WALLACE BROS. RELEASE 2010 VALENTINE’S DAY SINGLE, ROMANCE BLOSSOMS AROUND THE WORLD
For Immediate Release — “I knew I loved her,” stammers Artie Pyle, a shy but handsome grocery store clerk, as he clutches the hand of his beaming new girlfriend, Betsey Smith. “I just didn’t know what to say.”
“It was the Wallace Bros. who did it,” Betsey adds, rumpling his hair. “They brought us together.”
Pyle and Smith’s experience is not unique. Their budding romance is just one of literally thousands that have blossomed around the world in the wake of the release of the Wallace Bros. 2010 Valentine’s Day Single: “New Boyfriend.”
“I was crazy about her for years,” says Ben Hutton, gazing with adoration at Heather Stevens, a pretty coffee shop barista.
“But he never said anything!” Stevens exclaims. “He just kept telling me about all these tricks he could do with his skateboard. Until ‘New Boyfriend’ came out.”
The song’s unusual power may lie in the fact that although Mark, the band’s guitarist, bassist, and 'drummer', is responsible for most of the song’s underlying structure, his sister Carey wrote the bridge and lyrics. “She’s a female,” Mark explains. “So she knows what they want.”
“I just thought, what would be nice to hear?” says Carey. “And that’s what I wrote.”
“Basically it’s like kryptonite,” Mark adds. “For girls.”
International response has been overwhelming. Women across the globe seem unable to resist the song’s simple promises. In the twenty-four hours immediately following the single’s release, social networking sites like facebook and myspace registered a 30% decrease in the number of profiles which list themselves as “single”, and at the time of this writing, that number continues in freefall.
As with any smash success, the song has its detractors. “Let’s be honest,” says Sharon Jones, the author of How To Marry A Millionaire (In Under A Year). “Men will tell a woman just about anything. I heard a guy last week tell one girl he’d been undercover with Mossad, and the next girl that he’d been building hospitals with Hamas. When he got stuck in between them at the bar, he started speaking French and pretended he’d never met either of them. ‘New Boyfriend’ is a nice song, but it just gives men another script."
Thousands of happy couples around the world beg to differ. “I feel a lot of things,” says William McLeod. “But putting them into words has never been easy.” The afternoon clerk at his local library, McLeod read every book that pretty Laurie Avery checked out after she returned them. With each volume, his love grew – but despite the reams of poetry that lined the shelves around him, he couldn’t find the words to express his devotion until the release of ‘New Boyfriend.’
“He copied them out for me and slipped them in the dust jacket of the new Cortazar translation,” says Avery, waiting at the foot of the library stairs for McLeod’s shift to end. “But I don’t know if it was what he actually said that mattered so much. Just that he said something.”
The Wallace Bros:
The jezebel.com Interview
jbz: The Wallace Bros. are involved in a flurry of creative activity, not just the release of your traditional Valentine’s Day single, but revisiting your entire catalog in the process of recording a Greatest Hits album. And from what I understand, heartbreak has historically been a primary creative engine for the band.
CW: That’s fair to say.
jbz: Mark, you’ve been in the tabloids recently in a whole series of high-profile breakups, including Condoleeza Rice—
MW: Well, Condi and I have been on and off for so long now I’m not really sure I’d call it news.
jbz: Pamela Anderson..
MW: You know she teaches Sunday School? That’s really what attracted me to her.
jbz: And Katie Couric.
MW: She’s a sweet girl, but a little f***ed up.
jbz: But Carey hasn’t been linked with anyone in the media.
MW: Oh, Carey’s got a real talent for heartbreak. She doesn’t even need to be seeing anybody. She takes a walk around the block, and her heart gets broken.
CW: I’m not sure I’d call it a talent.
jbz: Well, wherever you get the inspiration, you two have a smash hit on your hands with ‘New Boyfriend.’ And some people are attributing that to the fact that it’s written for a woman, by a woman.
CW: In the grand tradition.
jbz: The grand tradition?
CW: Well, most of the romantic heroes women love were written by women. Rhett Butler. Edward Cullen. Mr. Darcy.
jbz: I love Mr. Darcy.
CW: You and a lot of otherwise intelligent women.
jbz: I’m sorry?
CW: Those characters don't appear in books written by men, because they're nothing but wish-fulfillment. They’re selling salvation dressed down as true love. But if you start looking for God in another person, you’re all f***ed. Look at the lives of the authors. The real-life model for Ashley Wilkes was gay, which explains a lot of things. The guy Margaret Mitchell based Rhett Butler on used to beat her up. He killed himself jumping out the window of a Salvation Army hotel. And you know Jane Austen never got married, right?
jbz: What are you saying? Romantic heroes don’t exist in real life?
CW: I’m saying they don’t look like Mr. Darcy.
MW: That’s right! F*** Mr. Darcy!
CW: But it’s not just women who get caught up with the idea of heroes. Men are always trying to come up with a big gesture to please some girl who’s already crazy about them just for being the boy next door. He’s running around trying to prove he’s good enough for her, and she just wants him to sit down and hold her hand.
MW: Really it’s about the simple things. Like in ‘New Boyfriend.’
jbz: Just a minute ago, you suggested we judge works of romantic imagination based on the successes or failures of their authors in real-life romance. So would it be fair for me to ask about your own history in that area?
CW: Well, you know, monks retreat from the press of life so they can see that much more clearly into it.
MW: Don’t you have any other questions on that sheet?
jbz: The Wallace Bros. put out a Valentine’s single every year. Any favorite Valentine’s Day memories?
MW: THE REPLACEMENTS!! WHOOO-OOOOOO!!!!
CW: Hill Auditorium, 1991.
MW: It was a blizzard that night, so Drew’s dad had to drive us into town. We went like fifteen miles an hour on Jackson Road. Tommy was so drunk he barely played. We were four rows back from the stage. None of us could hear for days.
jbz: So.. 1991. Your best Valentine’s ever?
CW: No question.
jbz: Nothing’s topped it since then?
MW: Topped The Replacements? What, you mean like, (high squeaky voice) The Fleet Foxes? Death Cab For f***ng Cutie? I don’t think so.
jbz: So it doesn’t sound like Valentine’s Day has been much of a romantic holiday for you, which is interesting, because ‘New Boyfriend’ is this unabashedly, even embarrassingly romantic song.
CW: That’s kind of a philosophical position for the band. True love. The happy ending. As opposed to all the sophisticated ‘close enough’, ‘what I can get’, or ‘seems to be working’ you see out there.
jbz: A minute ago you were arguing against the romantic hero.
CW: Because he’s the enemy of true love. Whether you’re looking for him, or thinking you’re going to be him. True love’s a species of grace. It doesn’t come to you because you deserve it. But you have to reach for it when you see it. That’s why we sing about love: so people don’t forget what it looks like with all the counterfeits out there and the bargains people cut.
jbz: But your B-side is undeniably bleak. ‘New Boyfriend’ is so hopeful it verges on naive. By the flipside you don’t ever want to see the person again. It’s really a brutal break-up song.
CW: Well, we are Wallaces. It’s in our blood. We’re all about the clean cut. You’ve seen Braveheart, right?
MW: I see it as cradle-to-grave entertainment. You’ve got everything you need for the whole relationship, all on one record. And breaking up can be romantic.
jbz: It can?
MW: Well, like everything, it depends on the circumstances. I mean, were you banging some bartender so your girl kicked you out? Not so romantic. But when something’s not right and so you let it go, despite the comfort and the company, you just let it go, and you step out all alone, into the cold, and you’re standing out there in the street by yourself, not sure if anyone else is ever going to come along, or if you’re the last man in the world, well, that’s pretty much the most romantic thing I ever heard. Because you just bet all your ‘good enough’ on a happy ending.
jbz: I never thought of it like that.
MW: Well, that’s what we’re here for. That’s why we sing the songs. To keep people from giving up. To remember the difference between true love and good enough. It’s not sophisticated. It might not even be smart. But it’s what the Wallace Bros. are all about, man. Taking the long odds on the happy ending.