“It Never Entered My Mind”

“It Never Entered My Mind” is the Rodgers & Hart lounge standard performed at O Cangaceiro by a stylish young chanteuse. The song unsettles Doc Sportello’s usual aversion to torch material and gives Coy Harlingen a way to speak about choices that have gone wrong; its lyric becomes the unlikely point where the two men recognize a shared sense of regret.

The performance at O Cangaceiro

After a set of Brazilian music, the singer approaches the piano. Her short, tightly permed hair, 1950s Little Black Dress, and high stiletto heels make Doc reconsider his first impression that she is a hippie. She sits at the keyboard with the composure of a poker player taking a seat at a promising table, runs a few A-minor scales, and begins the song with little introduction.

Doc is no admirer of torch songs and has sometimes withdrawn to the nearest toilet when he suspected one was coming. This performance catches him off guard: the singer’s voice and quiet confidence hold him in place, and by the second eight bars he finds that he cannot avoid taking the lyric personally. He puts on his shades. After an extended piano break and a repeat of the refrain, he turns and finds Coy beside him, also wearing shades and nodding along.

Recognition and conversation

Coy says he can relate to the lyric because a person may make choices believing they are right for everyone, only to see everything go wrong and realize those choices could not have been more mistaken. The song gives shape to that rueful recognition without resolving the circumstances behind it. Its effect is not simply that both men listen: Coy uses the performance as an opening to articulate regret, while Doc’s visible absorption makes the feeling a point of contact between them.

The singer moves on to “Alone Together,” and Doc buys himself and Coy cachaça with beer chasers. He then asks Coy whether he was the man Doc saw on television at a Nixon rally. The musical intimacy thus gives way to a question about Coy’s public political appearance, carrying the scene from private feeling toward the uncertainties of Coy’s identity and choices.

Function in the scene

The song’s title suggests a failure to anticipate what a choice will bring, while Coy’s comment makes that implication concrete: decisions made with good intentions can end in consequences that appear unmistakably wrong. The scene does not specify which choices Coy means, so the performance remains emotionally pointed but open-ended. Its importance lies in that combination: a familiar lounge song allows regret to be felt and shared before the conversation turns to the more guarded subject of Coy’s appearance at the rally.