phrase thirty-one times in the song. Repetitive. Dull. Annoying.

The rest of the music in that movie has an edge. The soundtrack offers a round-up of eighties alternative bands that scream cool: Red Hot Chilli Peppers, The Replacements, Mother Love Bone, Soundgarden and Fishbone. Other John Cusack films follow suit. Grosse Point Blank features recurrent soundtrack appearances from the Clash, the Specials, the Pixies, the Jam, and the Violent Femmes. Sort of a who’s who of my Spotify playlist.

In 1989, this music was fringe. In my rural town, it’s still fringe. It’s outside the mainstream, unfamiliar, banished from commercial radio, not pop or country or classic rock, but undeniably hip. People like me, and I suppose the Lloyd Doblers and John Cusacks of the world, think: if everyone could just hear this music, they’d be hooked.

Just like his music, Lloyd Dobler has edge. He’s an outsider looking in, trying to fight conformity in his corner of the world. As a recent high school graduate, when asked what his future plans entail, he replies:

“I don’t want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don’t want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don’t want to do that.”

He’s the anti-capitalist, a backlash against Reagan’s America.

As a thirty-five-year-old, I played a bar game with friends. We each needed to make a case for which actor would play us in a movie about our life. Naturally, I selected John Cusack. We’re about the same age, the same build, we identify as off-beat outsiders, and we seemingly possess identical taste in music. Same-same, twinsies, why wouldn’t he play me.

And this brings me back to my point. Did Cusack have any creative control in Say Anything…? If so, why did he film such an important scene with THAT song? I wouldn’t have used that song. I would have chosen from hundreds of better, more interesting, livelier eighties love songs. A handful of suggestions off the top of my head:

Obsession by Animotion
Love is a Battlefield by Pat Benatar
Time After Time by Cyndi Lauper
When Doves Cry by Prince
Almost anything by the Cure

Susan responded to my post-shower question: “The chicks dig it.” OK, she didn’t say “the chicks dig it,” that’s something I would say. She said something along the lines of “people love that song.” So Cusack green-lit In Your Eyes because it’s a crowd-pleaser, something for the masses, even though it’s a song Lloyd Dobler would never listen to. I’m going to name this phenomenon the Dobler Effect—when someone prefers fringe music but blanderizes their musical taste to accommodate the people around them.

Yes, this is a play on words, a nod to the Doppler Effect. Doppler Effect (n): the change in the frequency of a wave in relation to an observer who is moving relative to the source of the wave. Did that make any sense? It’s just a complicated way of describing something we already innately know. Think of a British ambulance. As the ambulance approaches, the neee-nuuu neee-nuuu pitch becomes higher and higher. After the ambulance passes, it gets lower and lower.

In each of these effects—Dobler and Doppler—a person’s perspective impacts the way they hear the sound. Susan points this out frequently. While listening to the same song, we hear very different music. I hear an intricate guitar solo in the random feedback of the Dream Syndicate. I conjure a melody in the jangly, atonal stummings of the Gang of Four. I pick up crooning in Johnny Lydon’s grating voice. I find solace and relaxation in the scraping guitars and screamed lyrics of Sonic Youth. Someone else considers In Your Eyes symphonic. I want to yawn.

Is it my neurodiversity? My rebellious nature? The fact that I was raised by a man who listened to Herb Albert and the Tiajuana Brass? I’m not sure, but I think genetics play a role. I can almost discern a member of my tribe just by looking at them.

It doesn’t surprise me that Lloyd Dobler woos Diane Court with a boring hit single. I do this all the time. As I create the playlists for the indoor cycle (spin) classes I instruct, I make sure I include four or five accessible songs, the crowd pleasers. Not boring songs, certainly, but songs everybody knows and likes. When someone walks away from my class thinking “what the hell was that,” I also want them thinking “oh, right, he played X, Y and Z, too.” We all do this, I think, those of us outside mainstream music. I have separate playlists in Spotify to play when I’m around other people. My principal playlist, Radio Jeff, is just for me. No one else would tolerate it.

I suspect the Dobler Effect and its non-musical cousins are familiar to most of us. We constantly make concessions to ease the discomfort of those around us. We drive slower for our spouse. We cook simpler meals for our kids. We dress in ways our boss deems appropriate. I’m sure each of us has an area where we naturally bend the norms of society. What’s telling is how we deal with that desire. Do we steadfastly plow ahead, refusing to give in, or do we recognize that compromise is necessary for civil society. Hopefully the latter, but Christ, In Your Eyes? C’mon Lloyd, you can do better than that.

Below is a recent spin playlist, one of my most accessible, actually. Constructing this mix was what got me thinking about the Dobler Effect and music-for-the-masses in the first place. Yes, this is what I consider music-for-the-masses.