It’s a rainy Sunday and, searching for suitable musical accompaniment, my hand fell on a compilation I picked up cheap as chips in a sale, many years ago: Folk Heritage II. It’s been on repeat play ever since -I’d forgotten how brilliant it is.
There’s the obligatory Richard Thompson (the otherwise hard-to-get Time to Ring Some Changes) of course but the rest is a string of absorbing gems. For example, Dick Gaughan’s stirring rendition of English rebel song, World Turned Upside-Down, the fragile beauty of June Tabor’s solo vocal The Band Played Waltzing Matilda, Nic Jones’ Canadee-i-o and a marvellous folk version of Music for Found Harmonium. That’s a few examples – it’s *all* delightful. And available for 9p from an online emporium near you.
My favourite though – and the reappoint of this post – is the attached (if I’ve done this right) the Albion Band’s Rambleaway. I’m not really familiar with the Albion’s output but I do love this song. One of the reasons, I think, is that it uses a device that few songs do – it changes the perspective from which it is sung (I make it two first person perspectives and a third person narrative).
I find this quite compelling and I’ve been trying to think of other songs that do something similar. The Bobster’s Tangled Up In Blue is probably the single best example but I’m sure there’s a host of lesser works. One possibility that initially sprang to mind is Genesis’s Harold the Barrel, however I don’t think that this is quite the same thing – it’s essentially just using a first person voice like a quote in a newspaper article, which is not what I’m looking for.
Reader, do you have any examples of lyrics sung from different perspectives?
The Human League’s Don’t You Want Me would be an example, I guess.
‘She was working’ etc, sung by a guy, then becomes ‘I was working’, sung by the girl he’s been checking.
Ah, nice one!
The Housemartins’ Sitting On a Fence is a good example of this. It starts off with predictable lefty finger-wagging, but at the bridge back into the verse the lyric becomes the anguished internal monologue of the fence-sitter himself – and indeed they choose to end the song with this voice –“I’ve just worked out that I’m falling apart”.
The The’s Slow Train to Dawn – great tune, great brass, great vocal by Neneh Cherry in her first big break and a top bit of scenery-chewing by the Mattster.
Records from years other than 1986 are available.
Idiot Wind. You’re an idiot, babe, all the way up to the point where we’re idiots, babe.
She’s Leaving Home comments on the girl in the third person but the parents’ view is in the first.
I wonder if this is the earliest example?
There was a bit if this going on in Gilbert & Sullivan – a few people to the side singing about the Major General, just after the Major General has been singing about himself.
You could also say that the same is true of, say, Bach’s Mathew Passion. Gilbert & Sullivan are closer to the world of popular song though!
Beautiful South – A Little Time
Standard Male/Female duet telling their sides of the story
Quite a subtle storyline in that song.
He goes on about needing some time away to think about their situation, so presumably off he pops and then returns after a bit, having concluded that in fact he’d like to stay with her.
Meanwhile, she’s been thinking the situation over too, in his absence, and has concluded that she doesn’t really need him.
Absence not always required
Ha ha – if Mark Williams (who is brilliant) turns up on anything my kids are watching, I nearly always shout “We want to beee togethha!” in an atrocious Birmingham accent at the telly to general bemusement. Likewise, “I want to be…. a tree…” from the same series of adverts gets dragged out occasionally too.
Barrel of laughs round our place.
With an owl!
It could happen!!
The band also did it with ‘Your Father and I’. The story of a child’s conception told from two wildly different viewpoints.
You’ll always find me in the kitchen at parties
(BV) You’ll always find him in the kitchen at parties
This is the Jona Lewie song – and I was thinking there must be lots of examples of this kind of thing but I’m struggling here (# ooh he’s struggling there…#)
Eager to maintain my reputation for stating the bleeding obvious:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwHyuraau4Q
The Bonzos, Canyons Of Your Mind.
Not only does it have the most skillful “bad” guitar solo in recorded history, but some great dialogue between lead vocals and backing chorus.
“My darling, in my cardboard-coloured dreams
(Ooh, cardboard-coloured dreams)
Once again I hear your love
(Ooh, ooh, ooh)
And I kiss, yes I kiss your perfumed hair
(But she’s not there)
The sweet essence of giraffe
And each time I hear your name
(Frying pan, frying pan)
Oh! How it hurts
(He’s in pain)
In the wardrobe of my soul
(Oh, my soul)
In the section labelled “shirts”
(Aah)
Ah! Oh!”
Nothing Better by the Postal Service has Ben Gibbard as the jilted boyfriend trying to convince his ex to come back, and Jen Wood as the unconvinced girl. Her first line is ‘I feel I must interject here…’
On a related note, Rilo Kiley’s A Man/me/then Jim does exactly what it suggests with three different perspectives
The Shangri-Las often had a conversation between themselves. Leader Of The Pack is the obvious one but I love Give Him A Great Big Kiss, especially the lines, “Is he a good dancer? What do you mean, is he a good dancer?”
Leonard Cohen’s “Take this Waltz” has five verses. The first four are sung from the male perspective, the fifth from the female:
“And I’ll dance with you in Vienna
I’ll be wearing a river’s disguise
The hyacinth wild on my shoulder
My mouth on the dew of your thighs
And I’ll bury my soul in a scrapbook
With the photographs there, and the moss
And I’ll yield to the flood of your beauty
My cheap violin and my cross”
In this video, the last verse starts at about 3:41. It’s sung by Hattie Webb.
Dylan’s Black Diamond Bay.
The last verse has Dylan commenting on what he has just seen.
I was sitting home alone one night in L.A.
Watching old Cronkite on the seven o’clock news
It seems there was an earthquake that
Left nothing but a Panama hat
And a pair of old Greek shoes
Didn’t seem like much was happening
So I turned it off and went to grab another beer
Seems like every time you turn around
There’s another hard-luck story that you’re gonna hear
And there’s really nothing anyone can say
And I never did plan to go anyway
To Black Diamond Bay.
Also Hard Rain’s A-gonna Fall, though that is question and answer so you are bound to get two viewpoints. Dylan based it on the question and answer form of traditional ballads such as “Lord Randall”.
Interesting – there’s quite a lot of this device about, in different forms.
Without wanting to lower the tone – there’s always Mr Loaf’s “Paradise by the Dashboard Light”.
Keith Harris and Orville were partial to a duelling lyric, as I recall.
There’s a right old ding dong of perspectives in “Jackson” by Hazelwood/Sinatra, and others. Also mentions ‘peppered sprout’ but that’s not relevant here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=QZ4dSOejBPg
Cat’s In The Cradle.
– When you coming home?
– Son, I don’t know when.
– When you coming home, son?
– I don’t know when.
Lucille by Kenny Rodgers is a straight country narrative which shifts to the man’s point of view in the chorus.
“You picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille”
Also Traffic’s Hole In My Shoe. The drugs kick in and it’s
“I climbed on the back of a giant albatross..”
I have one of these on my AW Swap CD…so I can’t tell you about it!
Clue, Miss, clue, clue!
Ah, I see how you might have thought that…but when I said “one of these” I didn’t mean one of the exemples given on this thread, I meant “one of these kinds of tracks”…sorry @retropath2! The track I’m thinking of is a Swedish one that you probably could use some clues to be able to get, however! 😀
The lyric don’t shift per se, but I love Jennifer Warnes’ version of Cohen’s Joan of Arc, wherein he is enlisted to be the voice of the fire and she the narrator and Joan.
There’s clearly a lot more of this about than I’d thought. It does make for a compelling lyrical device – to me at least – and I’m wondering why that is. I’m also wondering if it’s an instance where something works better as a sung lyric than as a written poem.
I agree. It sounds better than it reads, generally speaking.
Funnily enough I was listening to this song yesterday before I’d seen this thread. I’ve always thought this is a disconcerting lyric disguised by a sweet tune and performance. It changes perspective regularly and also seems to switch between love and hate very quickly. Two Seconds by Laura Cantrell. I particularly like the fact the first comment on this video is from the guy who wrote the song, back in the 80’s
Always a pleasure to listen to Ms Cantrell’s marvellous voice – yes, good example.
Another one that I found myself listening to yesterday – Love Street, by the Doors. There’s something about that uncertain-sounding “I guess I like it fine…so far.” that makes me think that maybe all was not going to be plain sailing, diamond-studded flunkeys or no. And indeed it wasn’t.