THREAD: In 1943, Frank Loessner & Jimmy McHugh handled songwriting duties for the film Happy Go Lucky, a minor musical about a woman trying to land a rich husband.

One song was a rollicking ditty about her frustrated friend enduring her hipster boyfriend's ridiculous slang. (1/)

It was called "Murder, He Says!" and was given a barnstorming performance by a young Betty Hutton, fresh off her debut turn in Miracle Of Morgan Creek.

The performance was incredibly popular and helped catapult her into stardom. Seriously, dig this: (2/)

But what does "Murder, He Says" actually MEAN?

She's trying to hook up with her dude, a hepcat who kills the mood by punctuating their make-outs with proto-beatnik slang:

He says, murder, he says
At a time like this
He says, murder, he says
Is that the language of love? (3/)

The song is a treasure trove of mid-40s slang: murder, solid, the jumps, Jackson...

Linguist @arikaokrent does a great job exploring the forgotten meaning of the slang in this fun piece from The Week: (4/) https://theweek.com/articles/466801/11-words-from-1940s-song-about-slang

But wait...murder!?

Yup! Apparently for jazz stans of the time, "murder" was the equivalent of "cool."

Okrent quotes none other than HL Mencken: "[In] the vocabulary of the jazz addict...anything excellent is killer-diller, murder or Dracula." (5/)

I'm pausing this thread to implore everyone reading this: WE HAVE TO BRING BACK "DRACULA" AS A SYNONYM FOR "COOL" (6/)

So: Hutton's performance was incredibly popular, everyone thought the song was totally dracula, and she became a big star.

But the takeaway here is that the song isn't about murder at all. If it were recorded today it would be called "Fleek, He Says." (7/)

Thanks to Hutton, the song became a bit of a standard. Dinah Shore covered it, though her low-energy take on it misses what made Hutton's version so memorable: (8/)

Decades later, Tori Amos covered the song for the Mona Lisa Smile soundtrack (huh?) and though it's a bit more upbeat than Shore's version it's also too...reverential to match Hutton's rip-roaring take: (9/)

Two years later a Fred MacMurray comedy called Murder, He Says was released. The film is unrelated to the song "Murder, He Says" but is clearly named for it.

The joke is that it makes the slang term literal: MacMurray is on the run from a bunch of homicidal hillbillies. (10/)

Sorta like a movie called "Juice" about a Lizzo-like character working at a literal juice bar. Or a movie called "Sicko Mode" about a young man working with terminal patients at hospice.

But I digress. The point is, "Murder, He Says" is now associated with actual murder. (11/)

Twelve years later, Agatha Christie publishes a Miss Marple novel called 4.50 From Paddington.

However, when the novel is adapted into a film in 1961, the title was changed to Murder, She Said. (12/)

(I can't find definitive proof that the title Murder, She Said is a reference to either the movie Murder He Says or the hit song "Murder, He Says." But I *can* find a lot of people speculating that it is, and also...come on, it totally is. What else would it be referring to?)

So now the "Murder, Pronoun Verbed" construction has become entirely about actual murder and not about trying to ignore a hipster doofus' obnoxious mannerisms long enough to get laid.

Y'all know where this is headed. But one more quick detour before we get to Cabot Cove. (14/)

International treasure Angela Lansbury, among many many other films, starred in two different Agatha Christie adaptations in the late 70s: Death On The Nile (where she played an author) and The Mirror Crack'd (where she plays Miss Marple, the main character of Murder, She Said.)

So when TV producers cast Lansbury for a show about a very Miss Marple-like detective who is also an author, the title was obvious: Murder, She Wrote.

From the unromantic utterances of a goofed-up hophead to a cozy mystery series about a detective / possible serial killer. (16/)

The series continued until 1996 and spawned an early hidden traitor board game, two video games (one from 2012!), a regrettably scuttled reboot starring Octavia Spencer, and most importantly this AMAZING Jessica Fletcher Funkopop: (17/)

(Fair warning that the story takes a bit of a grody turn here in a few different ways: anti-choice, sexism, misogyny, and the appearance of a notorious sexual predator. I'm gonna try to talk around them as much as possible but if you want to bow out now, I understand.)

In 1994, Chaka Demus & Pliers released what become one of the first dancehall reggae hits to chart around the world.

It's called…"Murder She Wrote." No comma. (19/)

Today, over 25 years later, "Murder She Wrote" is still one of the genre's most enduring anthems and has been sampled over fifty times by artists like Pitbull, French Montana, and Omarion.

Even Jessica Fletcher herself approves:

But why is it named after the beloved mystery series? Well…ugh.

For such a widely popular and beloved song, there's a deeply unfortunate facet that's rarely discussed: the song is in fact a gross anti-abortion tract that shames Maxine for not carrying her pregnancies to term:

And this dancehall track leads to the most recent appearance of the "Murder He/She Says/Said/Wrote" title in pop culture.

In 2002, "Ignition (Remix)" was released, which included this couplet:

"Now, it's like Murder She Wrote
Once I get you out them clothes" (22/)

This reference has puzzled casual listeners for almost twenty years, but there are a few different interpretations (none of which, admittedly, are fully satisfying):

- Though not a reggae song, the rhythms of "Ignition (Remix)" are heavily influenced by dancehall reggae (23/)

- It's also possible that this is a reference the woman in the original song, "a girl with 'wid di angel face and the devil heart" who acts "flirty flirty" even though her “character dirty.” (24/)

- Finally, the singer could also be using "murder" in the colloquial sense of "thoroughly have sex with." Uh, it's hard to explain what I mean here without saying something gross on the timeline. DM me if you don't get it, I guess. (25/)

(Though I was reluctant to mention this last point, I'll admit that there's a certain symmetry in the phrase having found its way back, after nearly sixty years, into another song full of euphemisms about sex.)

So THAT'S the story of how a silly little song making fun of a hipster's unsexy pillow talk eventually became associated with an action-comedy, a bunch of cozy mysteries, dancehall reggae, and an early 00s club hit. May your own romantic shortcomings have as rich a legacy. (END)