#36 Nadine Shah - Dreary Town

Album: Love Your Dum And Mad (2013.)

Lyrics excerpt:
We were down and out in London
Sharing beds and sharing money
But we were satisfied
With our hot milk and honey
For the young and beautiful
The life with no regrets
So let's toast to a short-lived love
And drink to all the rest
I'm not gonna follow you to the ground
Darling, I'm leaving this dreary town
I'm not gonna follow you to the ground
When there's greener pastures waiting to be found

Reasons to love this song:
The lyrics quoted above are probably not completely correct because I wasn't able to find them online, so I attempted to write them down as I heard them and it took me several repeats to make them out. But that just makes me appreciate Nadine Shah's voice even more: normally I consider the lyrics to a song at least as important as the music, if not more important. But this song instantly got a place among my all-time favourites during the very first listen -- while I understood very little of the lyrics -- because of the melody and the singer's amazingly expressive voice, which reminds me of the voice of a fado singer.

YouTube Link
The official video:

#35 Madonna - La Isla Bonita

Album: True Blue (1986)

Lyrics excerpt:
Last night I dreamt of San Pedro
Just like I'd never gone, I knew the song
A young girl with eyes like the desert
It all seems like yesterday, not far away

Reasons to love this song:
True Blue was one of the first albums I ever owned. I remember I listened to it until the tape was all worn out. Decades later, I have completely forgotten some of the songs (Jimmy Jimmy? Where's The Party? Love Makes The World Go Round?), but the others, especially Live To Tell and La Isla Bonita, have stood the test of time wonderfully. Just hearing the first few bars of La Isla Bonita makes me imagine tropical islands, bright orange cocktails with ice cubes and little umbrellas in them, and palm trees outlined in the sunset.

I like to listen to this song in a playlist with:
The Beach Boys - Kokomo
Kaoma - Lambada
Chris Rea - On the Beach
UB40 - Kingston Town
(Other summery songs from the same era.)

YouTube link:
The official video, featuring an adorable short-haired and wide-eyed Madonna:

#34 k. d. lang - Summerfling

Album: Invincible Summer (2000)

Lyrics excerpt:
Early morning mid-July
Anticipation's makin' me high
The smell of Sunday in our hair
You ran on the beach with Kennedy Flair
Sweet, sweet burn of sun and summer wind
And you, my friend, my new fun thing
My summerfling

Reasons to love this song:
So many of my favourite summer songs are melancholy and nostalgic. Summerfling is definitely one of them. I suppose it is because summer and nostalgia are so firmly linked to one another. For a child, summer is a seemingly endless time of being completely carefree. As adults, although most of us cannot afford to be completely carefree, I think we still try to capture some traces of this feeling, and k. d. lang's song captures them perfectly, from the anticipation to the final bittersweet loss.

I like to listen to this song in a playlist with:
Lana Del Rey - Summertime Sadness
Madeleine Peyroux - The Summer Wind
Boney M - Still I'm Sad
Tori Amos - Indian Summer
Beautiful South - Everybody's Talkin'
(These songs do not resemble each other, but to me they all seem to share a summery/melancholic/nostalgic mood.)

YouTube link:
The official video:

#33 Norah Jones - Miriam

(Halloween playlist, #7)
 Album: Little Broken Hearts (2012)

 Lyrics excerpt: Oh Miriam 
That's such a pretty name 
And I'll keep saying it 
Until you die 
Miriam 
You know you done me wrong
 I'm gonna smile when 
You say goodbye

 Reasons to love this song:
The fact that it sounds so innocent and gentle in the beginning, and that Norah Jones is best known for soft and gentle songs like Come Away With Me and Sunrise, makes it all the more shocking when you gradually come to realise that it's actually a murder ballad. Miriam reminded me instantly of Dolly Parton's Jolene -- it could be Jolene's dark twin. The narrator of the song is confronted by the same problem, but the solution is so different...

  YouTube link:
Like the song, the official video seems melancholy but innocent in the beginning -- until you see the blood-covered oar.
 

# 32 Loreena McKennitt: The Bonny Swans

(Halloween playlist, #6)

Album: The Mask and Mirror (1994)

Lyrics excerpt:

And there does sit my father the King 
(with a hey ho and a bonny o) 
And yonder sits my mother the Queen 
(the swans swim so bonny o)
And there does sit my brother Hugh 
And by him William, sweet and true 
And there does sit my false sister, Anne 
Who drowned me for the sake of a man 

Reasons to love this song:
I fell in love with this song at first listen just because of the tune, which is very pretty and not at all dark. Then I listened to the lyrics more carefully and thought I had heard something about making a harp out of human bones...
The Bonny Swans is a version of a ballad known at least since the seventeenth century, in many forms and under many different names (The Twa Sisters, The Cruel Sister, The Wind And Rain...). All these songs tell the story of a woman drowned by her sister because of jealousy; in the supernatural versions, such as this one, the bones of the murdered sister are made into a harp or a fiddle which, when played, accuses the murderer.
Loreena McKennitt adapted the lyrics and composed the music for this version. Although there is definitely humour in her version of the song (surely she had noticed that the heroine's father is a farmer in the first verse, but a King at the end?) the final two lines -- And there does sit my false sister, Anne who drowned me for the sake of a man -- never fail to make me shudder.

Youtube link:

The official video


And, for comparison, one of the non-supernatural versions of the same tale: Two Sisters by Clannad

#31 Joni Mitchell - Urge For Going

Album: Hits (1996); B-side to the You Turn Me on I'm a Radio single (1972).

Lyrics excerpt: 
I had me a man in summertime
He had summer-colored skin
And not another girl in town
My darling's heart could win
But when the leaves fell on the ground
Bully winds came around
Pushed them face down in the snow
He got the urge for going
And I had to let him go


Reasons to love this song:
Autumnal weather came rather suddenly where I live this year, making me want to listen to autumnal songs -- and Urge For Going is probably my favourite one -- even though I think of autumn as a colourful and pleasant season, and in this song the warm seasons are synonymous with life and love, and the cold seasons equal death and loneliness. (It's more complex than that, of course -- in this song's universe it is possible to escape from death and loneliness if you have "the wings to fly".) The music is melancholy, but I also hear it as incredibly warm, in contrast with the coldness described in the lyrics.

Youtube links:
Joni Mitchell performing the song on television in 1966. I love how the musicians around her all seem awestruck by her performance.


Tom Rush's version of the song (from his 1968 album The Circle Game, which also included two other Joni Mitchell covers):


My favourite cover of this song, by Charlotte Martin (from Reproductions, 2007):

#30 Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood - Summer Wine

Album: Nancy & Lee (1968)

Lyrics excerpt:
Strawberries, cherries and an angel's kiss in spring 
My summer wine is really made from all these things 
Take off your silver spurs and help me pass the time
 And I will give to you summer wine

Reasons to love this song:
The songs I have written in this blog are mostly performed (and written by) solo female musicians, but I will make an exception now and then -- starting with this song, one of my favourite summer songs. It tells the story of a man who is seduced and robbed by a femme fatale, but Nancy Sinatra sings her part in a sweet and dreamy voice, not even trying to sound "evil".
The lyrics to this song have made a friend of mine, who is very literal-minded, angry. "No, your summer wine is bloody well not really made of all these things, because you can't make wine out of strawberries, cherries and bloody angel's kisses!" When I told her the wine in the song isn't necessarily real wine at all, but a metaphor for the female character's love, she grumbled: "Even worse."

YouTube link:
I love Nancy's little laugh at about 2:10. Bizarrely, in the beginning of the video her head looks as if it were screwed on backwards.