From "Tonight" to "This Is What She's Like"

Two songs I've just played on Chorlton FM got me thinking about their lyrics and how they are head and shoulders above so much that is out there...

Iggy Pop - Tonight

"I saw my baby, she was turning blue".

Not the happiest of starts to a song I admit, but the sentiment at the heart of the song really is quite beautiful. It's rumoured to be about someone dying of a heroin overdose but it still conveys more emotion and says more than a thousand power ballads ever could.

It's arguably the song most likely to make me cry (not really cry obviously, but...err...nearly cry) - essentially Iggy is singing words of reassurance to a loved one who is on their death bed. The last verse is the one that really gets you, where Iggy stops singing to her and starts singing about her, at which point you know here life IS through.

Actually the only song more likely to make me cry is David Bowie and Tina Turner's cover version, where they ripped the soul out of the song and left it for dead in the gutter.



Dexy's Midnight Runners - This is What She's Like
This has to be the noblest attempt to describe someone and express how you feel about them ever. Anyone can sing "I love you" without really meaning it, so often it sounds like some trite half baked lyric, but few are able to try and express how they feel and sound so sincere as in this song.

What starts out as an awkward conversation between Kevin Rowland and Billy Adams turns into, over the course of 12 minutes, Kevin trying his best to explain how he feels about the girl in his life. But he can't - all he can do is list the kind of people he hates and everything that she most definitely isn't -  you know, the usual things such as the upper classes, people who put creases in their jeans and those who use words like "super" and fabulous" all the time.

"What's she like?" Billy keeps asking.
"In time, in time" is all Kevin can reply.

In the end he resorts to a singing a wordless melody to describe her. "oh, I see - she must be something" goes Billy. "I don't speak Italian myself....but I knew a man who did" Kevin summarises. Err...quite.

It's hilarious, stunning and bang on the mark. Looking forward to more of the same on their forthcoming album.