lady in red
Chris De Burgh’s 1986 number one single is usually taken as a romantic ballad affirming the special happiness to be found in a long-term relationship. Of course it’s nothing of the kind.
Everyone knows that de Burgh wrote this song for his wife. However, there is another key influence on its composition - alcohol. Notionally written ‘tonight’, on the night of the party at which de Burgh’s lady ‘shines’ so remarkably, the song clearly shows its narrator (who is, we can only assume, de Burgh himself) experiencing the more pleasant after-effects of an extended drinking binge: a tendency towards embarrassingly effusive displays of affection (‘I’ve never seen you looking so gorgeous as you did tonight, I’ve never seen you shine so bright, you were amazing, etc., etc.’), set alongside an apparent difficulty in recognising his own wife (‘I hardly know this beauty by my side’).
In fact, the whole atmosphere of slushy sentimentality that characterizes the song is as redolent of drunkenness as it is of romance, as if de Burgh were sardonically equating the two. All that’s missing is the hangover.
And what does this drunken haze conceal? Bitterness, of course. The compliments with which de Burgh showers his lady are so crass that they become, on reflection, insults. ‘I hardly know this beauty by my side’, taken as a compliment rather than as a simple admission of dazed drunkenness, is double-edged to say the least. The clear implication is that de Burgh’s wife has, by means of a particularly strenuous cosmetic regime (the dress, the highlights) at last managed to transcend her innate ugliness. Even the song’s coda, ‘I never will forget the way you look tonight’, is utterly transparent. ‘Even as I cheat on you, abuse you, and finally dump you, I’ll bear in mind this one night on which you did manage to look presentable’, he might as well be saying.
De Burgh knows all this, of course. He’s far too clever a songwriter to be dishing out all this abuse accidentally. No, he wants us to see the awful insincerity of this ‘romance’, and his eventual decision to blatantly have an affair with his nanny only serves to confirm this.
Apart from the alcohol, the only positive feeling in this song derives from sex. It’s all about the look and, by implication, the shag to follow. De Burgh is in the position of a man who discovers that the attractive, if somewhat blurred, stranger he’s been eyeing up all night is already ‘his’, and that therefore he won’t be required to chat her up in order to get his end away.
The signs are all there, in fact - the colour red, the seeming stranger who is in fact already secured (paid for), even the dancing (a distinct echo of Tina Turner’s Private Dancer from a few years previously) - this is a song about marriage as institutionalized prostitution, as incisive as anything Germaine Greer has written (its theme significantly echoed in de Burgh’s subsequent affair, with a hireling).
How de Burgh must have cackled, deep within his Irish castle, to see his song hailed as one of the most romantic ever! The time has come to give this slyly subversive classic of post-feminist irony the attention it deserves.
Further listening: Patricia the Stripper (Chris de Burgh, 1976)
Everyone knows that de Burgh wrote this song for his wife. However, there is another key influence on its composition - alcohol. Notionally written ‘tonight’, on the night of the party at which de Burgh’s lady ‘shines’ so remarkably, the song clearly shows its narrator (who is, we can only assume, de Burgh himself) experiencing the more pleasant after-effects of an extended drinking binge: a tendency towards embarrassingly effusive displays of affection (‘I’ve never seen you looking so gorgeous as you did tonight, I’ve never seen you shine so bright, you were amazing, etc., etc.’), set alongside an apparent difficulty in recognising his own wife (‘I hardly know this beauty by my side’).
In fact, the whole atmosphere of slushy sentimentality that characterizes the song is as redolent of drunkenness as it is of romance, as if de Burgh were sardonically equating the two. All that’s missing is the hangover.
And what does this drunken haze conceal? Bitterness, of course. The compliments with which de Burgh showers his lady are so crass that they become, on reflection, insults. ‘I hardly know this beauty by my side’, taken as a compliment rather than as a simple admission of dazed drunkenness, is double-edged to say the least. The clear implication is that de Burgh’s wife has, by means of a particularly strenuous cosmetic regime (the dress, the highlights) at last managed to transcend her innate ugliness. Even the song’s coda, ‘I never will forget the way you look tonight’, is utterly transparent. ‘Even as I cheat on you, abuse you, and finally dump you, I’ll bear in mind this one night on which you did manage to look presentable’, he might as well be saying.
De Burgh knows all this, of course. He’s far too clever a songwriter to be dishing out all this abuse accidentally. No, he wants us to see the awful insincerity of this ‘romance’, and his eventual decision to blatantly have an affair with his nanny only serves to confirm this.
Apart from the alcohol, the only positive feeling in this song derives from sex. It’s all about the look and, by implication, the shag to follow. De Burgh is in the position of a man who discovers that the attractive, if somewhat blurred, stranger he’s been eyeing up all night is already ‘his’, and that therefore he won’t be required to chat her up in order to get his end away.
The signs are all there, in fact - the colour red, the seeming stranger who is in fact already secured (paid for), even the dancing (a distinct echo of Tina Turner’s Private Dancer from a few years previously) - this is a song about marriage as institutionalized prostitution, as incisive as anything Germaine Greer has written (its theme significantly echoed in de Burgh’s subsequent affair, with a hireling).
How de Burgh must have cackled, deep within his Irish castle, to see his song hailed as one of the most romantic ever! The time has come to give this slyly subversive classic of post-feminist irony the attention it deserves.
Further listening: Patricia the Stripper (Chris de Burgh, 1976)
posted by martin @ 5:34 PM
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