Unworthy of Your Love
The Assassins number that has to be seen *not* to be believed
Imagine this: you have never before heard the song “Unworthy of Your Love,” and it starts playing on your car radio. What do you hear?
Soft guitar arpeggiation. A love song, perhaps? Then a male voice begins: “I am nothing. You are wind and water and sky.” Ah, definitely a love song! Our instincts were right. “Tell me, Jodie, how I can earn your love.” And now we have a name for his beloved. Perhaps we’ll hear from her, too. The song builds, and its singer seems to grow in confidence; there seems no limit to what he would do for Jodie. Swimming across oceans, moving mountains… This is pretty standard love-song fare, but touching nonetheless. She must be pretty special, this Jodie. The first chorus comes, and we can be in absolutely no doubt that this is a man utterly devoted to his muse. The chorus ends with a question: “How can I turn your love to me?”
A moment’s breath, then a second verse begins. “I am nothing.” A female voice! So, the song is a duet. And this must be Jodie, surely. That was a particularly delicious change of key too; we are now in a palette-cleansing A major, having previously been in B throughout. And that little harmonic maneuver has allowed this second singer to pick up where the first left off, pitch-wise. Her first word, “I,” matches his last, “me”: two pronouns, both alike in dignity. She continues, “You are wind and devil and God, Charlie.” Well, we can safely confirm that she seems equally smitten, to say the least. And we appear to know the first singer’s name, too. “Take my blood and my body for your love.” Gosh. Pretty full-on so far, this verse… But not outwith the bounds of pop-song hyperbole, of course. The second chorus arrives, and our second singer proves just as effusive as the first. These lovers seem perfectly matched.
Next, the bridge: both singers exchange lines of escalating intensity. “I would come take you from your life,” says the male singer––Charlie, presumably. He is veering towards knight-in-shining-armor territory here perhaps, but nothing too out of the ordinary for this type of song. His damsel in distress replies, “I would come take you from your cell.” Wait, which singer is saving which? And did she just say “your cell?” No, just a trick of the ear, surely; we must have misheard “yourself.” Anyway, the two are definitely building to a climax here, their voices beginning to overlap as they each declare, “Baby, I’d die for you.” That right there is some absolutely textbook pop-lyric exaggeration, delightfully earnest and overblown. And finally, gloriously, comes the final chorus. By means of a neat, chromatically descending bassline, we have traveled smoothly back to B major: home sweet home. The two lovers join together in harmony, and we are even treated to a soft, sweet ending. Beautiful.
Now imagine switching that radio off, parking your car, and taking your seat to see Assassins for the very first time. Imagine your surprise upon realizing that the song you had so enjoyed earlier was in fact sung by John Hinckley Jr. and Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme—meaning, of course, that neither singer was called Jodie or Charlie. Imagine discovering that, instead, these names belong to their absent muses, Jodie Foster and Charles Manson, and what seemed like a duet is perhaps better understood as two separate love songs running in parallel. This, of course, is the brilliance of “Unworthy of Your Love.” As a song heard but not seen, it is such an effective pastiche of a charming, fairly innocuous pop duet that we completely buy it as such. The fact it is a pastiche, not a parody, is crucial. Within the song, there are no knowing winks to the audience, and its lyrics almost entirely steer clear of anything specific enough to give the game away. It is a song that can only be understood in its theatrical context, which directly contradicts so much of what the lyrics alone suggest. In short, this song has to be seen not to be believed.
In “Unworthy of Your Love,” John Wilkes Booth’s second America speaks [have a read of our essay on “How I Saved Roosevelt” for more on these two Americas], but it masquerades as the first. These two deeply troubled souls, these archetypal outsiders, attempt to convey their feelings using the most conventional, commonplace musical vehicle possible. And there is certainly plenty of humor to be drawn from this square-peg-round-hole mismatch, especially given the infamy of those being portrayed, the shock of even seeing them as characters on a stage. But there is something almost poignant about it too. It is as if Hinckley and Fromme, tasked with making dinner, have procured all the right ingredients, followed a failsafe recipe to a tee, but have somehow forgotten to switch the oven on.
To this end, “Unworthy of Your Love” is perfectly set up by the scene that precedes it: the first of Samuel Byck’s extended monologues. Nixon’s would-be assassin appears with a tape recorder, and he, too, addresses an absent figure—in this case, Leonard Bernstein. As Byck departs the stage, he sings a snippet of “America” from West Side Story. Sondheim within Sondheim: Christopher Nolan would be proud. And there is wisdom in the words of that particular song, when viewed through our present Assassins-focused lens:
Everything free in America—
For a small fee in America.
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