On January 13, I turned 75. Six days later, Mary Weiss died, and four days after her death, Melania Safka died. Weiss, the lead singer of the Shangri-Las, was 75; Safka, who wrote the song that became the anthem of Woodstock, was a month shy of her 77th birthday.
As a teenager, I had all the usual problems of adolescence—feeling left out, worrying about my body image, losing my first serious boyfriend to an aggressive girl who wore his ring around her neck and flaunted it in my face. And I had other, more serious problems—a violent, distant, alcoholic father, and a mother who took her rage out on me.
I lived for books and music. In my room, I had a regular radio, a crystal radio, and a record player, and I was there for The Beatles, Elvis, Dusty Springfield, The Beach Boys, The Rolling Stones, Dionne Warwick—and the girl groups. Mary Weiss was the same age that I was, but that was where the similarity ended. She was from New York City, she was soulful, she was fierce, and she had a voice that belonged to a much older person. I couldn’t believe that this young girl—and the entire group—could make music that was so melodic, so dramatic, so filled with stories that I understood on such a visceral level.
Many people are familiar with the legendary Shangri-Las song, “Leader of the Pack,” but my favorites were “Remember (Walking in the Sand),” the dance song, “Simon Says,” and Weiss’s personal favorite, “Out in the Streets.”
The Shangri-Las were around for only a few years. It was reported—and it is totally believable—that they were cheated out of thousands of dollars of royalties by an industry that constantly exploited vulnerable artists. Weiss said that she wanted to get away from the litigation, so she gave up her career. About forty years later, she returned to making music, and produced an impressive album. She performed in New Orleans, just across the lake from where I live, but, sadly, I didn’t learn about the concert until after the fact.
I never forgot the Shangri-Las, and I’ve continued to listen to their music my entire life. The year that Weiss performed in New Orleans, I visited a friend in another state, and we stayed up all night listening to the Shangri-Las and watching blurry videos of them.
Amy Winehouse, when asked what led her to produce music, explained the depth of her heartache, and said “I didn’t want to just wake up drinking, and crying, and listening to Shangri-Las, and go to sleep, and wake up drinking, and listening to the Shangri-Las.” I understood that, though—for the last several years—when I felt really bad, I’ve been more inclined to drink, cry, and listen to Amy, whose music I treasure.
Melanie Safka, usually known as just Melanie, persuaded the Edwin Hawkins Singers to back her on her seven-minute hymn to Woodstock, “Lay Down (Candles in the Rain).” I wasn’t at all emotional about Woodstock, but “Lay Down”—which mixed gospel, a peace message, and the powerful, distinctive vocals of Safka—quickly became my favorite song. Many decades later, when I hear the abrupt opening drumbeat, followed immediately by the choir, I feel that electrical charge that comes with hearing music that courses through both your brain and your body.
I loved so much of Safka’s music—“What Have They Done to My Song, Ma,” “Together Alone,” “Bobo’s Party,” “The Nickel Song,” and the almost unspeakably sad “Leftover Wine.” She could be political, angry, heartbroken, and hilarious—all on the same album. There has never been anyone else quite like her. The week that she died, she was laying down tracks for a new album. Less than a decade ago, she performed a duet with Miley Cyrus, and her voice still had the distinctive sound that it had when she was a very young woman.
I learned of her death on January 28, and on the 31st, I learned of Weiss’s passing. It overwhelmed me. I was deeply saddened by Olivia Newton John’s death in the summer of 2022, and then we lost Tina Turner, and then Sinead O’Connor, and I had a lot of feelings about those deaths, too. But something about having a major birthday, then learning that two icons of my generation died within a few days of each other just undid me.
I couldn’t contain my sadness and wanted to talk about these almost simultaneous sad events, but when I approached people, they either had never heard of these two women, or their memories of them were very vague. I did eventually find a few people who were familiar with at least one of them, and a couple who knew the music of both, so I was able to share my sadness and my memories. And—while I don’t like to be the kind of older person who says, “I feel so old”—I felt so old.
We often feel sad about the deaths of people whom we’ve never met—that is the nature of our attachment to celebrity. But with artists, I think that it goes deeper: We receive gifts from them in the forms of empathy and joy, and we are grateful. When they leave us, we feel real grief, for the sources of that empathy and joy have—in a sense (though we still have recordings, films, etc.)—disappeared. And when those artists are from our own generation, we also feel an extra tug of anxiety over mortality—especially our own.
All my friends and acquaintances are younger than I am, and—with the exception of a few, bless them, who know all the music through all the eras—they can’t picture the wistful expression on 15-year-old Mary’s face when she speaks “Let me think, let me think!” in the middle of “Remember (Walking in the Sand).” And they can’t hear Melanie singing a spirited verse in French in “What Have They Done to My Song, Ma.” But I can, and it feels as though these are treasures that—as much as I want to share them—I must, for the most part, relish within the privacy of my own mind.
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Each stage of our life has a soundtrack, and the older we get, the more we savor the continuity of that soundtrack. Mary Weiss helped to birth Amy Winehouse, and when I listen to the producer of my current soundtrack, Taylor Swift, I sometimes hear the unorthodox and cheeky lyrical construction of Joni Mitchell, whose music has run through my life for many decades.
Thus does music affect all the elements of our human existence. Mary and Melanie have left us, but their music lives on in me. I feel so old, yet—at the same time—I still feel as young as the tough girl from Queens who stunned the music world with her soulful vocals, and the hopeful young woman with the guitar, unique voice, and endearingly quirky lyrics. For better or worse, we are made to carry more than one feeling at a time, and right now, as I continue to grieve, I am anxious over the process of aging, and and grateful that the music of Mary and Melanie continues to be part of the soundtrack of my life.
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Diane Elayne Dees is the author of the chapbooks, Coronary Truth (Kelsay Books), The Last Time I Saw You (Finishing Line Press) and The Wild Parrots of Marigny (Querencia Press). Diane, who lives in Covington, Louisiana, also publishes Women Who Serve, a blog that delivers news and commentary on women’s professional tennis throughout the world. Her author blog is Diane Elayne Dees: Poet and Writer-at-Large.
© 2025, Diane Elayne Dees
Halfway Down the Stairs 