Categories for Songs

In the late 80’s i didn’t have enough money to buy me full albums. So i got out and searched through the singles and found the just out of the top 40 box. Many singles from that time i still have. And no, i never had this single. I did just check this, but i couldn’t find it.

In the 00’s you could be rickrolled. It did happen to me a couple of times. And even though the lyrics are quite basic, i do like the song. So here it goes!

Never gonna give you up – Rick Astley
Ooh ooh

We’re no strangers to love
You know the rules and so do I
A full commitment’s what I’m thinking of
You wouldn’t get this from any other guy
I just wanna tell you how I’m feeling
Gotta make you understand

Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you
Never gonna make you cry
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you

We’ve known each other for so long
Your heart’s been aching but
You’re too shy to say it
Inside we both know what’s been going on
We know the game and we’re gonna play it
And if you ask me how I’m feeling
Don’t tell me you’re too blind to see

Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you
Never gonna make you cry
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you

Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you
Never gonna make you cry
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you

(Ooh, give you up)
(Ooh, give you up)
(Ooh)
Never gonna give, never gonna give
(Give you up)
(Ooh)
Never gonna give, never gonna give
(Give you up)

We’ve know each other for so long
Your heart’s been aching but
You’re too shy to say it
Inside we both know what’s been going on
We know the game and we’re gonna play it

I just wanna tell you how I’m feeling
Gotta make you understand

Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you
Never gonna make you cry
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you

Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you
Never gonna make you cry
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you

Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you
Never gonna make you cry
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you

The original

This song has grown on me over the years. I remember reading about the group Deacon Blues, who said this song was the best song Steely Dan has ever made. I was surprised by that, and it made me listen to it more carefully. At first i didn’t notice this song. It seemed mellow, soft. Which is exactly what it is. Languid.

The lyrics. I read them today, a couple of times. I did a search on duckduckgo.com too and finally found an interesting article on stylusmagazine.com, my one time fave website. Damn, it stopped in 2007, so long ago already. It is still online, happy with that! This article called Top Ten Obscure Steely Dan lyrics. Deacon Blues is not in the top ten list, but it is mentioned in the intro.

This is one of the strangest lyrics ever put to wax—and it’s attached to a song that’s still played in elevators and department stores all across America. If you listen to “Deacon Blues” and only hear lite pop, the joke’s on you; with just a little close-listening, and the help of that English degree you never thought you’d use, it’s clear that “Deacon Blues” isn’t about a melancholy priest, but about a young hipster celebrating being a drunk, jazz-loving loser in an America that only cares about college football teams. And herein lies the greatness of Steely Dan: they wrote complex, mysterious songs disguised as catchy pop tunes. They’re both the most MOR and least MOR band ever. They’re accessible and subversive at the same time. If that isn’t the definition of great art, what is?

Listening to this song, reading this article makes me realize i hardly know enough about Steely Dan’s lyrics, or any other group for that matter. I really really should put in a lot more effort!

*sigh*

Anyway, you may listen to my recording, which in my opinion is extremely horrible. Better you listen to the original version. With the music, the saxophone, the female singers in the background, the gitar and bass and drums and whatever more. Then listen to the tellings of Walter Becker and Donald Fagen themselves, and some other people too.

Enjoy!

Deacon Blues – Steely Dan
This is the day
Of the expanding man
That shape is my shade
There where I used to stand
It seems like only yesterday
I gazed through the glass
At ramblers
Wild gamblers
That’s all in the past

You call me a fool
You say it’s a crazy scheme
This one’s for real
I already bought the dream
So useless to ask me why
Throw a kiss and say goodbye
I’ll make it this time
I’m ready to cross that fine line

Learnt to work the saxophone
I, I play just what I feel
Drink Scotch whiskey all night long
(Aah)
And die behind the wheel
They got a name for the winners in the world
I, I want a name when I lose
They call Alabama, “The Crimson Tide”
(Aah)
Call me Deacon Blues
(Deacon Blues)

My back to the wall
A victim of laughing chance
This is for me
The essence of true romance
Sharing the things we know and love
With those of my kind
Libations
Sensations
That stagger the mind

I crawl like a viper
Through these suburban streets
Make love to these women
Languid and bittersweet
I’ll rise when the sun goes down
Cover every game in town
A world of my own
I’ll make it my home sweet home

Learnt to work the saxophone
I, I play just what I feel
Drink Scotch whiskey all night long
(Aah)
And die behind the wheel
They got a name for the winners in the world
I, I want a name when I lose
They call Alabama, “The Crimson Tide”
(Aah)
Call me Deacon Blues
(Deacon Blues)

This is the night
Of the expanding man
I take one last drag
As I approach the stand
I cried when I wrote this song
Sue me if I play too long
This brother is free
I’ll be what I want to be

I learnt to work the saxophone
I, I play just what I feel
Drink Scotch whiskey all night long
(Aah)
And die behind the wheel
They got a name for the winners in the world
I, I want a name when I lose
They call Alabama, “The Crimson Tide”
(Aah)
Call me Deacon Blues
(Deacon Blues)

The original song on the album which i actually do have! And yes, i did buy it when it was released, in 1977.

Steely Dan discuss the production behind “Deacon Blues” from “Aja.”

OK, this is not my favourite Scritti Politti song, but it is interesting. I’ve known this song since 1986, when i bought the album Songs to remember. I’ve been practising getting the words and the order right for years. Nowadays it’s easy, you simply search for lions after slumber lyrics and there it is. Although, i did have to add my own shit. Ha!

So i admit, i still don’t know the entire lyrics out of my head. It is hard, since the structure of the text is so uniform. The rhythm of the song lyrics is less uniform, some words go fast, some go slower. Some go really slow. I still had to sing along with the song itself a couple of times to memorize the entire structure of the song.
I did leave out the instrumental bit. That is the hard part when you sing a cappella. I can do some la la la’s and ooh ooh ooh’s, but with this song i simply didn’t feel like doing that. So i skipped it.

So, even when this song isn’t my favourite scritti song of all time, i do love it. I even made a present with in 2005, Lions after slumber. A fitting name.

I hope you will enjoy this one. 🙂

SCRITTI POLITTI
Lions After Slumber

My diplomacy, my security, my hope and my ice-cream
My tomorrow and my temperature, my lips and my selfishness
My cigarette, my uncertainty, my penetration
My notebook and my limit, my importance and my glycerine
My customer, my function, my lawlessness, my charm
My hunger, my refusal, my tissue and my vodka
My ommission, my ability, my telephone and my holler
My relaxing, my distress, my bedroom, my cassette
My dictation and my pulse, my fortune and my death
My flake and my restlessness, my headache and my dirt
My paper and my charity, my rose and my pallor
My guess and my closet, my light ‘n’ my time
My worry, my perversity, my transgression
My temptation and my polythene, my gunshot
My jealousy and my water
My demands ‘n’ my angels ‘n’ my waiting ‘n’ my distance
My death, my curtness, my insulin, my memory
My partner ‘n’ my sadness, my story, my wantoness
My wish, my despair, my erasure, my plantation
My white chocolate, my thoughtlessness, my gracelessness
My courage and my crying, my pockets ‘n’ my mistakes
My body and my sex, my gaze and my helplessness
My letter, my sugar, my homework, my walk
My records, my smile and my struggle
My reflection, my eyelid, my fragility, my discretion
My hair, my austerity, my tattoo, my demise
My fooling and my terror, my problem and my judgement
Oh my disguise, my tongue, my own shit
My ownership, my formula, my property, my thought, my razor
My blessing and my silence, my lust and my practice
My sincerity, my penecillin, my window and my androgyny
My mother, my recorder, my pity and my posing
My light, my carelessness, my drummer, my drummer, my drummer, my drummer
My tenderness ‘n’ my car, my undoing and my history
My bottle and my drugs, my drugs, my drugs
Tomorrow, my temperature, my lips and my selfishness
My cigarette, my uncertainty, my penetration, my notebook

My limit, my importance, my glycerine, my customer, my function
My lawlessness, my charm and my hunger
My refusal, my tissue, my vodka, my admission

My ability and my telephone, my holler, my relaxing
My distress and my bedroom, my restlessness, my headache
My dirt, my paper, charity, my rose
My pallor, my guess and my closet,
my light ‘n’ my time, my worry, my perversity
My transgression honey, my temptation honey
My polythene, my jealousy
My water, my demands, my angels
My waiting, my distance, my death, my curtness, my insulin
My memory, my partner, my refrigerator
My sadness, my story, my wantoness, my skipping
My wish and my despair, my erasure, my plantation, my chocolate
My thoughtlessness, my gracelessness, my courage and my crying
My pockets, my homework
Like lions after slumber in unvanquishable number
Oh yeah

The orginal

The single version

I mentioned buying her album A Distant Shore in 1983 in the Memories post in June this year. I loved it when i bought it, and i still love it now.

I also do enjoy her writing. I haven’t read her books yet, but i’m sure i will some day. I do read her column in the New Statesman.

This song Plain Sailing is about how your life will never be that, plain sailing. It simply doesn’t exist. I don’t think you should want it anyway. It is an illusion. Even if you are happy, with friends, with someone to love, with work in your life, there are always rocks and dry periods and sandbanks to try to get you off course. You simply have to deal with that.

My wise words for today 🙂

Enjoy!

Plain Sailing – Tracey Thorn
Meetings arranged, they say, never work out
I say we’ve proved them wrong without a doubt
I can’t remember now just what we said
I never could have guessed what lay ahead
As I ran towards you up the stairs
Did a voice in my ear cry, ‘Beware’?

Even now I’m surprised you recall
Such a short time it took me to fall
Pretending that my heart still lay elsewhere
When in truth I had long ceased to care
For what I thought I’d never replace
Til in my heart you left him no space

You say, you wonder what was it I saw?
I say ‘Oh, I don’t recall anymore’
My first impressions have been left behind
Replaced now by feelings and more lost in kind

Sure that you know but you never can tell
When I think I understand you so well
Shakes me that you were a constant surprise
Or so you appear in my eyes

Tempting to think now it will all be plain sailing
Old enough now to know there’s no such thing

The original

The main a cappella song i know, Jane’s It’s a fine day. It was on a disc sampler i used to have, The eyes of Barbara Steele. I might have lended this album out. I don’t remember to be honest. I did go though my whole vinyl collection but i couldn’t find it.

I do enjoy this song. I did find more people have covered it, but this version i do really love. Because it is a cappella. It was heard to find good lyrics for this song, there wasn’t one with the right verses and la la la’s and hm hm hmm’s in it. I did sing it from my memory, after having sung it with her a couple of times. I don’t think it is exactly the same, but i do really enjoy singing it.

It’s not too bad. In my humble opinion. 🙂 Enjoy!

It’s a fine day
Jane
It’s a fine day
People open windows
They leave their houses
Just want a short walk

They look at the grass
They look at the sky

It’s going to be a fine night tonite
It’s going to be a fine day tomorrow

La la la la la dee da la la
La la la la la da la la la
La la la la la dee da la la
La la la la la da la la la
La la la la la dee da la la
La la la la la da la la la
La la la la la dee da la la
La la la la la da la la la

Sitting in this field
I remember how we are going to sit in this field
But never quite did
Rain or appointment or something
Rain or appointment

Hm hm hm hm hm hmmm

It’s a fine day
People open windows
They leave their houses
Just for a short walk

They look at the grass
They look at the sky

It’s going to be a fine night tonite
It’s going to be a fine day tomorrow

We will have salad

The original

Top Of The World. My first Carpenters song. And the first time i did a bit of mixing of several versions i sang. I know i know, it’s not the best. I enjoy singing this song. The most important thing for me now. Truthfully, some songs almost pain me. They are so painfully sweet, it’s hard to listen to them. But this song, as is Close to you, Yesterday Once More, Rainy Days and Mondays and We’ve Only Just Begun are my favourites. They might come along too in my series of songs!

A quote from the Rolling Stone, putting her on place 94(?) in the list of 100 Greatest Singers.

Karen Carpenter’s white-bread image and sad fate — she died of anorexia in 1983 — have overshadowed her chocolate-and-cream alto voice. But other performers know the score: Elton John called her “one of the greatest voices of our lifetime,” and Madonna has said she is “completely influenced by her harmonic sensibility.” Impossibly lush and almost shockingly intimate, Carpenter’s performances were a new kind of torch singing, built on understatement and tiny details of inflection that made even the sappiest songs sound like she was staring directly into your eyes. Still, she’s a guilty pleasure for many. “Karen Carpenter had a great sound,” John Fogerty once told Rolling Stone, “but if you’ve got three guys out on the ballfield and one of them started humming [a Carpenters song], the other two guys would pants him.”

Top of the World
Such a feelings coming over me
There is wonder in most every thing I see
Not a cloud in the sky, got the sun in my eyes
And I won’t be surprised if it’s a dream

Everything I want the world to be
Is now coming true especially for me
And the reason is clear, it’s because you are here
You’re the nearest thing to Heaven that I’ve seen

I’m on the top of the world looking down on creation
And the only explanation I can find
Is the love that I’ve found ever since you’ve been around
Your love’s put me at the top of the world

Something in the wind has learned my name
And it’s telling me that things are not the same
In the leaves on the trees and the touch of the breeze
There’s a pleasing sense of happiness for me

There is only one wish on my mind
When this day is through I hope that I will find
That tomorrow will be just the same for you and me
All I need will be mine if you are here

I’m on the top of the world looking down on creation
And the only explanation I can find
Is the love that I’ve found ever since you’ve been around
Your love’s put me at the top of the world

I’m on the top of the world looking down on creation
And the only explanation I can find
Is the love that I’ve found ever since you’ve been around
Your love’s put me at the top of the world

The original recording

A live version

Another song of my favourites list, Sometimes song by Britney Spears. I always liked this song and the corresponding clip. I made a present with Britney in 1999, the year this song was released as a single.

It is of course a very young and withholding song, about a shy girl expressing her reserved and mixed feelings towards the boy she apparently fancies. There is another interpretation that the song is about a former relationship. I can understand that feeling, especially when looking at the video, but from the lyrics i don’t get that idea. The lyrics do say ‘You’ll see that you’re the only one for me” and “If you love me, trust in me”. The refrain for me is the strongest in this song, “Sometimes i run”, “Sometimes i hide”, “Baby all i need is time”. I simply do love these words.

Of course to me, the “uh oh” after “I don’t wanna be so shy” is the selling point of this song.

Sometimes
You tell me, you’re in love with me
Like you can’t take your pretty eyes away from me
It’s not that I don’t want to stay
But every time you come too close, I move away
I wanna believe in everything that you say
‘Cause it sounds so good
But if you really want me, move slow
There’s things about me, you just have to know

Sometimes I run
Sometimes I hide
Sometimes I’m scared of you
But all I really want is to hold you tight
Treat you right, be with you day and night
Baby, all I need is time

I don’t wanna be so shy
Every time that I’m alone, I wonder why
Hope that you will wait for me
You’ll see that you’re the only one for me
I wanna believe in everything that you say
‘Cause it sounds so good
But if you really want me, move slow
There’s things about me, you just have to know

Sometimes I run
Sometimes, sometimes I hide
Sometimes I’m scared of you
But all I really want is to hold you tight
Treat you right, be with you day and night
All I really want is to hold you tight
Treat you right, be with you day and night
Baby, all I need is time

Come, just hang around and you’ll see
There’s nowhere I’d rather be
If you love me, trust in me
The way that I trust in you

Sometimes I run
Sometimes I hide
Sometimes I’m scared of you
All I really want is to hold you tight
Treat you right, be with you day and night

Sometimes I run
Sometimes I hide
Sometimes I’m scared of you
All I really want is to hold you tight
Treat you right, be with you day and night
All I really want is to hold you tight
Be with you day and night

Sometimes I run
Sometimes I hide
Sometimes I’m scared of you
All I really want is to hold you tight
Treat you right, be with you day and night

—–

I did find it hard to keep on singing this song in the same key. I sang along with the song several times to get it fixed in my head, but well, i don’t think i really made it. But i’m not entirely unsatisfied with it, so here it goes!

The videoclip