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Band of Gold - Freda Payne (1970)

3/5/2016

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How about a brief series looking at some very strange lyrics from a golden period of 'big song' lyrics – between about 1965 and 1975.


Now, don't get me wrong, I love all these songs – and this is one of my all-time favourites - but as each year passes, each time I hear them my mind goes rounder and rounder as I wonder how on earth the songwriters came up with those lyrics to that tune, in that way in that time.


Number 3: Band of Gold – Freda Payne


If, like most people, you only listen to lyrics with half an ear, you'll know what this song is about – after all it's a late pop classic from the Holland, Dozier, Holland team – who had already given us such as You Keep Me Hanging On, Stop in the Name of Love, Where did our Love Go and many, many more.

Plainly it's just some poor woman looking back on a broken marriage – doubtless after the feckless husband has done the do with someone else - “thin, pretty, big tits, your basic nightmare.” Oh Freda – get over him, he ain't worth it girl.

And so you move back to the rather catchy chorus that demands to be sung lustily and loud, particularly with the pleasing way it wraps the repetition of 'band of gold' around what's left of the dreams she holds. But actually that's not what the song's about at all and it feels darker and weirder every time I hear it.

But that night on our honeymoon,
We stayed in separate rooms.


(huh??)

and now the camera moves to that moment,

I wait in the darkness of my lonely room
filled with sadness, filled with gloom


so now we're with her on her wedding night. Or is there more to it than that? Is it that we're with her now, in a perpetual present, where she's always lying there, waiting in readiness, like a supine Miss Havisham?

Hoping soon
That you'll walk back through that door
And love me like you tried befor
e.

That's the killer for me. Not love me like you did before. Love me like you tried before. Like he's Jon Ruskin whose marriage to Effie Gray was annulled due to non-consummation – allegedly because Ruskin was so disgusted at the sight of her pubic hair.

Or like the 'climactic' scene in On Chesil Beach where disastrous honeymoon sex means the end of a marriage before it's even properly begun. But here the timing's even worse, given that the problem's happened prior to the wedding , which goes ahead anyway.

Blimey...



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Love Child

29/4/2016

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How about a brief series looking at some very strange lyrics from a golden period of 'big song' lyrics – between about 1965 and 1975.

Now, don't get me wrong, I love all these songs – always have done, always will – but as each year passes, each time I hear them my mind goes rounder and rounder as I wonder how on earth the songwriters came up with those lyrics to that tune, in that way in that time.



Number 2: Love Child - The Supremes (1968)
 
Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(which was rather late for me)
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles' first LP.



Ah, the sixties. Free love. The sexual revolution. This makes sense to me. My dad describes his pre 1960 courtship of my mother as going to the Streatham Locarno every Friday night until someone agreed to dance and of then marrying them so he could get his leg over. The old charmer. But by the time he'd dumped us in a Clapham slum, and left us for a more glamorous sexy life around the world, the sixties were in full swing.

Venus was in furs. Shiny, shiny shiny, boots of leather. Where was I? Ah, yes, parties full of easy girls in mini-skirts mashing the potato to Booker T and the Green Onions, or something. Everyone was getting some, even Lynn Redgrave in Georgy Girl (if she'd only shed her dowdy feathers anyway).

But not in Motown. Not on Diana's watch. Or Berry Gordy's watch. Or,um, whatever - look whoever said artists had to be consistent between their own lives and their art? Not me. But sex outside marriage gets a right good kicking here – in the summer of love.

I guess in its own way, Beyonce's 'you should have put a ring on it' is close in sentiment, but I can't think of any other song, saying this. Not then, not now, not ever. Love Child is of course a much nicer term than the one they really mean and presumably couldn't actually say at that time. Plus it's mighty hard to rhyme much with bastard.

This love we're contemplating
is worth the pain of waiting

We'll only end up hating the child we may be creating.
Don't think I don't need you
Don't think I don't want to please you
No child of mine will be bearing
the name of shame I've been wearing.


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Hey There Georgy Girl...

28/4/2016

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How about a brief series looking at the lyrics of a few songs from the golden period of 'big song' lyrics – between about 1965 and 1975. 


Now, don't get me wrong, I love all these songs – always have done, always will – but as each year passes, each time I hear them my mind goes rounder and rounder as I wonder how on earth the songwriters came up with those lyrics, to that tune, in that way, in that time.

Plus just check out the clip, it's fantastic...


Number 1: Georgy Girl.

I love Lynn Redgrave. Fact. I love the film. Fact. But then I also love the film The Knack and Ray Brooks (aka, to all intents and purposes, my dad) chasing Rita Tushingham down the street whilst she screams rape in a faux Rita Tushinghamy manner. But even I can see that scene hasn't stood the test of time very well.

And, increasingly, that's how I feel about the lyrics to Georgy Girl. Which to be honest I never paid any attention to for years. It's a happy song isn't it? Ting a linging along. I certainly remember my nan and mum singing it when I was young. They went something like “Hey there Georgy girl, da di da di da di da....” whistled even. It was happiness in the kitchen. But god knows why. Ok, yes I get it - it's about re-invention, confidence, embracing the new – the times they were a-changing. But, even so:


Why do all the boys just pass you by?

Could it be you just don't try, or is it the clothes you wear?



Blimey, try that now and you'd be plastered all over Twitter for fat-shaming or something. And that's the tidied up version for the single, even in 1968 the men in charge presumably doubted the lyrics to the opening of the film so much they thought they'd best tone them down:


Look at the boyfriends you don't get
never had a real one yet
just look at the clothes you wear.



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