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Here's a nice homemade video that uses the original track from her album Mortal City. YouTube also has many live performance versions.
This song drops me every time (as in: have to go find Delia & weep copiously into her shirt...). I put it into my Sound & Spirit show on Breakups (which was originally written - for February 2000 broadcast - by none other than Justine Larbalestier!) - you can listen to that whole program here.*
I just heard it on my favorite old Boston station, WUMB - which I can now hear on my internet radio, yay! - followed by another favorite, that is not about breakups at all:
Anyway,
from Maggie & Suzzy Roche's great, great album ZERO CHURCH (which I also used trax from in Sound & Spirit, but, um, I forget which show). Here's more on the album & this song in particular. My link is to a YouTube video which "illustrates" the lyrics with very concrete images that to me limit your interpretation . . . so maybe just listen the first time without watching. Look out the window, or something, and see what the song can mean to you.
So what's your favorite breakup song?
*This is the program in which I told the - TRUE - story:
When I was young and foolish, a friend of mine dumped her boyfriend. The next day, she looked awful: "I lay on the sofa and cried for hours last night." Dumb me, I said, "Well, but...can I ask you something? If you didn't want him anymore, then why did you cry?"
Kindly, she answered: "I was crying because I had to say goodbye to the hopes I had . . . ."
And that's when you need a really good Breakup song to let the tears flow, for the release, the sympathy, even the sense that you're not the only one who's ever felt this pain . . . Though the same show contains this (also True):
A guy I once knew said: "Why is it whenever something awful happens to women, you always go talk-talk-talking about it? Why can't you be like a man--and just go off somewhere and quietly throw up?!"
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Date: 2012-01-29 05:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-31 01:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-29 05:59 pm (UTC)This played as I crossed the city line, moving out of town after my one huge, earthshaking breakup.
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Date: 2012-01-29 05:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-31 01:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-29 06:24 pm (UTC)"February," on the other hand, got me through something much worse than a breakup, back in 2006. From February 19th, when my son was born, through the end of the month, when he was still in the NICU, the sig line on all my e-mails was, "The nights were long and cold and scary/can we get through February." When he was still in the NICU the next month, I changed it to "And February was so long/That it lasted into March."
He's fine now. Full of life. But that song helped me get through. a really rough beginning. Makes me tear up now, just thinking about it.
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Date: 2012-01-29 06:41 pm (UTC)http://www.lyricsbay.com/no_guilt_lyrics-waitresses.html
ooo! here's a video!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_UYo_C4ASI
(Do you Young People even know what "I got the cab calls out of the hi-fi" means? Sure, you don't!)
Your story about your son is making *me* cry . . . and I don't even know him. So very glad to know he's doing well.
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Date: 2012-01-30 04:40 am (UTC)I don't know what a cab call is (I'm assuming it's not just somebody hailing a taxi), but I do know that Hi-Fi is short for high fidelity, which, as I understand it, is what stereos used to be called when they were still a novelty/luxury item that people had to engineer on their own to get the sound right.
And thanks for the sympathy for my son you've never met. Having just gotten back from my critique group, I'm now pondering how to get a story out if it...except that, come to think of it, I did have an idea a while back that is still growing. I need to go through and harvest some of those old story ideas soon...
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Date: 2012-01-30 04:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-29 08:21 pm (UTC)Many years later, the English Beat's "Save It For Later" seemed to encapsulate my situation.
ETA: A bit after that, it was Alkaline Trio's wonderfully bitter "Fine Without You."
Haven't had much need of one since, and the other early breakups didn't seem to attach songs to themselves.
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Date: 2012-01-29 08:28 pm (UTC)It would be too hard to pick only one. But I suppose if I absolutely had to, it would be "Missy How You Let Me Down," for the sheer gorgeousness of the imagery.
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Date: 2012-01-29 10:22 pm (UTC)I'm pretty fond of Mary Chapin Carpenter's "This is Love", which is oddly comforting for a breakup song.
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Date: 2012-01-29 10:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-29 10:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-29 11:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-29 10:44 pm (UTC)And I always think of the Be Good Tanyas' "Human Thing" as a breakup song, though it's ambiguous: the way they sing "A girl can keep it together" has a just-broken-up feel about it. And their cover of Neil Young's "For the Turnstiles" (though I guess that's kind of ambiguous too. But it would work well for a breakup.) And "A Thousand Tiny Pieces". And really everything on the first half of the album where I heard these, "Hello Love."
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Date: 2012-01-30 01:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-31 11:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-29 11:16 pm (UTC)In the fall,
We circle through the leaves
And talk about the little ones.
And we smile, but never say too much.
The moment always vanishing.
One by one the neighbors' lights come on.
Our October day is almost gone.
I know the border lines we drew between us
Keep the weapons down,
Keep the wounded safe,
I know our antebellum innocence
Was never meant to see the light of our armistice day.
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Date: 2012-01-31 01:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-31 02:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-31 11:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-30 01:02 am (UTC)Songs that I thought were true when I was very young, such as "Love has No Pride" turned out in the event to be dead wrong for me.
"Fire and Rain" isn't really about a breakup, is for me. There was a year when that song followed me around...
And "February" always makes me think of Pamela Dean's Tam Lin. I read an article online and saw a related video that used the song to explain some of the symptoms and progression of Alzheimers. It was very compelling.
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Date: 2012-01-31 01:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-30 05:10 am (UTC)So this is goodbye.
Is it time to set you free?
Is it time to let it fly?
Is it time to let it bleed?
We used to take turns
to cover up the pains
but deep below, it burns
and the feeling still remains.
You're gonna find someone new
I really hope you do
'Cause I love you...
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Date: 2012-01-30 05:19 am (UTC)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1xQ7i-ZAYc
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Date: 2012-01-31 01:59 am (UTC)Thnaks, sweetie
Date: 2012-01-30 11:11 am (UTC)xxxJane
Re: Thnaks, sweetie
Date: 2012-01-30 03:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-30 04:30 pm (UTC)Inches and Miles by Dave Mallet and Trees Still Bend by Girlyman got me through a rough patch a year and a half ago. (so long, already? time's doing that 'flying' thing again.)
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Date: 2012-01-31 02:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-31 08:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-15 12:50 am (UTC)VNV Nation - Holding On (http://youtu.be/ieSq8moVOG0http://youtu.be/nCUHClheiZk)
Tori Amos - 1000 Oceans (http://youtu.be/UXsT8uTyt34)
Bat For Lashes - Sad Eyes (http://youtu.be/ieSq8moVOG0)
VNV Nation - Holding On (http://youtu.be/ieSq8moVOG0http://youtu.be/nCUHClheiZk)