Unsolved Mysteries: Simply Irresistible

Last year, I was on the road and found myself eating in a diner by myself. In the booth next to me was a black couple, probably in their 40s. There was music playing in the diner, and somewhere in the middle of my meal, the song “Simply Irresistible” came on. For those unfamiliar, “Simply Irresistible” is a rock-pop song from 1988 by the British musician Robert Palmer.

If you remember anything about that song, or about Robert Palmer, it is likely because the video for that song was a classic. It featured Robert Palmer, all five-foot-eight of him, neatly-cut feathered hair, tailored suit, belting out the song while a dozen or so beautiful women dressed identically and made to look like clones danced seductively around him, expressionless. Iconic is a word that is grossly overused nowadays, but in my mind, as far as 1980s music videos go, this one was iconic. Or maybe that’s just how my 14-year-old brain remembered it.

The reason I took note of this song at the diner was that the guy next to me absolutely loved it. He was grooving along and would sing each chorus, loud, air-drumming each time. His lady friend mostly ignored him and just sipped her coffee.

She used to look good to me
But now I find her…

[boom-bap, boom-bap, boom-bap… whoosh!]

Simply irresistible

It’s probably taken me too long to appreciate this, but thanks to that day at the diner, it’s clear to me that this is a powerful and underrated song. There are so many things about it that work, most notably Robert Palmer’s vocals, but also the driving bass (especially the riffs accompanying the in-your-face guitar solo) and the unapologetic campiness to it all. If you remain skeptical, watch Robert Palmer perform it live on the David Letterman show with Paul Shaffer’s band. When you combine it with the video, you realize it’s one of the cooler rock songs of that era, and that Robert Palmer was just a very cool guy.

With that said, the most notable – and maybe even the coolest – part of the song is what it doesn’t do. What I mean here is that the entire premise of the song is based on the following sequence:

1. She looked good [to the singer].

2. Something happened.

3. [The Singer] finds her simply irresistible.

Or, more accurately:

3. [The Singer] finds her [boom-bap, boom-bap, boom-bap… whoosh!] simply irresistible.

But we never find out what happened to change the singer’s perception of the woman. Not even a hint. All we can decipher is that it is likely something physical, as it suggests that it is related to her appearance. The rest of the lyrics provide no help, as they just follow the format below.

How can it be permissible
She compromise my principle, yeah yeah
That kind of love is mythical
She’s anything but typical
She’s a craze you'd endorse, she’s a powerful force
You’re obliged to conform when there’s no other course
She used to look good to me, but now I find her

Simply irresistible

You get the picture. What changed is anyone’s guess. Did she lose 50 pounds? Did she gain 50 pounds? Did she get a new hairdo? Did she get breast implants? Change her wardrobe? Buy a hat? Wear boots? The song never tells us.

If that mystery lies at the heart of “Simply Irresistible,” there is another, less obvious omission that to me is at least of equal interest.

During the second chorus, Robert Palmer repeats the “simply irresistible” line, and then we hear background vocals for the first time. The line goes as follows:

She’s so fine, there’s no telling where the money went

For my friend at the diner, this was by far his favorite line in the song. He belted it out every time.

She’s so fine, there’s no telling where the money went

This raises a reasonable and obvious question: what money?

Much like the nature of the initial transformation, the story of “where the money went” is left unexplored, as is the prerequisite question of what pool of money we’re even talking about. I will readily concede that songs don’t need to explain everything. I’m not even saying that the line doesn’t belong. Clearly it does. We all get it. It’s a fantastic lyric.

All I’m saying is that that line really does jump way ahead in the story, and seems to skip over some key action. Let’s summarize:

If Robert Palmer was still with us today and decided to release “Simply Irresistible (10 Minute Version),” we might get all the answers. Alas, Robert Palmer, sadly, died of a heart attack in 2003 at the age of 54. Nonetheless, here is how I like to imagine the full story that inspired “Simply Irresistible.”

The hero of the story is a Company Man. He’s been at the job for a decade and a half, a reliable and ambitious middle manager. He’s got vested stock options, a pension, and his own secretary. His secretary has been with him each and every one of those years, having started at the company right out of secretarial school. Every time her boss gets promoted, she gets to sit behind a nicer desk on a higher floor. They’ve therefore been moving up the corporate ladder together.

The Company Man has always regarded his secretary as fairly attractive, but he’s a professional. That’s just how he’s wired. He’s also a family man, with a devoted wife and two kids at home, one getting ready to start college in a few years. He’s never uttered an untoward phrase at work, or even hit a blue note while in the office.

As for the secretary, while she’s been lucky at the company, she’s been unlucky at love, failing to find the right man after all these years. Plus, all that note-taking, steno, dictation, and typing, and now with these new things called computers (remember, this was the 1980s) the job is starting to take its toll on her. Her eyesight in particular has been compromised to the point where she now needs to wear prescription eyeglasses for the first time.

One morning (everyone remembers it was a Thursday) she takes the elevator up to her floor, sits at her desk, her hair up as always. She turns on her computer and puts her new glasses on, self-conscious and more than a little embarrassed. Despite her trepidation, the other secretaries tell her how good she looks in her new glasses, including how much they appreciate the choice of the candy red frames. Her confidence rises.

Later that morning, the Company Man walks out of his office to schedule a lunch meeting for the next day, and that’s when he sees them for the first time. The glasses. Is she blushing, or is that the fluorescent light reflecting off the red frames? He doesn’t know. He doesn’t care. He seems to be lost in a trance. She notices.

That evening at dinner, the Company slash Family Man doesn’t speak. He’s clearly got something else on his mind. What’s left of it, anyway.

By the next morning, he knows exactly what he needs to do. On the way to work, he stops off at the bank. It is there that he withdraws the entirety of his children’s college fund. He’s wearing his best suit, the one he saves for company events and important client meetings. He even stops off for a shoe shine.

At around eleven o’clock, sweaty palms and all, he lurches up to his secretary and asks her what she’s doing for lunch. He seems out of breath, but tries to be casual.

“Well, you have a lunch meeting with Mr. So-and-So at—“

“Cancel it. Anyway, I asked what you were doing for lunch?”

She smiles. He continues.

“How would you like to go out to lunch with me? In Paris?”

“Paris?”

Clearly, he hasn’t worked out the time zones and such, but the point is made. The Concorde was still operational back then, and by noon they are at JFK buying their tickets to Paris. Back at the office, there are rumblings, but what is clear is that no work is getting done this afternoon.

How can it be permissible? It’s not.

She compromise my principle. So it seems, although you definitely share a good part of the responsibility, sir.

They disappear together, go completely off the grid. It was much easier to do that back then. No one knows where they went or what they did. No one ever discussed it, including first and foremost the scandalous couple at the center of the story. There were several unconfirmed sightings of the lovebirds arriving at the Hotel Savoy in Florence in the early morning hours, but again, unconfirmed. All anyone knows is that they left work together one Friday morning and returned the following week. In fact, they both showed up for work as if nothing happened. The only difference, as some noticed, was that she was no longer wearing the red glasses.

Despite their best efforts to play it off, any notion that the Company Man would return to the status quo were quickly dashed when he was called into an unscheduled meeting that first afternoon back. The agenda for the meeting? Where to start, but the talk of the office was how the Company Man earlier that day submitted an expense reimbursement request form for a highly questionable business trip to Europe. It was a massive five-figure sum.

To this day, no one can explain what he was thinking. Was he trying to support the cover story he was telling his wife by creating a documentary record? Some say he just wasn’t as smart as people thought. Others chalked it up to the same temporary insanity, the same fever dream that made this professionally successful, happily married man put everything in jeopardy in the first place.

Inside the conference room, sitting opposite the Company Man were the vice president of human resources, the company controller, and, of course, the company’s lawyer. This was to be the moment of truth.

VP of HR: Putting aside the propriety of the trip itself, including whether or not it was for a legitimate business purpose, whether it was approved in writing in advance, as expressly required in the company handbook, and the obvious question of whether it was authorized or appropriate for a female subordinate employee to accompany you on this trip, putting all those things aside, all we see here is a submission for reimbursement for a sizeable amount of money without any supporting documentation whatsoever.

Company Man: I’m sorry, is there a question?

VP of HR: I have a million questions, actually, but the first one is this: what did you spend all that money on?

The Company Man meets the eyes of everyone in the room, then stares through them, probing them, almost surprised that they don’t see what he sees. He shakes his head in disbelief.

Company Man: She’s so fine, there’s no telling where the money went.

The others all look at each other, incredulous. They return their collective gaze back towards the Company Man.

VP of HR: Come again?

Company Man (slowly, for effect): I said “she’s so fine, there’s no telling where the money went.”

Silence.

VP of HR: You didn’t keep any receipts?

As expected by every human and every other creature on Earth, the rest of the meeting did not go well. In fact, although he entered that meeting the Company Man, he left holding only the name with which he was born. As he walked down the hallway holding nothing but a cardboard box filled with the memories of 15 years of heretofore loyal service, he nodded in the general direction of his secretary. Her face never looked up from her new computer. Maybe she didn’t see him.

At that moment, thousands of miles away, lying on the cobblestone street outside the Hotel Savoy in Florence, a pair of candy red eyeglasses, abandoned, glistening under the rays of the streetlight.

The End.

As you can see, “Simply Irresistible” touches upon several timeless truths. The first and most obvious is that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Second, but no less true, is the maxim observed by every great thinker from Plato to Shakespeare to even Einstein, that [boom-bap, boom-bap, boom-bap… whoosh!] the P***y drives a man to do crazy things.