Some of the finest pieces in popular music (speaking purely musically) have unfortunately been based around someone cheating and I was dismayed to find three of my all time faves, with three of the best singers going, almost labours of love, were excusing, even pushing, that unacceptable lifestyle.
So I decided not to post them after all in expanded form:
I researched each song and that was even more dismaying.
The first, sung by Linda, I knew was about wrong, so when in RL I said to my new friend Ay, having split with Aa, one of many times as it turned out … I suggested let’s reconstruct it, actually do that song, meet at the dark end of a street I know well, easy enough for both of us to get to, and she’d heard the song … so we met up, as in the song, but not as a cheating tryst … rather as an opening scene for a new beginning. Supposedly.
Who was I kidding? She secretly had someone as it turns out and Aa got to hear of it and came back to “reclaim her property”. And so to the second, with Merrilee, which was not only about cheating but was also a double entrendre on a different Angel of the Morning … the chief fallen angel himself, the enemy of humankind. I used it in my book with a character, Julia, in a tryst with the very man she’d betray next morning, in a hail of gunfire.
The last was Bono’s song for Roy the Boy … a bit different in that it is her leaving him on a jet airliner for a rich man. The dark joke was that the actress in the clip was actually Bono’s wife of the time.
In one sense, all very exotic and chic … but in another … just tawdry, the whole thing. What sort of person actually embraces such things as a lifestyle? Either a lost soul … or a loser.
So, in that mood, I cast around for a more up tempo, happier song … guess which one appeared?
Again … fabulous singer, very good instrumentation, esp. with Dave Swarbrick, a trad storytelling from the C17th revamped by an English 60s/70s folk/rock band. And again, in the subject matter … tawdry.
A bit of classic Fairport. Another tale of the entitled class taking advantage of the peasantry. I think Fairport have played this at almost all live shows over the past 40 years, all sorts of different arrangements from acoustic folk arrangements to heavy metal intros. A poor recording of Metal Matty exists https://youtu.be/8b9zbVGbN3U?si=MOal24GKi9S-Tr1I
There is also an interesting variant in the song Lady Margaret by the band Trees
https://youtu.be/fLcxC_ZFnLg?si=73d_6yL1dELWaHAU
Then the tune was also used in the USA for Shady Grove, Tom Petty and a strange version from Quicksilver Messenger service!
https://youtu.be/5CUxHNRBneE?si=uCHRJW9IcSjuzJ_h
https://youtu.be/MT1acrlb_RE?si=HFjPK54w5ym-tXij
Amazing how these old tunes get around.