Beautiful South made a fantastic bitter sweat song called Don’t Marry Her, Have me. This is a love song with a quite different source than is usually seen. The song is about a woman who want her lover to leave his wife to be with her instead. Her most profound argument to leave his future wife is that he will get bored with her in their everyday life.
In my ears this is a typical Beautiful South song with a kind of melancholy sound to it. On the other hand we only hear the voice of Jacqui Abbott with no sign of Poul Heaton – they often sing different vocal parts and in this way share the spotlight of Beautiful South.
The song originally included the word “fuck” – and what a disaster, it had to be changed (probably to avoid the sensorship and get radio air time I assume). The original titel was Don’t Marry Her, Fuck Me. Or perhaps this was just a trick played by the Beautiful South to get more media publicity.
Don’t Marry Her, Have Me is on the album Blue is the colour.
Highest chart position: UK singles chart#8.
The reggae inspired song Informer by Snow is really difficult to me. I try to be open to all kind of music believing there is some good stuff to be found everywhere and because we all have different tastes in music (luckily). But some songs I just do not understand and Informer by Snow is one of them!
Karma Police by Radiohead is a real classic rock song from a real classic rock band. Fantastic song – not much needed to be said about it! In 2000 I was so lucky to see two Radiohead concerts in Copenhagen performed in a tent that they used for this tour. Both concerts were great and as I recall it the setlist for the two nights were quite different so we got a lot of Radiohead songs performed.
Parklife by Blur hit me hard and as I remember it was my primarily gateway into loving the Britpop music scene. The song has a fantastic laidback mood with a great melody and of course the voice of Damon Albarn. Also the video to the song is great fun giving us the life in an English suburb. The lyrics also present the daily life saying:
The song Kiss Me by Sixpence None The Richer with the beautiful Leigh Nash in front was a huge hit in my region as well as the rest of the world. You just could not avoid listening to it – it was present everywhere on radio and TV. It is a simple but very fine track that I still like to listen to. Maybe a success because of the lyrics – who doesn’t like to be kissed by their loved one?
Sometime in the late 1990s I saw Black Rider by Tom Waits performed at the local theatre. Not knowing much about Tom Waits or his music this experience really surprised me. A story hard to understand combined with the music that to me sounded very weird live in the theatre. But something must have hit me anyway because I bought the Black Rider album shortly after but the music was difficult for me to take in. Still today some 20 years on I have to sit down with no disturbances to concentrate on Waits hoarse vocal when I listen to it because there are so many elements on this record that I feel that something new comes up every time. Black Rider is therefore a favourite of mine although I still have difficulties understanding it – but maybe this is the charm about Tom Waits.