Saturday, 11th April 2009.

Human Writes

“In the beginning / when we were winning….”
“There!” said Emily. “There it is again.”
“In the beginning / when we were winning….”
“That’s the Manics, is it?” I said.
“Yes. I played the album, like, once on Monday. And Joshua just picked that up and he’s been singing it all week.”

I swung the Zafira round the curve at the bottom of Streatley Hill, as the A329 heads out of the residential area by the youth hostel, and the road opens up towards Pangbourne.

“In the beginning / when we were winning….” sang Josh, somewhat tunelessly.

“Clever that he picked that up so quickly.”
“Yes,” she said, “except he only knows the first two lines. Which is kind of annoying.”

This reminded me of a story I once read about a group of children on a train journey, and one girl in particular who was singing ‘On The Road To Mandalay’. Except she knew only the first line, which she repeated over and over endlessly, much to the annoyance of her accompanying aunt. Sitting here now some hours later as I type it up, I’m reminded of seeing Bernie Clifton at Butlins of Skegness twenty years ago this summer, and his rendition of ‘Memory’, which consisted of the words ‘Not a sound from the pavement’, repeated throughout the entire verse.

“In the beginning / when we were winning….”
“Which one is it, anyway?”
“I can’t remember. It was definitely on This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours, because that’s what we were listening to.”
“I don’t know it too well,” I said. “I kind of went off them then.”
“It is a bit pompous.”
“It’s not just that. The songs are badly written. “ Actually, my contempt for This is My Truth… runs deeper than bad songs. When I first heard the album ten years ago, I commented in an email that it sounded like they’d written lyrics in one room and then married them with a completely unrelated melody. This, as it turns out, is exactly how the Manics worked, and the friend who’d received the email was quick to point this out (as well as slag me off no end for stomping all over his favourite group). I might just have been able to live with this disjointed methodology if they hadn’t been so fucking preachy. As someone who knew all about writing bad, preachy songs, having written a fair few myself, I felt I had some frame of reference.

But the biggest crime on This Is My Truth… is the execrable ‘S.Y.M.M. (South Yorkshire Mass Murderer’, which – as well as being even more preachy than usual – commits the cardinal sin of talking about the songwriting process. In a song. Opening with some pleasant, distorted guitar work, in a ponderous minor key, you think you’ll be treated to a thought-provoking album closer until Bradfield starts his vocal: “The subtext of this song, I’ve thought about it for so long / But it’s really not the sort of thing that people want to hear us sing”.

Excuse me? What is this bollocks? Is this your contribution to the liner notes that somehow got dropped onto a lead sheet by mistake? Or did you have the idea of writing one of those thought-process songs? Have you pinched the idea from George Harrison, and his equally whiny and equally shit ‘Only A Northern Song’? But perhaps I’m being a little too harsh. Let’s stick with it and see if it gets any better:

“The context of this song, well I could go on and on
  But it’s still unfashionable to believe in principles”.

What the hell? That barely even scans, Bradfield. And what do you mean you “could” go on and on? You do go on and on. Constantly. ‘The Everlasting’ was six minutes – it didn’t live up to its title, at least technically, but it certainly felt like it. You’ve barely shut up since Richey jumped ship. Things don’t get better: later, Bradfield admits that “the reason for this song…may be a pointless one”, before conceding that he hasn’t thought of an ending. Well, that’s just lovely. One of the most popular bands in the world, and you can’t think how to finish off your latest album, except to go out with a colossal whimper rather than a bang. Let’s just go back to the chorus, shall we? A droning repeat of “South South Yorkshire Mass Murderer / How can you sleep at night, sleep at night?”. Perhaps we should level the question at the Manics, and ask them how they could sleep at night after having written such turgid rubbish and foisted it on the general public. I don’t care if the song’s about Hillsborough, that doesn’t make it any good.

I didn’t say all this to Emily, because it would have taken the rest of the journey. Instead I said “There’s a song that closes the album that talks about writing songs. And stuff like that rarely works. Certainly not in this case. It’s the same with Elton John.”
“Which one?”
“’Your Song’.”
“I thought you liked that one.”
“I suppose I do. In a way. But it’s amateur. It was thrown together in twenty minutes, and it shows. One of the lyrics was “If I was a sculptor / but then again, no…” to which the conventional response is well, why the hell did you bring it up?”
Emily giggled.
“Not my joke, unfortunately. Thing is,” I said, “it works in the context of something like Moulin Rouge. Because in that it’s used in by a young poet who’s improvising and trying to work out what to say next, and that’s exactly how the lyrics come across. That’s probably why that sequence functions so well, because it gets to the heart of the song. But a masterpiece it ain’t. And it doesn’t rhyme.”

Emily gave me one of those you’re-stretching-the-point-with-that-one looks.

“I just think they’ve written better stuff, that’s all. ‘Tiny Dancer’, for one, or ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’.”

Both songs have a certain place in our hearts: I first sang ‘Tiny Dancer’ to Emily before the beginning of a rehearsal, seated at the piano in the hall, just the two of us, not long after we got engaged. ‘Yellow Brick Road’ was, for some time, the only song that would pacify Thomas when he was upset, to the extent that we pasted a permanent MP3 link on our desktop. I knew she was thinking about this as well, and allowed us a reflective pause.

“Or,” I added eventually, “‘Someone Shaved My Wife Tonight’.”

Another giggle. Then, from the back seat,
“In the beginning / when we were winning….”

Cue Pangbourne city limits, and comparative sanity.