Today I am going to write about how a certain song, might – and can – trigger powerful emotional responses in human beings, and – for a future, related piece – I am also interested in how an “emotional connection” can form with regards to a specific piece of music – a song, an album sometimes – and how the interplay of time, distance, nostalgia, longing, sorrow, joy, alienation, hope and a myriad of other powerful emotions can be and often are experienced by listeners – and under what conditions and circumstances does this occur?
While I have spoken to other musicians, acquaintances and friends about this phenomena from time to time over the years, it’s only recently, when hearing certain pieces of music for the first time in many months – or, in a few instances of hearing pieces after many years of not hearing them – that I’ve had a remarkable emotional experience – and up until now – I have never really explored the “how” and the “why” of this.
Given that I only have my own emotional responses to hand as a reference; I am going to cite just one recent example today – where I experienced a very powerful, emotional response during the playback of a particular song. I think I will leave the “emotional connection” issue for a future discussion – and concentrate on and just look at the sudden and inexplicable emotional response alone in this blog – it’s a mystery enough on its own!
I’ve been “listening to music” now actively for several decades, and that experience, over time, has changed, and changed again. In the past, I’ve had strong emotional responses to songs, and more recently – some really, truly powerful ones – and I feel that the time has come to try to gain a better understanding, to gain in some cases any understanding – of how and why both powerful emotional responses (as well as the less emotional but no less interesting emotional connections to songs) occur – I want to attempt to gain any understanding at all – because a lot of the how and why is just not clear to me so far.
It’s my hope, too, that by broaching this somewhat personal and sensitive topic, that others might “weigh in” and share with us, their own experiences with emotional response to music – so that we might all better understand what happens to us when we are powerfully “affected” by the simple act of hearing a particular piece of music.
The only way we can begin to understand the powerful, emotional experiences I am referencing here, is to describe one such experience in as much detail as possible – which is both embarrassing and also, very personal – because I think – and I don’t really “know” this – but I think – that each of us unique individuals is different – and therefore, each of us will have a very specific and very personal experience based on our own individual emotional “make up” if you will – and I would break that down thusly as a sort of background to the discussion in general:
- Some individuals may experience a powerful emotional response to a piece of music – while others, may not. For those who never have experienced this – well – this may not be a very interesting blog to read lol (my apologies), unless you happen to know someone like me – who this DOES happen to from time to time – and / or you are curious to want to understand more as to the “how and why” of these emotional responses – what is actually causing them – how do they occur – why do they occur – none of these are simple questions with simple answers – so the more data we have – the better.
- The “symptoms” or “affects” of the emotional response will also vary greatly between individuals – in some, it might just be a wistful feeling, it might be a smile or a happy feeling, it might be a sad feeling – perhaps a welling up of tears but no actual physical response – right on up to and including some truly powerful and inexplicable emotional responses such as suddenly bursting into tears unexpectedly or sobbing uncontrollably a moment or two after a “particular” song begins to play (or when a playing song reaches a certain point in its musical and lyrical narrative) – the exact “when” of the response is somewhat indeterminate. So the level of the reaction will vary greatly between experiencing individuals.
- So – the term I am using – “emotional response” – clearly runs a gamut from mild – to medium – to incredibly powerful feelings “evoked” by a particular song – the most extreme reactions I would term “powerful emotional responses” while the milder ones I would just deem to be lesser “emotional responses”. That is about as far towards “defining” this experience that I have got to date – “emotional responses” and “powerful emotional responses”. Not much of a definition – but it’s a start, and it’s a place from which a more definite definition can grow I hope with some further data and some further descriptions of other experiences should those appear in response to this blog.
- In some cases, the “trigger” for the response, might just be “part” of a song rather than the entire song – a chorus, a verse, maybe just the lyrics – who knows? For me, it usually “feels like” it’s the whole song, like it is a true mixture of
- the music playing and it being heard and understood – and
- the vocals and lyrics sung being heard and understood…
…but, sometimes, within that experience – one particular musical phrase or one particular lyric – can sometimes impact the listener with a further, even more powerful response – so some parts of the song are more powerful “evokers” – than others. It’s very difficult to articulate this point clearly – I would say, as example, that during the experience that I had – that the” level” or “intensity” of my emotional response definitely increased at certain crucial points which seemed to correlate with certain words, certain tones in the singers voice, or certain emotions that the lyrics and the vocal performance produced in me – it wasn’t just – a flat response, but more like a very short, very powerful emotional roller coaster ride – with certain parts of the song (i.e. “…and once when I was so drunk” and especially “she was strong…and she lifted me…”) caused a much stronger emotion for a few fleeting seconds – as part of what was already a highly charged and very emotional experience – peaks of intensity, might be one way to describe this.
So… bearing the above in mind, here is a recent “powerful emotional response” that I had to a song. I have attempted here, to set up some background so you can understand the context better – because the onset of the response was so sudden, so unexpected – that I want to understand that background as well as possible myself – in the hopes of reaching some kind of understanding as to how and why this very sudden, very, very unexpected, and incredibly powerful emotional experience happens – and even stranger – why does it only happen on certain occasions, under certain sets of circumstances – and not every time I hear that particular song?
EXAMPLE SONG – “The Girls In The Flat Upstairs” by Martin Newell – taken from his 1995 record “The Off-White Album” – it’s the final track on the record – featuring a two guitars-bass-and drums rock band with a real string quartet added for an amazing pop sheen – it’s a cracking tune! (I recommend this song and this entire album to anyone who likes high quality pop or rock music with thoughtful, intelligent lyrics – by all means – give it a listen if you can).
NOTE: A full transcript of the song’s lyric is provided at the very end of this post – please see below.
Background
In the early 1990s, in about 1993, via my longstanding admiration of the band XTC and probably through the auspices of “Chalkhills” – the official XTC website (admirably built, run and maintained for many, many years now by my friend and fellow Level One Guitar Craft partner, the remarkable Mr. John Relph – mandolinist extraordinaire) – I learned about an album called “The Greatest Living Englishman” by an artist named Martin Newell with whom I was not familiar with at that time.
My initial interest in this album was due to the fact that one Andy Partridge (of the band XTC) had played a lead guitar solo on one of the tracks (“We’ll Build A House”) – and being a huge fan of Andy’s guitar playing – I simply wanted to hear that solo. And on a more human level – I wanted to hear any album by a friend of Andy Partridge – and by someone who Andy admired enough to take the time to support the album by playing on it – that definitely piqued my interest in the record.
So I got that album (and, incidentally, I subsequently learned that “We’ll Build A House” guitar solo note for note – it’s not terrifically difficult but it’s quite subtle and beautiful – you should have a go if you are a guitarist!) – and that – the purchase of and enjoyment of buying that album – then – later on, led me to automatically buying the next Martin Newell release – “The Off-White Album” from 1995 – which, curiously – features a fantastic guitar solo by the OTHER guitarist from XTC – the remarkable Dave Gregory.
By the mid-1990s then – approximately 25 years ago now – I collected these two albums by Martin Newell – and I played them both a lot – and over the years, neither has been neglected – they both have a lot of great songs on them – and in fact, as John Relph of Chalkhills pointed out – Martin Newell is a proponent of something I think he called “Jangly Pop” (or is it “Jangle Pop” – I am not quite sure now) – which is an apt-enough description.
I would, however, hasten to add – that this description does not mean this music is frivolous in any way – and while some songs are definitely excellent examples of “Jangly” or “Jangle Pop” – some of the songs are also hard-hitting social commentary and are moving in the extreme – and are still relevant and hard-hitting after 25 years – in my personal opinion.
These two albums are pop albums, made mostly with a sort of two guitars bass and drums approach – featuring the excellent socially aware and often fairly biting social commentary of Martin Newell’s lyrics – mixed in with songs of love and loss and all of the familiar topics that get covered on the more serious less frivolous pop music or singer / songwriter releases. Martin himself, happens to also be a very well-read and well-respected poet of no mean skill – so he brings a poet’s sensibilities to his” jangly” pop music and to his more serious lyrics, too – a potent and attractive combination of factors.
In fact it was the element of storytelling, and the obvious poetic bent of some of the lyrics on both of these mid 90s albums – that made them stand out from the crowd at the time – and finding out later on that Martin Newell was in fact very well known for his poetry – well, when I learned that, the lyrics of these two albums made even more sense to me than they already did – they have a somewhat deeper meaning I believe, because of the way they are presented – as living stories with a poetic lilt – that’s maybe not quite it – but it’s something like that.
Not your typical “I love you why don’t you love me” kind of boy-girl pop song lyrics – but in fact, Martin’s lyrics loaded with meaning – foresight, foreboding, hindsight, regret, fear, alienation – insight – it’s all there in Martin’s words – not to mention, a wicked sense of humour which can be seen in some of the wonderful titles and puns that abound in Martin’s work – for example the title of the album that the example song in this blog comes from “The Off-White Album” – which happens to contain a track that clearly pays tribute to a George Harrison song – “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” – from “The White Album” by the Beatles – I mean come on – “The Off White Album” – that is a great album name and a funny one, too – a great slightly off-kilter view of a pop album –“Off-White” rather than “White” – brilliant!
As with all albums, there is a real mix of tracks on both records, and you get some very sentimental, lovely songs and some powerful, dark, socially aware songs where Martin is clearly less than pleased with the way the government is doing things, with the politics of the day, or with the attitudes of real folk he has encountered while busking – such as “Queen Phyllis of Colchester” – [which as noted above – is a nearly direct copy of the Beatles’ “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” – from Martin’s “The Off-White Album”] – which happens to be the track where Dave Gregory unleashes his own inner Eric-Clapton-psycho-guitar solo – so the albums both contain songs ranging from very light-hearted to much more serious – and everywhere in between.
If you are by chance, familiar with these records, then this example will make more sense to you perhaps – but if not, if it’s possible, if you are able to hear “The Off-White Album” once or twice so you get the feel for what kind of music this is – an excellent work of true quality I would say – nothing particularly unusual about it that might make it good music to evoke an emotional response – just a good quality album, by a good artist who writes excellent lyrics and makes good records.
What’s not to like?
I suggest a listen to “The Off-White Album” by Martin Newell then, because that is the album that contains the track that affected me so deeply in this example. Barring that – a listen to the actual song in question – “The Girls In The Flat Upstairs” by Martin Newell – taken from his 1995 record “The Off-White Album” – would also help set the scene for this incident.
THE INCIDENT
2019 has been a strange, strange year for me – and it has been a transitional year for me in a lot of ways – for example, over the past three to four months, I’ve been undergoing a physical and mental transformation of my music work space and my working method in my head – with a view to doing things a bit differently going forward – please see my previous blog regarding, among other things – a new approach to music making that I am in the process of formulating this year (2019).
Because of the work being done on physical infrastructure / sound systems and the like, I pretty much didn’t have a lot of ready access to my library of recorded music for a few months while I was doing a lot of the physical re-construction work – or – it was available rather, but I was not – so while normally, throughout my life, I have always listened to recorded music as part of my pretty much daily experience of music – to some degree, during the first half of 2019 – I did not listen to as much music as I might have normally – so I was feeling a bit disconnected perhaps, because of that – I don’t know.
So – one of the first things I did during my physical set up of my new office space, was to make sure that the sound card and speakers were in working order, and that I had my new favourite music player up and running (FOOBAR 2000 – a great player – get it!) and I then did start listening to items from my catalogue of recorded music again – from my main CD library.
During this time, I also did some serious upgrading of the data for my recorded music – i.e. I fixed my internal song tags over a period of weeks…so I was going back through a lot of catalogue items, updating and correcting the tags – which left my entire collection in such better condition in terms of its data being far more useful , correct and clear now compared to what it has been historically since I started collecting my music digitally in about 2008.
Having a much more modern and capable music player such as FOOBAR 2000, allowed me to visually “see” a lot of problems in the data and in the tagging – which led to me getting a great tagging tool – “MP3Tag” – so I used that tool to make corrections and apply categories and add missing content – and so on – and in just a few weeks, the quality of my music tags went from liveable to extremely well organised and documented.
As a result of all of the above, as the year progressed, I began listening to more and more music again, as you do when you’ve had a time away from it – you want to hear things again that you have missed hearing, and so on.
It was nearer the beginning of this process, when I didn’t have the sound card and speakers set up, and I had not been able to listen to much recorded music for a few months – this is when this occurred, and it surprised me in an incredible way – it was just out of the blue.
I was working on installing music software or getting programmes and samples and synths to do my bidding or some such tedious set up tasks (loading software, joy of joys), when I decided to put on some Martin Newell music – which I hadn’t heard for a couple of years perhaps.
When I reached the final piece of music on “The Off-White Album” – which is a lovely song about some kindly neighbour girls who looked after the singer of the song when he was really drunk – “The Girls In The Flat Upstairs” that I suddenly realised that I was sobbing uncontrollably, just crying like a child at this ordinary story of life as told by Martin Newell.
I have always liked that song – but it had never, ever had an effect like THAT on me before! It happened so suddenly, and it was such an intense feeling – really upsetting! – it took me completely by surprise – completely.
My brain immediately went into “analysis mode” and I tried to think – what on EARTH just caused that? What on earth…
And what is even really stranger is that I absolutely had never had any comparable or “relate-able” experience – I’ve never had any personal incident like the one depicted in the song or anything even close to that experience described.
I have never had an incident where I got a bit too drunk and my neighbours or friends or something – had to get me into the house and put to bed – but the way Martin tells this story – it sounds like he did have such an experience – or at the very least, his song writing talent has allowed him to “invent” this wonderful story of the neighbours helping him when he could not help himself.
There must be something about the lyrics, I thought – but then part of me thinks that it’s the real string quartet that is featured in the song – those string parts – perhaps it is those really affect me (??) Even when I am not having a powerful emotional response to the song – but I am just unsure as to what it really, precisely it is that causes this sudden, uncontrollable emotional experience. My brain desperately tried to find an explanation, a reason – for such an outburst – and I came up with nothing – no answers.
I keep going back to the lyric of the song – and also, the way in which Martin sings those lyrics – he describes his upstairs flatmates in the first part of the song – and then suddenly the scene shifts, and he is talking about “once when I was so drunk…she was strong – and she lifted into my room and put me to bed…” – he goes on to describe how she (one of the girls from the flat upstairs, of course) took care of him and left him a drink “for next day” when he woke up – and there is absolutely no correlation to my own life here – so I have to begin to believe that in this particular example – that the sobbing and the tears and the heartbreak I experienced when hearing this song again after some time away from it – is (perhaps?) an “EMPATHIC” response on my part.
i.e. I feel emotion not for myself (since I have no frame of reference for an experience like this one in my own life) but on behalf of the recipient of the care and kindness of “The Girls In The Flat Upstairs” – there is real emotion in Martin’s voice when the strings preface his vocal and he says “and once, when I was so drunk…she was strong” – I am not entirely sure, but I believe that that particular line – “she was strong…” is possibly the “trigger” that in this case, led me to burst into tears spontaneously and cry all the way through to the end of the song.
What an extraordinary and completely surprising thing to happen – and – why didn’t it happen, on the previous dozens of listens to that song over the period from 1995 through to this very different listening experience of early 2019?
Why now? And – and why DIDN’T I react to it emotionally for the first 24 years of listening to it?
NOTE: Since that time, I have out of curiosity – played the song again – since the early 2019 “emotional event” I have just described – to see if anything would happen. I didn’t experience the extreme reaction again – but I did feel something akin to it under the surface – and remarkably, when writing the paragraphs above, recounting the actual incident – I did briefly become overwhelmed with tears and again when trying to write out the lyrics.
So that was a recurring emotional response – something about that line “once when I was so drunk…she was strong…” somehow, those words, sung so beautifully by Martin and supported so beautifully by his band and the real string quartet he used on the session – somehow – that was the trigger – I think.
From here forward then – I have nothing but questions. I’d very much welcome your opinion here – any ideas or thoughts you might have about this incident, the how and why of it – I’d be very interested indeed to hear – because music is a very powerful yet mysterious thing – and this was an unforgettable experience for me personally – a beautiful experience despite the very real sense sorrow and sadness accompanying my reaction.
- How did it happen that a song I know well, that I’ve heard dozens of times over 25 years – how is it that suddenly, in the here and now of 2019 – how did it happen that hearing it caused a powerful emotional response in me this time – and not on many other listening occasions?
- Why did this occur – has something changed, does the lyric now hold meaning for me that it did not previously?
- Did my perception of the song itself change – am I hearing it in some “new way”, that “allows” for an additional layer of perception which is emotional upset? (Like going from 2D to 3D video?)
- Did I somehow gain a new or different understanding of the lyrics – or somehow detect emotional content in the singing or in the lyrics that I was perhaps, not able to detect 25 years ago when I first heard the song?
- What on earth caused this to happen?
- Why this song – why not a hundred, a thousand others? Why not really famous songs about very naked emotions – “Yer Blues” or something like that – why THIS beautiful song?
- I would have understood this better, had the lyrics of the song affecting me be something relating to an experience that I had had in my life – but in this case, there is absolutely no relationship to any personal experience I’ve had – I’ve never needed to be carried to my bed and put to bed because I am too drunk to get their myself; I’ve never had flatmates or neighbours who went out of their way to help me or care about me – the song could in fact, be a total invention (as it turns out, it is partially autobiographical – please read on below) – but regardless of that – it does NOT relate to any similar real incident in my life.
- I would have expected a song that recounts an experience – probably an emotional one like being in love, or, of losing a love or maybe some other kind of recounting of some other emotional or other trauma – to be something that would trigger such a response – that makes sense, because you can “relate” to the characters in the song, something nearly identical or very similar may have happened to you in your life – so you can relate and therefore, that song might suddenly strike you as being “exactly about you” and “all about you” – and that very similar experience that you had that apparently, the singer of the song had to.
- Not so in this example – I have no relatable anything between my life, and the events and the story of “The Girls The Flat Upstairs” by Martin Newell.
- So – how – and why – did this happen?
I would love to hear your own experiences if any – like this, and what conclusions, if any, you came to in trying to understand why your response occurred. Please don’t be shy – speak up – I think it is an interesting demonstration of the power of music – but it’s an “intangible” quality of music – it’s definitely not in the score “add extreme emotion HERE” – and that intangible quality isn’t easy to pinpoint or describe or explain – and yet – it exists, and it can be very surprising and very powerful indeed.
This is just one example of such an incident; I’ve had a few other similar ones here and there over the years – but not one so powerful, so recent, and so utterly inexplicable.
I could now listen to that song over and over – and I would feel nothing more unusual than the very pleasant experience of listening to a well-written and well-recorded piece of pop music that I happen to admire. It seems odd to me that on just one occasion, really, that this song should have such a profound and upsetting effect on me – it was quite, quite upsetting to say the very least. I’m actually, very glad that it doesn’t happen every time – or I would spend far too much time sobbing over a song instead of just enjoying listening to music as I always, always have.
Having said that – I am also very glad it happened, because while it was upsetting at the time – for three or four minutes only so not a big deal – it was actually a unique and wonderful experience that is quite rare, so it was interesting and memorable for me in that regard.
In considering this still further, spending still more time thinking about it – I can come up with but one tentative, half-baked “theory” as to why this song may affected me so much that day – which is this – it could possibly be due to a sort of – for lack of a proper description – a “long-delayed short bout of self-pity” (hopefully, I just invented that – but it sounds quite unpleasant) – and this is only a theory – I am not sure I believe this – but, many years ago, I did tend to drink a bit too much myself – [a lot of young men and women, too, do this] – but in recent years I am basically 100 percent sober – once a year I might have a glass of wine – or a Guinness Stout – but then I might let two years lapse before I do that again. So now, for the past eight or nine years – I have had very, very little to drink, and I no longer use alcohol as a pain-killer – which I admit I did do back in the day – this is not uncommon – especially among musicians I am afraid.
But back in the day, quite a few years ago now – I drank quite a bit of beer and wine and sometimes even stronger alcohol (including a few months where I drank copious quantities of Tia Maria – don’t ask me why – because I have no idea lol) – and now – I don’t.
For health reasons only, I do regret that I drank so much – I used to really knock back the white wine – which also makes you gain huge amounts of weight by the way) – but now, in hindsight (which is always 50/50 of course!) I don’t think the drinking ever “helped” me with anything and I think my body – which I now take care of much better than I used to – didn’t need all that alcohol.
It’s alleged “pain killing” qualities aren’t really there – it pretty much just damages you although short term, you can get some great illusions that you are “feeling no pain” and that you have somehow (by poisoning your system?) managed to “drown your sorrows” – I hate to break it to you – but there is very little of the factual in that notion or even in the notion that drinking kills your pain – it kills your brain cells – but it doesn’t kill pain.
So with that background… my thought was – OK, when Martin sings so mournfully, so beautifully “and once when I was so drunk…” maybe – just possibly, I was suddenly transported back in time – and was suddenly identifying with my “25 years ago heavy drinking persona” – and feeling the heartache of how futile drinking yourself into a stupor actually is – and maybe a “long delayed short bout” of the dreaded “long delayed self-pity” is what triggered my response – I may never know.
I suppose it could have been something like that – but somehow, I don’t feel like that could be it at all – because it’s the story – the “reality soup” that Martin created – and the sounds of the guitars and the string quartet – the feeling of the song – that made me feel that emotion – not the fact that I used to get “so drunk” a long, long time ago – so – that theory is more of a question than an answer – but it’s one remote possibility. So having presented my one vague, uncertain and only vaguely possible theory as to how and why – I am prone to just retract it again and go back to the place where I was when I started down this particular rabbit hole – wondering just how on earth what happened to me that day – how did that HAPPEN to me?
This then, leaves me once again – with a lot of questions and not any definite answers at all – it’s still a mystery to me – and may always remain so.
We may never know.
Dave Stafford
August 28, 2019
CREDITS AND ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:
Meanwhile – credits (and edits, too) are due where credits are due…
Author’s Notes and Commentary: When it came time to prepare this blog, I found to my surprise that one could not obtain the lyrics to Martin Newell’s song “The Girls The Flat Upstairs” on the Internet – since apparently, no one had ever bothered to transcribe them. Very remiss indeed!
The final transcription below, is actually a composite transcription worked up by myself with assistance from John Relph and then finalised by Martin Newell himself at my request – originally, I had transcribed it “by ear” (and my ears are NOT what they once were lol) and then, uncertain on quite a few points – I took my first draft of the transcribed lyrics to my old friend John Relph – yes – the chalkhills.org John Relph – who then made a few subtle improvements and suggestions to the lyrics – and then also suggesting that if I am still unsure (and I was still unsure on a few of the words even after a few iterations of drafts) – “why don’t you just ask Martin?”
So, since I wanted the lyrics to be transcribed with 100 percent accuracy – that is exactly what I did – I took the composite Dave Stafford / John Relph “unofficial rough transcription” from August 2019, and asked Martin Newell to cast his eye over it – which he very promptly and very kindly did – and I am proud to say that the “by ear” transcription that John Relph and I worked on – only contained two minor errors – just two words incorrect – out of the entire lyric – so we did pretty well for ourselves there. Amateur transcribers – clearly on the way to future glories…
This version, however, below contains Martin’s final corrections so is in fact a 100 percent accurate lyrical rendering of the song “The Girls In The Flat Upstairs” from “The Off-White Album” by Martin Newell.
In his response to me just a couple of days ago, Martin also added the following insights into the song’s creation:
“This song was what we call a kind of ‘reality soup’… it’s fictional, but has many elements taken from life experience and mixed up together in the lyric.
It was written in 1994 and recorded in December of that year but remained unreleased until April 1996. The album went mostly un-reviewed and un-listened to at the time. Liberacion in France gave it a glowing review (Nick Kent, no less). Some people said they preferred it to the Greatest Living Englishman. I left music a while later for three years, because my poetry was doing so well”.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
I am very happy to have a properly-approved and fully corrected, fully accurate lyric as well as some provenance and comments from Martin regarding this song – because I feel it helps us to begin to understand the song as well as possible, so that we might be able to then try and “figure out” why on earth this song – and these lyrics – evoked such an unexpected and powerful emotional reaction in myself.
And I would be very curious to hear from you regarding this topic – has this ever happened to you? – that totally out of the blue, you are listening to a song you’ve heard many times before, that you have no particular connection or relationship to – and yet, it suddenly affects you in a truly powerful, unforgettable and meaningful way?
In my case – I will never listen to this song the same way again, I can tell you that – it will always bring the memory of that powerful experience – so I am glad the song exists – because it triggered something unique and something that was definitely not a “typical” day to day listening experience.
I think that we’ve seen, on many, many occasions – over time – that music can be a very powerful force indeed. As to exactly how music does this – that may never be known – but the emotional response I had was well worth the price of admission – I didn’t mind, because it elevated the piece beyond being “just a song” to now becoming a part of my life’s emotional experience – and that really is something significant – at least to me.
Please let me know if you have had any kind of similar experience – I can’t be the only one.
Until next time…
I remain
Dave
[Full lyric transcription – approved by Martin Newell himself – follows]:
The Girls In The Flat Upstairs
Martin Newell – December 1994
Ah Lindy sometimes got down
and she worked in a club,
doing drinks or the door…
She’d say “I’m tired of this town –
of the farm-boys and jerks
and their fights on the floor”
“And one day I will break out
And I’ll save…
I’ll buy some B&B and me and Sheila will live
And we’ll drink till we drop
On a Saturday night”
The girls who lived in the flat upstairs…
The girls who lived in the flat upstairs…
And Sheila was so alive…
she would laugh and she’d curse, and say outrageous things,
she drove a big motorbike…
she wore leather and jeans, and she had lots of rings
And once when I was so drunk…
She was strong…
And she lifted me into my room and put me to bed
With a washing-up bowl, and a drink for next day
The girls who lived in the flat upstairs…
The girls who lived in the flat upstairs…
Carry on, carry on, carry on, carry on…
Carry on, carry on, carry on, carry on…
Carry on, carry on, carry on, carry on…
And wherever you are, you better watch your chemicals, girls
Carry on, carry on, carry on, carry on…
Carry on, carry on, carry on, carry on…
Carry on, carry on, carry on, carry on…
And wherever you are, I hope you watch your chemicals, girls
Carry on, carry on, carry on, carry on…
Carry on, carry on, carry on, carry on… (oh, oh no…)
Carry on, carry on, carry on, carry on…
Carry on, carry on, carry on, carry on…
Carry on, carry on, carry on, carry on…
Carry on, carry on, carry on, carry on…
Carry on, carry on, carry on, carry on……
pureambient / dave stafford 