The Song:
"Dorianne" is one of the bonus tracks on the compilation CD, "Caruso: The Albums, 1986-89."

After reading the book "PIcture of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde, I thought it would be fun to write a song about the book's main character, Dorian.  It's a great book about a man who trades his soul to the devil so that he'll never grow old.  Meanwhile, his painted portrait continues to age, reflecting the ugliness of his egotistical and newly jaded personality.

My take on the song was to recast Dorian as a woman.  I didn't know it at the time, but the book was also made into a movie and later re-written with a woman in the title role.  Anyway, I needed to change the name "Dorian" so my character could be female.  I thought "Dorianne" sounded like a real name.

At the time I wrote the song, I did know a girl named Dory, but nobody named Dorianne.  I thought I'd made the name up.  Since then I've received e-mail from several Doriannes around the country who had Googled their names and found the song lyric on my web site, wanting to know how I came to write a song with their name in it.

The Dorianne I wrote about is entirely fictional.  I just used ideas from the book to create her.  I made an obvious reference to the book at the opening of the second verse with the lines, "Picture yourself when you're gray as your name / how long do you expect to go on looking the same?"

I must've been listening to Rick Springfield at the time because the arrangement and style kind of remind me of "Love is Alright Tonight."  You might be able to hear similarities in the chorus vocal harmonies of both songs and also in the the end of the intro to "Love is Alright" and the end of the chorus to Dorianne.  The chords and rhythm in Dorianne's chorus also sound a lot like the long intro to "I Need a Lover" by John Cougar (Mellencamp). 

My brother Joe engineered and produced the song in our home studio.  He has an excellent ear and did a great job.  Somewhere there's a compatible reel-to-reel machine that will play our original 4-track source tape with high quality, but since I haven't been able to find one, a cassette source tape was used for the compilation CD.  There's a little bit of tape dropout and it's not perfect quality, but hey, it's a bonus track.

Dave Caruso
June, 2006

"I was searching the internet for just my first name which is Dorianne and I was surprised to find your song with this title. My name is not common, and your song title is identical to the spelling of my name. I am intrigued.  Did you write this song for anyone specific (ie, wife, sister, ex-girlfriend)?  It is so strange for me to hear a song with my name in it. I guess if I had a more common name, it would not be a big deal. But this is strange. My mom tells me that she was going to name me 'Dana' but she was watching the game show 'Tic Tac Toe' and there was a woman with the name 'Doriann.'  My mother liked it and added the 'e.'  My sisters are laughing hysterically at how your lyrics even fit my personality (my vanity, ha, ha). Thank you for sending me the song. I can't wait to have my parents hear it as well."

Dorianne
Las Vegas, Nevada

"I would really like to purchase a copy of Caruso: The Albums, 1986 - 1989.  I would love to hear the song Dorianne... for obvious reasons...  How I found you is a funny story.  I haven't run into too many people with my name spelled the same way and everything so when I had heard of a romance novel that had someone with my name as its lead character, I got very curious.  So I went online and typed in my name and your lyrics came up, which lead to me contacting you.  As far as the romance novel goes...  I found that as well.  Her love interest though was named Evan which happens to be the name of my brother...  Needless to say there was no way I could read the book and not need therapy...  Thank you again and I'm looking forward to hearing the CD."

Dorianne
Houston, TX