A brief history of whether she's really going out with him
The place: Queens, New York. The time: The mid-'60s. Good girls all over the United States are shedding their impeccant cocoons, slicing off their distended umbilicals. Tormented felons-in-training are only too happy to swipe up the mess as parents look on, uncertain whether to submit or press charges. Eventually the laws of social physics come into play, as the parents wave bibles and prison garb in their daughters' faces. "Come on, pumpkin," they say, "either lose the blot or forget about that self-cleaning oven. Who's going to clean you?" Mary delivers the bad news to Surly Jimmy himself, his cheeks turn briny, he screeches off into the onyx-black night, misjudges the shape and intent of a fire hydrant, and a new death cult opens its doors for business.
Is she really going out with him? Not anymore she's not.
Leader of the Laundromat - The Detergents (1965)
Not ten minutes later, parodies start falling out of fifth-story windows in the Brill Building. The first is a modest gender-flip in which Surly Eddie has turned into Feckless Betty, an incompetent launderer. Mary is now Murray, sounding at least as innocent but a tad more pugnacious. After helpfully pointing out that customer service really is Job One, Murray helplessly watches as Betty gets swallowed up in the tides of progress courtesy of a garbage truck. It's always the garbage truck. Murray avoids further awkward proms at reform school, and either he or one of the other Detergents becomes lead singer of the Archies (this is true).
Is she really going out with him? Nope.
New Rose - The Damned (1976)
Jump-cut 11 years later and we've all had a change of heart. We are no longer conscripts to the eroto-industrial complex; neither are we eager pillocks clinging like the drooping branches of a weeping willow to the trunks of blanching townships. We're young. We can afford our own cigarettes now but we're better at stealing them. Nick Lowe perhaps accidentally invents punk rock and its first entry is a love song even more affirming than "Good Vibrations" or "Love Grows Where My Rosemary Goes" or Physical Graffiti.
Is she really going out with him? Yes, emphatically.
Kill - Alberto y Lost Trios Paranoias (1977)
Once again, almost as instantly as the first time, the parodies start coming, only instead of falling out of windows they're hurled out of passing motorcars. Some targets duck. Others enjoy the intimacy. CP Lee (1950-2020) knows a good joke when it's disguised as low-hanging fruit, dodging the original question entirely and threatening the by-now throttled marketplace with his liver.
Is she really going out with him? Inconclusive.
Is She Really Going Out With Him? - Joe Jackson (1979)
Finally somebody has the good grace to address the question beyond the limits of the prelude. And would you look at that, Mac: it's a pianist! Typical of pianists, though, the question is filtered through the wearied envy of an onlooker, judging from his aegis behind a bay window, projecting improprieties that he no doubt would happily partake in if only he had the brawn, the hubris and the diphthong of men twice his square footage. It's enough to drive him out of the rock and roll empyrean and into the arms of a maitre d'.
Is she really going out with him? Depends what you mean by "him."
Is She Really Going Out With Him? - Blue System (1991)
We then merged with the Germans, handed over the blueprints, the keys to the liquor cabinet and the safe deposit box, trusted them to take care of all future inquiries, and went out the kitchen exit. We haven't been heard from since.
Is she really going out with him? Ja.
