Shoes (Reparata song)

Reparata was Mary Aiese O'Leary's confirmation name, and she had used it as her stage name when she became lead singer of the 1960s girl group Reparata and the Delrons. O'Leary had left the group in 1970 to become a solo artist, after which bandmate Lorraine Mazzola took over lead vocals until the group disbanded in 1973. A subsequent legal dispute with Mazzola over the rights to the name Reparata^[2] meant that "Shoes" was not promoted, and according to some sources, the single was withdrawn by the record label, Polydor. O'Leary eventually won the case, and meanwhile "Shoes" did have some success, especially in South Africa, where it reached #6 in January 1976^[3]. "Shoes" was on the playlist of BBC Radio 1 and reached #43 in the UK in October 1975^[4]. In the US it reached #92 on the Hot 100. It is also fondly remembered by German pop fans^[5].

"Shoes" was unlike anything else in the charts at that time, and is not in any definable genre. Described by one critic as a "bizarre wedding song"^[6], the lyric tells the story of Johnny and Louise's wedding day, and the contributions of various relatives to the wedding. The song is not about shoes, although it does include the line "Mother didn't give her abuse / she didn't forget her shoes". A family wedding is an unusual subject for a pop song, although not unique: the 10,000 Maniacs' song "My Sister Rose" on their "In My Tribe" album has a similar subject and similar bittersweet mood.

The happy and celebratory lyrics of "Shoes" are undercut by Reparata's understated, even mournful, vocal delivery. Moreover, after more than a decade of recording, Reparata'a singing voice had matured to a slightly lower register, which has been mistaken for a male vocal. This ambiguity of the singer's gender adds to the strange mood of the record.

"Shoes" has what one commentator calls "a Middle Eastern feel"^[7]. The recording uses a harpsichord, bazouki and tambourine and some vocal shouts and cheers to create the atmosphere of a Greek or Middle Eastern wedding celebration. At the same time, the song also features an electric guitar solo and children's backing vocals, and has been described as "discoish"^[8]. This mixture of styles creates an "absurdly catchy"^[9] and unique record, which has been described as "Spooky bazouki"^[10] and "like it was written by [maverick US pop and rock group] Sparks"^[11].

Summarising the sound and mood of "Shoes", one blogger comments that

"... despite the surface bonhomie, the music's thrust is slightly threatening and more than slightly unreal, particularly in the middle section when the beat cuts out to let through an ethereal cloud of dishevelled angel choirs ... [While] Reparata's voice strolls as serenely as Carole Bayer Sager's, [it] cannot dispel the feeling that something isn't quite right with the scenario"^[12].

In an interview with the NME in 1989, the singer Morrissey listed "Shoes" as one of his 14 favourite "Singles to be Cremated With"^[13]. Although already 14 years old at that time, "Shoes" was still the most recent record on Morrissey's list, with all the others dating from between 1959 and 1970.

Reparata did not have any further chart hits after "Shoes". She concentrated mostly on her career as a school teacher in Brooklyn, although she did reform Reparata and the Delrons in the late 1970s for occasional recordings and performances on the nostalgia circuit in the New York and New England areas. She retired from both teaching and performing in the early 2000s, and lives in Neponsit, Queens^[14].