“A solitary life /
A life of small horizons /
Dull as the pewter skies over NW11”
For the 0.3% of the blog who don’t own all of Richard Thompson’s albums, this is the chorus to a Solitary Life off Front Parlour Ballads. It’s a bitter lay; some might say typically so. The song finishes on an upbeat note with the subject matter dying of cancer. (Having a bodycount in song qualifies Thommo to play at folk festivals.)
But as I pedalled up the Denbighshire moors on a gloriously sunny Easter, I found myself merrily singing one of the couplets, as I oft have before:
“Holidays in the Yorkshire Dales /
Cycling tours of the North of Wales”
He may sing it with a sneer, but it all sounds lovely to me, as indeed does the solitary life, says someone who has relished living on his own for the last 18 years. So I sing that song with a spring in my step and joy in my heart.
Do you ever find yourself enjoying a song for emotions that are quite clearly the opposite to that which the artist intended?
Oddly Front Parlour ballads is my least favourite RT album by some distance. It is quite bleak – I dont have problem with his bleakness after all that is his style. I think it is the solo acoustic guitar – it needs some embellishment.
However another RT song does it for me. I am sure he wrote it as a tale of a woman’s loneliness. However I read the seediness in the song as being the overriding interest.
Turning of the tide:
How many boys,one night stands?
How many lips,how many hands have held you?
Like I’m holding you tonight
Bleak and sneering. Yep, that about sums him up a lot of the time. Writes a good yarn, Molly touches every boy biker’s heart after all, but by Heavens he’s a miserable bastard a lot of the time. I can only take him in small doses for that very reason, yet I’ve got a stack of his records. His manual dexterity with the fretboard got me interested to start with, and the twisted gothic lyrical thing came along later. By and large, I’d think I prefer to hear him sharpen up someone else’s tune than to hear him play his own.
I think he wrote about a prostitute he noticed when he was on tour in Germany.
“Do you ever find yourself enjoying a song for emotions that are quite clearly the opposite to that which the artist intended?”
That would surely be everybody who’s played Every Breath You Take at their wedding reception…?
Babybird’s You’re Gorgeous is constantly being used by people who don’t know that it’s about what I suppose you would call grooming.
@thecheshirecat what I remember from living on my own was that I had no time for monkey business.
The line in The Smiths Meat is Murder ‘and the flesh that you fancifully fry’ makes me hanker after a bacon sandwich.
The word “fancifully” always conjurs up an image of the Swedish chef from The Muppets.
U2’s One played at weddings. “You gave nothing, now it’s all I’ve got” and “did you come here to play Jesus to the lepers in your head?” should get any wedding off to a flying start.
Also, it hardly needs saying, The One I Love.
I simple prop to occupy my time, indeed.
People don’t manage to concentrate beyond the chorus.
Gretchen Peters was upset many years ago when Sarah Palin used her song Independence Day at her political rallies.
It’s a song, told from a young girl’s point of view, of her mother killing her abusive husband. But people only listen to the chorus.
She took the royalties earned and gave them to a pro-choice charity.
The more I get to know Gretchen, the more I like her,
“Born in the USA” was widely taken as a song of unthinking patriotism but it was far more nuanced then that.
Personally it took me a while to realise the guy singing “I’m not in love” was a telling porkies.