Warren Zevon / Bad Luck Streak In Dancing School / 1980
A Certain Girl
playful, teasing, slightly manic
This is a straight-ahead cover of the Ernie K-Doe R&B classic, built almost entirely on a call-and-response tease between a lovestruck narrator and an unseen chorus badgering him for a name he refuses to give. Zevon plays it as party rock rather than confession, letting the joke of withheld information carry the entire song.
unrequited longing secrecy as flirtation stuck-in-the-friend-zone frustration performance of desire
Who's speaking
A first-person male narrator addresses an implied crowd of friends or bandmates who keep interrogating him; he's reliable in that he clearly knows the woman's identity, but the song never lets the listener verify anything he says.
What happens
The singer establishes a long-standing crush, explains he's stuck in the friend zone despite repeated attempts, and fantasizes about a future declaration of devotion. As the song progresses, the surrounding chorus's questions grow more insistent, and by the outro the verses collapse entirely into a extended volley of question-and-refusal, turning the song's small drama into pure vocal ritual.
How it's built
Verse-refrain pairs with a call-and-response hook lead into a long vamped outro that abandons narrative content altogether, repeating the same denial-and-question exchange dozens of times until the song essentially becomes rhythm and texture rather than lyric.
Section by section
Opening verse
The narrator sets up the premise economically: long-term infatuation, a superstition-like refusal to name her until she's won, and the suggestion that naming her might jinx the outcome. The parenthetical question functions almost like a heckle from the room.
Second verse
He escalates from vague longing to a specific complaint — being cast as merely a friend — and briefly imagines a moment of surrender.her your your slave, a small hyperbolic vow that reads as comic devotion rather than sincere plea.fri
Bridge/plea
The declaration of servitude here overplays its hand, and that excess is the joke: total submission imagined in the same breath as total secrecy.
Outro vamp
The song sheds its narrative entirely, becoming a percussive loop of question and refusal. This structural choice mimics the badgering, party-like energy of the original recording, using repetition itself as the climax rather than any resolution.
Craft
- call and response
- The bracketed interjections function as a second voice needling the narrator, dramatizing the tension between private feeling and public curiosity.
- refrain repetition
- The recurring insistence that he can't tell becomes both punchline and structural engine, its meaning flattening into pure sound as it repeats.
- withheld information as device
- The absent name operates like a MacGuffin — the song's tension depends entirely on a fact it never intends to supply.
Reading it
Read straightforwardly, the song is a lighthearted genre exercise — Zevon indulging in classic R&B swagger and audience-participation showmanship rather than personal songwriting. A more skeptical reading might note how the refusal to name her, paired with the outro's dissolution into pure chant, suggests the 'girl' is almost beside the point: the song is really about the pleasure of being asked, the performance of romantic mystery rather than romance itself.
Context
This track is a cover of Ernie K-Doe's 1961 New Orleans R&B single, later also covered by others; Zevon's version appears on his 1980 album and leans into party-band arrangement and vocal interplay rather than the introspective, darkly comic songwriting he's best known for elsewhere in his catalog.
Listen for
- the interplay between lead vocal and the shouted interjections
- how the arrangement builds energy through repetition rather than harmonic development
- the moment verses stop and the song becomes pure call-and-response texture
- the comic overstatement of the devotion line contrasted with the song's refusal to reveal anything real
About Warren Zevon
Warren William Zevon was an American rock singer and songwriter. His most famous compositions include "Werewolves of London", "Lawyers, Guns and Money" and "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner".
1947 - 2003 / United States
Full biography and catalogue