Another of those Beautiful South songs with a barbed lyric. See my comments on Song for Whoever.
For single release and radio play the line in this which reads, “Don’t marry her, have me,” was changed from something altogether more fruity, as was the euphemism “Sandra Bullocks”.
Part of the lyric always annoyed me, though. “Take the kiddies to the park,” doesn’t scan. “Take the kids to the park,” would.
The Beautiful South: Don’t Marry Her
The less work-friendly, more earthy, version of Don’t Marry Her can be found here.
Sweet tunes, romantic tunes, The Beautiful South certainly had them; but allied to bitterly ironic – even cynical – lyrics.
The opening line here, “I love you from the bottom of my pencil case,” is just about on the bounds of tastefulness but the lyric goes on (partly to comment on the process of writing a cheap love song) by listing a series of girls’ names with the tag, “I wrote so many songs about you, I forget your name,” then adds a cutting parenthesis, “(I forget your name)”.
The cynicism is increased in the second round of the melody where we have, “Oh Cathy, Oh Alison, Oh Phillipa, Oh Sue. You made me so much money, I wrote this song for you.” Jennifer, Deborah and Annabel are added to the list in the next two lines. It’s brutal in its lack of regard.
Having said there weren’t many protest songs in the 1980s this is another one – of sorts. It was performed by the Hull based Housemartins (out of whose demise came both The Beautiful South and Fat Boy Slim.)
This is a song from the far-from-lighhearted-lyrics-set-against-jaunty-tune genre that The Beautiful South mined so successfully much later. Did Ray Davies invent this as well as heavy metal and prog rock?
The BBC apparently took exception to this promotional film at the time as it was “in bad taste.” (You can see why I didn’t want to post it in the week Pete Quaife died.)
