OMGWTFLOL: Think – “Once You Understand” (1971)

OMGWTFLOL is a series covering some of the most bizarre and inexplicable moments in Pop Culture history.

I’ve recently acquired a taste for spoken word hits of the 60s and 70s, the great majority of which I had never even heard of before I started listening to the 60s and 70s stations on my parents’ XM. My two favorites are probably Victor Lumberg’s “An Open Letter to My Teenage Son” (#10 in 1967) and Byron MacGregor’s “Americans”, (#4 in 1974) but there were a whole host of these in a ten-year period between ’65 and ’74–Johnny Sea’s “Day for Decision,” Sgt. Barry Sadler’s “The Ballad of the Green Berets” (the #1 single of 1966, incredibly enough) and even Gordon Sinclair’s original version of “Americans (A Canadian’s Opinion)”. Even more incredible than the number of these was just how similarly terrible they all were–all preachy, right-wing, pro-American diatribes commending the old guard and disparaging those damned newfangled youngsters.

Even among such company, however, Think’s “Once You Understand” (a #23 hit in 1971) stands alone. At first, the song appears to be a plea for parents to be more understanding and less overbearing to their children–grouchy-sounding parent types intone such phrases as “I expect you to get a haircut by friday…you’ll do as I say as long as you’re living in my house!” and “You’d better be home by TEN–or don’t bother coming home at all!” while their kids act shocked and outraged by their parents’ strictness, and in the background, hippie-sounding voices chant “Things get a little easier…once you understand.” But all of a sudden, the music abruptly cuts out, and an authoritative-sounding voice tells a “Mr. Kirk” that “you’d better come down to the station house–your son is dead.” The parent responds “DEAD?? …WHY?” “He died of an overdose,” the voice informs him (dance aficianados will of course immediately recognize this section from its use in 4 Hero’s rave classic, “Mr. Kirk’s Nightmare.”) The father is left sobbing, as the voice comes back in, now faded and ghostly, “things get a little easier…once you understand….”

From this part, it would seem like the song is actually a warning to kids, and that we were meant to sympathize with the parents all along, since they were only being strict because they loved their children and cared for their safety. But was there really ever a time in history when parents could say things like “Why don’t you sit down and read a book? You’re wasting your life on foolish things!” or “If you can’t figure that out for yourself, you’re STUPID!” or “Son, there’s a little more to life than…joining a group, or…playing a guitar!” and not be supposed to sound totally ridiculous? Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It” was only 13 years away at this point, did the world actually shift that seismically in that period of time? Or was the song actually going a level deeper, attemptiing to tell parents that if they’re not more understanding with their kids, then they could push them so far away that they could get involved with drugs and other dangerous pastimes?

Answers to these questions are few and far between, at least those that can be found on the internet–the band has no Wikipedia page, no Allmusic entry, seems to have no available discography and no compilation appearances (most likely why the only version I could find of it is a shitty vinyl rip). In fact, the only google hits the song comes up with are blog and webboard posts of people who heard the song on XM and were just as confused as I was. Clearly this is a mystery we were never meant to understand completely. At least Think get the distinction of having perhaps the only spoken word hit that isn’t mind-numbing in its single-minded simplicity, even if it is mind-numbing in countless other ways.

What a time to be alive this must have been.