Peggy Lee / Rare Gems and Hidden Treasures / 2000
Similau (See-Me-Lo)
hypnotic, ceremonial, sensuous
This is a brief exotica-styled incantation built around a repeated chant word, staging a ritual invocation of natural and bodily forces rather than telling a story. Peggy Lee uses percussive repetition and pseudo-ceremonial imagery to conjure mood more than meaning, in the tradition of mid-century lounge and tiki exotica.
ritual and invocation desire and renewal nature as spiritual force exoticism hope against aging
Who's speaking
An unnamed speaker addresses a spirit directly, functioning as a supplicant or celebrant in a ritual; the voice is sincere within the song's invented ceremony, not ironic, though the listener may register the exoticist artifice surrounding it.
What happens
The song moves through a series of invocations rather than a plot: first calling on a wood-spirit to heal and revive the body, then on a heart-spirit to sustain vitality and hope as youth fades. A middle section imagines a lover's arrival triggering cosmic-scale events, before the song returns to the opening image, now cast as an echo, ending on a note of anticipation for renewed passion.
How it's built
The song is built in four stanzas, each ending in the chant refrain, giving it a call-and-response, hymn-like shape. The third stanza breaks the pattern by dropping the refrain and shifting into hyperbolic imagery, functioning as a bridge before the final stanza folds back to the opening figure with a variation.
Section by section
Opening stanza
The invocation begins with a spirit residing in a carved instrument, asked to relieve suffering and restore physical vitality, establishing the song's ritual register from the first line.'
Second stanza
“keep the hope alive when the youth go past”
The address shifts to a heart-spirit, moving from bodily healing to emotional endurance, introducing an undercurrent of mortality and the wish to outlast time's erosion of youth.
Bridge
“fill the river with the sea”
The song abandons the refrain to describe the lover's arrival in images of impossible scale, suggesting the disorienting, world-altering force of desire without needing literal sense.
Closing stanza
The final stanza returns to the opening image but transforms it into an echo waiting to reignite, closing the ritual on anticipation rather than resolution, as if the ceremony is ongoing rather than completed.
Craft
- anaphora
- Repeated openings invoking the spirit in the wood and in the heart create an incantatory, prayer-like rhythm that reinforces the ritual framing.
- refrain/vocable
- The recurring nonsense-word chant functions less as lyric content than as rhythmic and sonic ritual, anchoring the song's exotica atmosphere.
- hyperbole
- The bridge's images of flinging mountains into the sky and merging river with sea exaggerate the lover's impact to cosmic scale, signaling ecstatic disproportion rather than literal description.
- symbolism
- The hollow cane and its echo symbolize an emptied vessel awaiting renewal, tying physical instrument to spiritual and erotic reawakening.
Reading it
The most persuasive reading treats the song as a piece of invented ritual language designed to evoke mystery and sensuality through sound and repetition rather than communicate discursive meaning -- consistent with the exotica genre's use of pseudo-ethnographic imagery. An alternative reading takes the wood and heart spirits more sincerely as stand-ins for a personal meditation on aging and desire, with the ceremonial trappings serving a genuine emotional plea for renewed vitality and love. Both readings can coexist: the exoticist form carries a real emotional undercurrent about time, longing, and the wish for revival.
Context
I am not confident about the specific origins of this song or its authorship beyond what's given; it appears on a compilation of Peggy Lee rarities, and its style fits the mid-20th-century vogue for exotica and tiki-influenced pop that used invented or borrowed ritual imagery, chant-like vocables, and pseudo-tropical settings, a mode popular in the 1950s-60s alongside artists like Martin Denny. I don't have reliable information on when Lee recorded it or its chart history.
Listen for
- The rhythmic, percussive delivery of the chant syllables and how they function almost as an instrument
- The shift in tone and imagery in the bridge, where the melody or arrangement likely departs from the verse pattern
- Any vocal shading Lee gives the word 'pain' or 'hope' that reveals sincerity beneath the exotic staging
- How the ending echo effect might be rendered vocally or instrumentally to suggest continuation rather than closure
About Peggy Lee
Norma Deloris Egstrom, known professionally as Peggy Lee, was an American jazz and popular music singer, songwriter, and actress whose career spanned seven decades. From her beginning as a vocalist on local radio to singing with Benny Goodman's big band, Lee created a sophisticated persona, writing music for films, acting, and recording conceptual record albums combining poetry and music.
1920 - 2002 / United States
Full biography and catalogue