
An Emotive Look at the Price of Fame and Misunderstood Desire
For those of us who came of age in the vibrant, sometimes overwhelming, era of late ’70s pop, the name Shaun Cassidy evokes a very specific kind of teen idol frenzy. He was the younger, blonde brother to David Cassidy, inheriting a potent mix of Hollywood lineage and bubblegum pop royalty. Yet, even as his face adorned countless bedroom walls and locker doors, there were signs of an artist eager to grow beyond the confines of his manufactured image. This tension is nowhere more palpable than in “Taxi Dancer,” a remarkable track from his third studio album, Under Wraps, released in July 1978.
“Taxi Dancer” stands out not only because Shaun Cassidy himself penned the song, but because it’s a darker, more nuanced piece than the infectious rock-and-roll covers that rocketed him to fame—”That’s Rock ‘n’ Roll” and “Da Doo Ron Ron.” The track was not released as a major hit single in the US, nor did it chart on the Billboard Hot 100, which is telling of the changing tides in the singer’s career. By 1978, the initial, staggering success of his first two albums, Shaun Cassidy and Born Late, was beginning to wane, and the Under Wraps album itself, though still platinum-certified, only peaked at a modest No. 33 on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart. “Taxi Dancer” was an album cut, an unsung hero buried on the B-side of the popular narrative, a fate that speaks volumes about the commercial pressures of that fleeting teen-idol stardom.
The song tells the story of Sheila, “a girl misunderstood,” an “operator,” and a “legend in the neighborhood” who becomes a taxi dancer. For those who may not recall, a taxi dancer was a woman who was paid to dance with male patrons in dance halls, often for a mere fraction of a song. Shaun Cassidy’s lyrics paint Sheila not as a cautionary tale, but as a figure of resilient, almost tragic, enterprise: “Always enterprising. Always livin’ for today.” The meaning is richly layered, touching on themes of unrequited or impossible love, the performance of emotion for survival, and the profound loneliness felt by both the dancer and the boys who loved her from afar.
The young men—the schoolboys—are “in love with you / And we all cried the same tears too,” suggesting a collective, youthful heartbreak. Sheila, however, is removed, simply “playin’ with the schoolboys’ hearts,” keeping them “only a shuffle apart.” There’s a beautiful, melancholic ache in this distance. It’s a metaphor for the transactional nature of fame, a notion Shaun Cassidy was surely grappling with himself. He was the beautiful object of a million teenage affections, yet simultaneously isolated, performing a role while his true self remained “under wraps.” In “Taxi Dancer,” he seems to be reaching for a deeper, more mature artistic voice, commenting perhaps on the very dynamics of his own celebrity—the illusion of intimacy and the hard, cold business of selling a dream. It’s a poignant, introspective track that rewards a revisit, revealing the complexity simmering beneath the surface of a seemingly simple pop star. The song’s rock undertones, driven by Shaun’s own guitar and the slick production of Michael Lloyd, give it a driving urgency that only deepens the emotional pull of Sheila’s story, reminding us that even in the brightest spotlight, the shadows hold the most compelling truths.