Lorenzo Semple, Aspen Daily News Columnist • Jan 7,2023
I’m obsessed with the way particular girls and young women in America talk. I’ve been this way since 1982 when I first heard Frank Zappa’s song “Valley Girl” on Casey Casem’s top 40 countdown radio show.
The lingo, the slang, the pronunciation, the enunciation, the cadence, the meter and rhythm fascinate me. It’s almost like they’re speaking in code. Not only that, the accompanying flippant attitude and the innate ability to pivot seamlessly from one random topic to another cracks me up. I’ve made a secret sociological career of eavesdropping on the way girls converse as a result of that song.
Frank Zappa’s “Valley Girl” came out when I was a freshman in high school. We had our very own “Valley Girls” at Aspen High, with feathered hairstyles, lip-gloss and leg warmers. Their drink of choice was the Bartles & Jaymes wine-cooler. The single was perhaps meant to be a scathing musical statement on how an archetype of America’s bored mall-culture youth spoke, but if so, that tactic backfired miserably.
Instead the sector of kids who spoke funny and spurned parents’ interests was adored, even celebrated as the song climbed the charts. I can relate on some obscure level, because I’ve always been self-conscious and insecure of the way I speak — way beyond just thinking your voice sounds weird when you hear a recording of yourself. I’d say I sound more like a low-IQ surfer-dude mountain version of a “Valley Guy.”
People still to this day comment on how I talk, or that they instantly recognize my voice from others. Now when someone makes fun of the way I speak, I’m personally flattered. I’ll often hear people mimic the way I speak back to me, which is a peculiar sensation. I grew up with a debilitating stutter and then a lisp. If it weren’t for the valiant efforts of Paula Bickelhaupt, my speech therapist in second grade at the Yellow Brick Aspen Lower Elementary, I’d probably still talk that way. In her spare time, Paula was a goaltender for the Motherpuckers, Aspen’s women’s hockey team. Metaphorically, she put a “stop” to my stuttering and “saved” me from a life of lisping.
Here’s the funny thing to me about the Valley Girl lingo from the early 1980s in southern California — it hasn’t gone anywhere. We still have our own funky subset of mountain “Vals” as Moon Zappa would say, right here in Aspen. I should know. I married one. If you listen closely, the infectious “Val” dialect is still out there on our streets. I marvel hearing girls say the word mountain as “mowt-un,” couldn’t as “coonint,” shouldn’t as “shoonint,” wouldn’t as “woonint” and didn’t as “dinnint.” I’ve also noticed the words COVID or the name David have a unique enunciation “Covit” and “Davit” as if there is a “T” at the end. As if! I’ve yet to crack the “n,” “d” and “t” pronunciation codes, like I before E except after C.
A funny, totally rad “Aspen” thing happened a few years ago. I got a phone call from an Aspen Skiing Co. events director saying that some musician performing for an X Games concert required my (don’t ask) services. Out of curiosity, I probed which artists they were and she divulged: The Chainsmokers, the now-beloved Aspen regulars. In an effort to better understand my future client and have a more informed business interaction with them, I went to iTunes and bought a random song of theirs with a title that piqued my interest: “#SELFIE.”
My gut reaction? Oh wow, man ... far out! The song blew my mind. I hadn’t heard a track that captured, characterized and exemplified a specific segment of today’s female youth like that since I first heard “Valley Girl” nearly 40 years ago. When I first listened to “#SELFIE,” I thought to myself, this is undisputedly today’s version of “Valley Girl.” Go listen to it yourself if you don’t believe me. Later that week when I was lucky enough to interact with members of The Chainsmokers, I likened their song to “Valley Girl” to which one member replied flatly, “Sorry, never heard it.” Kids these days!
When the phenomena of people taking selfies first emerged, I thought it was only a passing fad. Boy was I wrong. Selfies are more engrained in American pop culture that ever. The song “#SELFIE” takes a similar approach as “Valley Girl,” with the main character riffing and musing on the daily ins and outs of their daily existence. “#SELFIE” proves undeniably that the “Valley Girl” never died. Much like every social trend we see nationally and locally (the reboot of microwave fashion for example), they’ve simply metamorphosed to accommodate today’s climate.
Being from California, the words “totally,” “rad” and “bitchin’” still lurk well within my janky jargon, but others like “tubular” have escaped my vocabulary for the most part. I do try to insert the word “ratchet” from the song “#SELFIE” in a sentence wherever I see fit, but there will be no gagging of anybody with a spoon, young lady.
I pen these deeply personal observations at the damning risk of being labeled as a member of the pronunciation police. Au contraire: Hear my message to girls and women who talk like Moon Zappa’s ditsy “Valley Girl” and The Chainsmokers’ frivolous “#SELFIE” characters. Don’t go changing; take me to your leader! You bring joy to my otherwise lackluster existence. Both songs will forever hold a cherished space in my heart as well as my “bowl hike” playlist.
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