Summer sometimes seems deceptively sweet, carelessly benign as its sun beats down and lends a false aspect of cheer to whatever might be crumbling in the world around us. Strange really, as heartache knows no seasonal bounds, and occasionally summer’s relentless sweetness is a slap in the face when you’re faced with sadness. That sort of contradiction is rife throughout the memories of this song – ‘Toy Soldiers’ by Martika, of ‘Kids Incorporated’ fame.
It wasn’t my intention to mislead you
It never should have been this way
What can I say?
It’s true, I did extend the invitation
I never knew how long you’d stay
When you hear temptation call
It’s your heart that takes
Takes the fall
(Won’t you come out and play with me?)
Step by step, heart to heart (heart to heart)
Left, right, left, we all fall down (all fall down)
Like toy soldiers
Bit by bit (bit by bit), torn apart (torn apart)
We never win, but the battle wages on
For toy soldiers
In July of 1989, the song went to number one, which is when I remember it – and in many ways this was the section of life when music started mattering, when a song melded itself to a moment. I was thirteen years old, about to turn fourteen, and it feels far away. There are elements that are unrecognizable to me, and elements that are still very much the same. That’s the age the soul is said to solidify into what it will be for life. A powerful age, a tender age, an impossible age. How much we load onto ourselves without realizing it…
It’s getting hard to wake up in the morning
My head is spinning constantly
How can it be?
How could I be so blind to this addiction?
If I don’t stop, the next one’s gonna be me
The specifics of that summer escape me, but if I think back hard enough and reinhabit that section of youth, I remember feeling the dangers of growing up, while wanting nothing more than to be older and out in the world – the first stirrings of a restless heart. Throughout that summer Martika sang this plaintive song (reportedly about a friend enthralled in drug addiction) and though I had no idea what it was about, it called to me with all its 80’s glory. To this day, it reminds me of summer – the darker underside of summer – always there in the shade, in the shadows, in the night…
Only emptiness remains
It replaces all
All the pain
(Won’t you come out and play with me?)
Step by step, heart to heart (heart to heart)
Left, right, left, we all fall down (all fall down)
Like toy soldiers
Bit by bit (bit by bit), torn apart (torn apart)
We never win, but the battle wages on
For toy soldiers
