home shit stuff books forum about
 |
|
James Blunt James Blunt is the perfect singer-songwriter for the busybusybusy generation who don’t have time to consider what a song might actually mean. Literary conceits swallow up valuable minutes which might be spent . . . oh, I don’t know, cracking up or having a really massive latte. Given these constraints, the smartest, sharpest title for a song about a woman being beautiful is surely ‘You’re Beautiful’. And why call any song that concerns the pain of saying goodbye to a lover anything other than ‘Goodbye My Lover’? From this perspective, it’s hard to see why anyone gets stewed up about this songwriting game. It’s quite straightforward. A fucking monkey could do it. ‘Goodbye My Lover’ was the emotional core of Blunt’s huge-selling debut album Back To Bedlam.* As the title implies, the song in no way involves saying ‘hello’ to a lover. The situation departs from the pleasures that come with welcoming a lover almost completely. It could equally have been called ‘Farewell My Lover’. Or:’ See Ya! My Lover’. Blunt – the ‘epitome of 21st-century chic’, according to the Mail – has probably said goodbye to quite a lot of lovers. If the tabloids are to be believed, he can’t keep it in his trousers: sort of like a posh-rock Darren Day. But those were merely casual lovers. The lyric of ‘Goodbye My Lover’ explores the crucifying angst of losing a woman who Blunt apparently ‘pretty much considered the one’. Interviewed on James Blunt At The BBC, the Queen- guarding balladeer called the story ‘very tragic’. And, in many ways, he is right. The song begins by questioning whether he failed his departed lover, before his thoughts turn back to the early flowering of romance, depicting himself as some sort of victor (that would be the army background, presumably). His powerful presence caused his new lover temporarily to lose her sight. So he decided to take, not forcibly but with a certain righteous zeal, what he considered his property by an everlasting, possibly even divine, covenant. Continuing this reverie, Blunt imaginatively plants his mouth over various parts of his exlover’s body before recalling how they would both sleep under the same sheets. This is the reason he can then claim intimate knowledge of her physical odour. In the chorus, he repeatedly bids his lover farewell before revealing she was probably the only woman for him in the world. The implication is that he can never love again. That’s it. He is spent. Goodbye to love, perhaps. The second verse finds the war-hero-turned-singer still urgently envisioning his former girlfriend and imploring her to remember him, too. He has watched her at various times, he reveals, while she was crying, while she was smiling and also while she was sleeping (but not for that long, he also assures her – not so long that it would become fucked-up). You see, he would happily have sired offspring with this woman and spent all his born days with her. Actually, you know what? If she isn’t there, if she has definitely disappeared for good, then he is genuinely unsure about whether he can carry on living. It’s not quite, ‘Don’t leave me or I’ll kill myself!’ But it’s not quite not that, either. Self-harm, possibly? The chorus then repeats the claim that she was his only hope. Everything is ruined. And so on. We’re nearing the end now, but he must still detail the haunted nights; the nights when, lying in bed, he actually feels her hands. Honestly, it’s like she’s really there. She’s not, though, as I hope we’ve established. At the song’s climax, he brings out what we have already surmised: that this heartrending experience has left him an empty husk. To emphasise this point, he repeats it six times. Don’t make the mistake of thinking his life has any meaning. Because it hasn’t. Okay? Selling lots of records in America? He’s not bothered. ‘People have said it sounds like she died or something like that,’ he admitted. He’s very hunky with his top off and all that. But wouldn’t you chuck him too? The moaning twat. * Bedlam here refers to the famous London mental hospital. However, in 1930 the Bethlehem (of which the common name is a corruption) moved from St George’s Field, Southwark, to the outer suburb of Beckenham. The long tree-lined streets of semi-detached ennui do not in any way conjure up the spirit of 19th-century chaos; they do, however, perfectly evoke the spirit of James Blunt. I expect that’s why he called his album that. |
||
| Some shit things: Prince Andrew Bratz Charity, Trips of a lifetime for Che Guevara merchandise Citybreaks ‘Contemporary’, the word Football pundits 'Having one of those days?' advertising James Blunt Lemsip Richard Littlejohn, gays constantly sharking after Some clips from the audiobook: Delicatessen counters at supermarkets Election planes Global warming sceptics Interactive media Nu-snobbery |
||||
 |
||||