My Little Tribute to the Late Shelley Duvall

There is some drama going on in my apartment. My report on it will have to wait, though, because I owe a tribute to the recently deceased Shelley Duvall. Some of my earliest memories are of her voice issuing from the CD player in my parents' basement. She was a second mother figure to me. I made this meme in her honor.

Her release from mortality is probably for the best because she hadn't aged well. Her physical and mental decline was heartbreaking to see. She largely avoided the spotlight in her old age, but in a controversial appearance on Dr. Phil in 2016, she opined that her Popeye costar Robin Williams wasn't dead, just shape-shifting. She probably supported Trump too. Regardless, a formative piece of my childhood, of myself, is gone. The world of the nineties is quickly disappearing forever.

At least her lullaby album lives on. It might not be Grammy material, but it ironically has far more sophisticated lyrics than the Harry Nilsson songs she sang in Popeye. (Who could forget such classics as "He needs me, he needs me, he needs me, he needs me, he needs me, he needs me"?) Here's that album, direct from my YouTube channel. I recommend it to any parents of little children, though more particularly little boys because a few of the lyrics specify that she's singing to a little boy. That seems unnecessary, especially since she didn't have any children of her own to whom she could have been singing, but it worked fine for me so I can't complain too much.

Hey Little One

She opens this opening track with "Hello, I'm Shelley Duvall. I'd like to sing a little lullaby or two for you." Chills. When I heard that as a kid, I knew I was in for a treat.

Itty Bitty Kid

Kind of an upbeat, almost marching song. Not really a lullaby, it occurs to me for the first time in thirty-one years.

Small Fry

Now this is more of a lullaby. And now we really feel the depth of her feelings for her imaginary little boy as she sings, "You... are the apple... of... my eye." That sounded sarcastic, but it wasn't.

Little Kid's World

In a similar vein to Madonna's "Dear Jessie," but less treacly, here's a tribute to the boundless imagination that most children have before it's squelched by Blippi and the public school system. I admit the chorus is a little weak, though. "In a little kid's world, a little kid's house, you can find anything from a rabbit, to a mouse." Wow, very range, such a diverse. That sounded sarcastic because it was. I still love her, though. Shelley Duvall, I mean, but Madonna is great too.

Twinkle

This song is more poignant than any children's lullaby has a right to be. Here, she sings not to her imaginary little boy, but to a star outside her window that she considers her "dearest friend." Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but damn, she sounds lonely. SPOILER ALERT, the ending tears my heart out: "I know that I can't touch you... but I want so very much to... You know how much I love you... Liiiiiiittle... star..."

Why?

This song is a tribute to the curiosity that children have about literally everything, but it resonates with me more than ever as an adult grappling with existential and philosophical questions that I could never have imagined back then. She alludes to those ever so slightly, though, as she sings from the child's perspective that she adopted just for this one song, "Is there someone special called God?" And like her, I plead, "Tell me how? Why? I wanna know! How does it work? What makes it go? If it's just a puppet, then who pulls the strings? Is it all magic? Or is it just a dream?"

Before You Were Born

One of the reasons I took so long to leave the LDS Church was that it teaches the existence of our souls before we were born more consistently and "officially" than any other religion I'm aware of. That concept made sense to me then and it makes sense to me now. Based on my research of near-death experiences, I still believe it, though of course I don't believe the specific details about the war in heaven and Black people being less valiant and all that jazz. Anyway, I think a lot of people intuitively sense this truth without being taught it. In this song, Shelley Duvall (who was never LDS) tells her imaginary little boy that he was in heaven before he was born. And she says a lot of other stuff that's really sweet.

Rain

I love the sound effects and the sproingy instrumental thing during the chorus that kind of evokes raindrops even though it sounds nothing like them. If I knew anything about music, I could say what the instrument is, but I don't. I just know what I like.

Little Child

I don't know what to say about this one. It's just a nice little song about how much she loves her little child, in case she hadn't managed to get that point across yet.

Tiny Pillow

This is the perfect song to close the album, as it's the best one to fall asleep to. So soft, so soothing, the aural equivalent of a pillow. An unidentified male joins her for the chorus, and I always imagined he was the imaginary little boy's father who had finally gotten home from work.