Because The Original Wasn't Gay Enough

I don't know why I am doing a mind riff on this song, but I just can't shake it. Mad About The Boy deals with the theme of unrequited love for a film star. It was written to be sung by a female, but Coward also wrote a version with lyrics bent to the risqué topic of homosexual love:

Mad about the boy
I know it’s silly
But I’m mad about the boy
& even Dr Freud cannot explain
Those vexing dreams
I’ve had about the boy


When I told my wife
She said “I never heard such nonsense in my life!”
Her lack of sympathy
Embarrassed me
& made me frankly glad about the boy.


My doctor can’t advise me
He’d help me if he could
3 times he’s tried to psychoanalayse me
But it’s just no good


People I employ
Have the impertinence
To call me Myrna Loy
I rise above it
Frankly love it
‘Cos I’m absolutely
Mad about the boy

The song gained new popularity when Dinah Washington's rendition was used in the Levi's television advertisement " The Swimmer", directed by Tarsem Singh. In the commercial, which is homage to the1968 Burt Lancaster film The Swimmer, a young man runs through an American suburban neighborhood stripping down to only his jeans, invades private gardens & dives into a series of swimming pools in order to shrink his jeans. Washington's recording was re-released by Mercury as a tie-in in with the advertising campaign, & the cover art featured a shot of the topless male emerging from a swimming pool & bore the Levi's logo. The single made the Top 50 in the UK singles chart.



Other Notable Cover versions by:
Georgia Brown
Blossom Dearie
Marianne Faithfull
Frances Faye
Helen Forrest
Jackie Gleason
Lena Horne
Cleo Laine
Gertrude Lawrence
Beatrice Lillie
Julie London
Billy May
Carmen McRae
Anita O'Day
Eartha Kitt
Elaine Paige < Tom Robinson
Dinah Shore
Maxine Sullivan
Miss Piggy (as Mad About the Frog)