Sunday 7 February 2010

80. 10 Songs About Couples

Jack & Diane - John Mellencamp
Penny & Jack - The Essex Green
Donna & Blitzen - Badly Drawn Boy
'03 Bonnie & Clyde - JZ and Beyonce
When Johnny Met June - Shelby Lynne
The Ballad of John and Yoko - The Beatles
Johnny & Mary -Robert Palmer
Scenes From An Italian Restaurant - Billy Joel
Waterloo Sunset - The Kinks
Romeo & Juliet - Dire Straits

Check me out with my cool taste in music - Dire Staits, Billy Joel, Robert Palmer and John "Cougar" Mellencamp on the same tape - we're in MOR heaven.
Couples are awesome, but only if joined by an ampersand, like Peter & Katie, and not if they are merged together, like Brangelina, Bennifer or Jedward. These over-eager attempts to merge into one will only end in wretched wrenching apart, you mark my words. You need a cool, clean ampersand.
When I go to weddings and social events everyone is in a couple pretty much - except little old me, of course, so I get to be a louche, devil-may-care dandy before crying myself to sleep at the bitter sting of eternal solitude. It's pretty cool.
I ponder and puzzle at couplings of all sorts, but tend to be pretty impressed by how people keep it together. Did you know that divorce rates are at their lowest in years? Cheering news. Apart from for bitter misanthropes like me.
Who are my favourite couples of history, I hear you asking?
Well, there can only be one
Number 1 - Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince, of course. Friends, lovers, partners in music and comedy gold, every time Jazz got thrown out of the Banks household, separated from his beloved Big Willie, you felt a schism in everything good and noble in the world
Number 2 - David Gest and Liza Minnelli
Number 3 - Saint and Greavsie
Number 4 - Frank and Pat Butcher, especially when he was wearing only a bowtie. Hepburn and Tracy? Bogart and Bacall? Do me a favour
Number 5 - Pat and Mick, as in Pat Sharp -woowoo! - and Mick Brown, superstar DJs and late 80s chart stars, kind of a British version of Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince.

So those are some great couples. I also like Lennon & McCartney and Bacharach & David and Coen & Coen and Torvill & Dean.
Here is a song about Robson & Jerome ... it's called

The Ballad of Renee and Renato

You can't account for my unearned euphoria -
my ugliest face could shoot all the stars
up to a heaven that's out of the question
to the glorious despair I'd thought was ours

Oh love, what love, who's now more expertly
scornful of joggers in hers'n'his
but look at me, finding it hard to keep up such
mournful contempt to this wonder that is

to itself and for no perceptible purpose
yet wonder, o wonder, yes, nevertheless
(Now you condemn me as inconsistent -
Are you Melanie Phillips?) - but I digress,

Oh love, no love need be so shackled
that it finds its comfort in itself only
I can't cling to your respite every second.
I've eyes, they see wonder, got happy, still lonely.

3 comments:

  1. Nice work. I'm tempted to suggest swopping the last two words of the last verse's second line though?

    ReplyDelete