In my Las Vegas kitchen, I sing “Say It Isn’t So” into a plastic whisk. I’ve logged hundreds, maybe thousands, of karaoke hours in my lifetime, but had never sung this song before last month. Nights at Duet 35 in K-Town, in a room full of friends, I usually left the Hall & Oates, the “Sara Smile,” to more versatile singers. Now I sing “Say It Isn’t So” several times a week, cranking the volume on YouTube. The video starts with feet walking in time with the bassline, a determined synth creep of big harmony and pop longing. Hall appears in a striped scarf and a sweep of blond hair, Oates in his dark mustache and leather jacket, and there’s a mouthful of sadness behind the keyboard sparkle, the chords not major enough to pass for unabashedly upbeat. It’s a song about delusion, brightness juxtaposed against its heartbreak lyrics—the singer refuses to believe it’s over, Baby say it isn’t so!—and I sing it through my own delusions and magical thinking: that there will be a next year and a year after, that I’ll be able to see and hug my family again, that there will be a when all this is over and we will all somehow be okay, though already we aren’t.
You have reached your article limit
Sign up for a digital subscription and continue reading all new issues, plus our entire archives, for just $1.50/month.
Already a subscriber? Sign in
