Choose Your Own Adventure: How was Valentine's?

 So how was your Valentine's Day?

It's Wednesday, which would usually mean a post from Mr. Juke Box Hero, but a busy week combined with lavishing his lady with thoughtful Valentine's Day courtesies has put him out of commission until tomorrow.

Instead, in recognition of the likelihood that we all celebrated (or pointedly ignored) yesterday's Hallmark holiday in ways that may require some musical soothing the morning after, here are a few videos to set the mood for today. Choose your own adventure!

How did you spend Valentine's Day?
a) With my beloved! It was beautiful and perfect!
b) With my beloved! It was somewhat less than beautiful and perfect.
c) On an awkward date.
d) Alone, because I chose to be alone, goddammit.
e) Alone, with a tub of ice cream.
f) Alone, with a bottle of vodka.

James Brown: "It's a Man's Man's Man's World"

James Brown. Legend.

This song. Also legend. Recorded in 1966, it is one of the most openly chauvinistic songs since Ludvig van Beethoven's "I Got My Bitches on Lock." It was co-written by this woman, who dated Brown in the '60s and inserted lines about how all the many achievements of man would be "nothing without a woman or a girl." (But, you know, men did pretty much invent everything worthwhile.) It's the only song she's attributed with as a writer, but it's at #123 on Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Songs of All Time." Not a bad legacy.

This version was recorded in 1981, at a concert that apparently also included "the hardest-working woman in show business," Janis Joplin. (Don't get too excited -- she doesn't make an appearance in this video. Gotta love the pairing though.) Enjoy.