Soul-destroying feeling not likely to be swayed by logic
By Caitlin Ward
Ole Black
‘n’ Blue Eyes
By The Fratellis
Well she wants
to be a singer in the band
Maybe I’ll give the girl a hand and a microphone
Looks like she’s all alone
She can bring a friend, though she’s not my kind of friend
She keeps staring me out with her
Ole black ’n’ blue eyes
And I can take
her dancing just to give the girl a chance
And I was never that good at being nice when I should
I guess that she’ll forgive me
Right before she tries to kill me
’Cause I sold her on yesterday’s
“Come take me home” eyes
And I can take
her waltzin’ just so
She could kick my head in
Oh I do believe I was drunk
And both of my heads had shrunk
I guess her name was Tina ’cause before I’d even seen her
I was lost in her what’s your name
“Just get me f-ed” eyes
Oh, “take me home” eyes
CHORUS
Chelsea said she’s got nowhere to go
And if she does she’s getting there slow
And I can help her out but I’ve got somewhere to be
And that’s the very thing when you’re dealing with me
Young soul shagger
Begging me to bag her
Filthy heart and swollen hips
And she said, “Oh my dearest I’m not pretty
Isn’t it a pity that you won’t kiss these rotten lips?”
Come take me home eyes
Ole black ’n’ blue eyes
CHORUS x 2
Sometimes bands get too much
hype and then everyone hates them. Well, not everyone. But the people
who liked the band before they got the hype think they’ve got
too popular and get sick of them. The type of people who are used to
knowing about the bands before they get the hype but missed this particular
band for some reason dislike the band on principle because they’ve
got too much hype. It’s a difficult place to be for a band, I
imagine.
Such happened to The Fratellis,
a Scottish band who got just a little bit too loveable in the autumn
of 2006 with their accents and their interest in burlesque and their
obscure film references. One of their songs got on an iPod ad, you see.
It was all downhill from there. And thus, I was mocked for wearing a
Fratellis badge at a concert in March 2007. I managed to salvage my
credibility by saying I’d bought their album Costello Music the
previous July. Which was clearly a lie, because the album only came
out in September of that year.
I make no attempt to pretend
I’m actually on top of these things anymore.
I imagine most people have forgotten about the band, now. Their second
album Here We Stand wasn’t exactly well-received and at present
the Fratellis are somewhere between “on hiatus” and “split
up.” In retrospect, they almost come across as a novelty act:
so Scottish and so trumpet-laden and named after the villains in The
Goonies, writing about weird nights out and drinking.
Perhaps they didn’t live up to the hype, in the end. The thing I find interesting about hype, though, is how little we actually think about the people on the other side of it: the ones who are hyped. We see this projected image created by ad men and magazines, and we get annoyed at how ubiquitous that image is, but it’s easy to forget the emotions and the anxiety on the other side of it.
The Fratellis never wrote a song about that — really, when people
write songs about how hard it is to be rich and famous, it’s slightly
annoying — but what they did write a song about was being on the
other side of unrequited love. It’s not the same thing as anxiety
about fame, certainly, but in the lexicon of song, there’s a parallel
to be drawn. As a culture, we’re very well-versed in wanting things
we can’t have, be it a man or a woman or a record contract. What
we don’t talk about nearly so much is having things we don’t
want.
There must be hundreds, if not thousands, of songs that concern themselves
with being in love with someone who’s not in love with you. As
most of us know, no doubt, being in that situation is awful. Equally
awful, and almost as common, is knowing someone’s in love with
you and not being able to do a thing about it. There are few songs about
that. Perhaps that’s why I refuse to think the Fratellis were
simply an overblown novelty act: Ole Black ‘n’ Blue Eyes
takes the viewpoint of that person who knows someone loves him with
a curious sensitivity.
What’s especially refreshing about the song is that the narrator
does not mock this woman, but his own charm: “I guess that she’ll
forgive me / Right before she tries to kill me / ’Cause I sold
her on yesterday’s / “Come take me home” eyes.”
The narrator is aware of his own culpability in the situation: at some
point he led her on, and now he has to deal with the effects of that.
It’s not some sort of overblown treatise on his awesomeness, that
random women fall in love with him. Rather, the song is a quiet, personal
and self-deprecating account of an awkward and painful situation: trying
to balance being kind with being honest.
Most of the lyrics are about the narrator: his mistakes, his faults,
his reactions. The woman in the song could easily have been portrayed
as comical or pathetic, but in giving her a voice, the song allows her
to claim some dignity for herself when she says: “Oh my dearest
I’m not pretty / Isn’t it a pity that you won’t kiss
these rotten lips?” She knows. She knows it’ll never happen;
essentially, she says she’s not good enough for him, but she can’t
help how she feels. The fact that she can name it like that, so simply,
so clearly — to me, it’s heartbreaking.
Now, really, if this narrator is the sort who randomly leads women on,
she’s probably better off without him, anyway. However, that feeling
— the crushing realization that you can’t have someone because
you’re not pretty enough, or thin enough, or special enough in
some way — that’s a feeling that won’t be swayed by
logic. It’s a feeling that’s occasionally soul-destroying.
And really, it’s a feeling most young women have for at least
a portion of their lives. The song has a sensitivity and insight that’s
lacking on the rest of the album, and frankly, is lacking in most albums.
So it makes me a bit sad that in the end, the Fratellis didn’t
quite live up to the hype. Among the songs about drinking and weird
nights out, there were beautiful moments that spoke to something larger.
Ward is a freelance writer and aspiring documentary filmmaker based
in Saskatoon. You can find her short bursts of insight and frustration
at http://www.twitter.com/newsetofstrings
 |
|