I live for a musical surprise. SURPRISE SURPRISE!

Whether it’s the long pause of silence, followed by the sudden re-appearance of the drum machine in “Your Love” by Frankie Knuckles that just takes your breath away eery single time, reminding you of the heartbeat’s inner metronome, no matter if it comes from a waltz or a TR 808. A miracle happens at 5 minutes and 11 seconds.

What about the sultry, seductive, langorous pace of “Love Hangover” by Diana Ross, that turns into an absolute shuffling stomper of epic proportions at exactly 3 minutes? The first time I heard that song, on a “Best of Disco” CD that I bought at Hastings in Wenatchee, Washington, I was barely paying attention, when all of a sudden I hear “HANGOVERRRRRRR!” and then the tempo started shifting – I could barely keep still in the backseat of my grandpa’s Subaru Outback. Don’t call the doctor! Don’t call the preacher!

I love surprising things – like learning that Chaka Khan and Donna Summer were friends, who said “Donna Summer is the only black woman I can speak German with!” I get why Donna can spreche Deutsch, she was married to a German guy and she started out careerwise over in Europe. But Chaka Khan from the Southside of Chicago? I love these kinds of surprises.

There are other moments of musical surprise that makes it all worthbwhile. The day that someone kindly informed me that ABBA, the band I had loved since I was 12 years old, a band whose music is equally loved by my aunt, my mom, my grandpa, and everyone else in the Rutledge clan, had released their songs in SPANISH, was a game changing day that was for me! They released these songs contemporaneously, so they sound just like the classic songs I had grown up with, but better, or somehow curiously different. Nowdays, my play count for “Dame! Dame! Dame!” is three times higher than “Gimme Gimme Gimme A Man After Midnight”.

Or, the moment I first heard “Tainted Love” by Gloria Jones at a hipster dancehall in Williamsburg – I was floored. That’s what northern soul is! Marc Almond of Soft Cell is from Leeds. It makes total sense! Everyone piled onto the dance floor, and danced unapologetically like we were from the Deep South or Wigan. A great song does occasionally yield a great remake.

One time during a game of Charades at my grandparents’ house in Washington State, we made the theme about music. I chose “Tainted Love”. My mother stood up, looked at the piece of paper with my handwriting, and scoffed. “Too easy.” She pretended to paint the ceiling, and then gestured the heart / I love you gesture, and then my step grandmotrher went “PAINTED LOVE? TAINTED LOVE!” Everyone laughed at me – it was a surprise to them to learn that the child prodigy Matthew was pretty bad at charades. But an even bigger surprise to know that my grandmother knew Soft Cell’s Tainted Love.

There was the time I learned who wrote and sang the first widely released song to portray gay men in a positive light? Rod Stewart. Despite his teased hair and bulge-forward spandex, he was a straight man through and through. But his manager was gay, and some of his early fans were gay, and he has been quoted as saying that he owes his career to gay people. Decades before it was even fashionable.

Writing a song about a gay man in 1976, and then having the audacity to release it in the UK as a 7″ single, and include it on his next LP record, that was a surprise to me. Bravery at the moment when Rod Stewart was on a fast track to worldwide stardom, between the bookends of “Maggie Mae” and “Tonight’s The Night” is true fearlessness. It could have ruined his career, but the song “The Killing of Georgie, Parts 1 and 2” actually made the Top 40 in the UK, although just barely. This was almost a decade before “Smalltown Boy”. It’s a song about a friend of Rod Stewart’s, a gay man named George, who left his childhood home “on a Greyhound bus, cast out by the ones he loved”, then arrived to New York City. He prospered and thrived as an out gay man, he was all of the famous people’s friends, “no party was complete without George”. Then, he was killed, in the summer of ’75, a New Jersey gang intending to just rob him of his wallet out on the Christopher Street piers, but “pushed their luck too far”.

Not only was that a heartbreaking story to tell in the form of a pop song, it was very much ahead of the curve in terms of society’s acceptance of gay people. He ends the song with, “Georgie Boy was a friend of mine”.

Up until that moment, I had never thought of Rod Stewart as particularly great, I was clued into his caricature of floppy hair, philandering, and “If you want my body, and you think I’m sexy”. Not only was he brave to write and release that song, it opened me up to the fact that Rod Stwart is a GREAT songwriter and lyricist. I had never considered it before. What a great surprise to learn that about someone you had overlooked.

I responded to this Quora thread that a 16 year old boy wrote, “I’ve been told that it’s weird that I’m a 16-year-old white straight boy and I like black female singers from the ’70s like Donna Summer, Chaka Khan, Diana Ross, Pointer Sisters, Tina Turner, and Patti LaBelle. Should I stop listening to this music?”

The answer is NO! I’m so thrilled to hear this. I’m so happy to know that music is music is music, as Jesse Jackson once said. I responded and said, “there’s nothing wrong with you, there’s something great about you, something special about you – don’t be afraid to surprise people!”

I live for surprises. I am the only white boy I know that has multiple Yatrbrough and Peoples singles, can sing all the traditional Spanish folk songs thanks to Joan Baez, and who listens to ABBA in its original native Klingon.

Surprises are the reason I’m still here on this planet – if I died, it would rob me of the thrill of WHAT COMES NEXT.