This is a hauntingly beautiful song about introspection, specifically about looking back at a relationship that started bad and ended so poorly, that the narrator wants to go back to the very beginning and tell himself to not even travel down that road. I believe that the relationship started poorly because of the lines:
"Take me back to the night we met:When the night was full of terrors: And your eyes were filled with tears: When you had not touched me yet"
So, the first night was not a great start, but the narrator pursued the relationship and eventually both overcame the rough start to fall in love with each other:
"I had all and then most of you"
Like many relationships that turn sour, it was not a quick decline, but a gradual one where the narrator and their partner fall out of love and gradually grow apart
"Some and now none of you"
Losing someone who was once everything in your world, who you could confide in, tell your secrets to, share all the most intimate parts of your life, to being strangers with that person is probably one of the most painful experiences a person can go through. So Painful, the narrator wants to go back in time and tell himself to not even pursue the relationship.
This was the perfect song for "13 Reasons Why"
The word's on the street; you've found someone new
If he looks nothing like me
I'm so happy for you
I heard an old girlfriend
Has turned to the church
She's trying to replace me
But it'll never work
'cause every touch reminds you of
Just how sweet it could have been
And every time he kisses you
It leaves behind the bitter taste of saccharine
A bad cover version of love is not the real thing
Bikini clad girl on the front who invited you in
Such great disappointment
When you got him home
The original was so good
The one you no longer own
And every touch reminds you of
Just how sweet it could have been
And every time he kisses you
You get the taste of saccharine
It's not easy to forget me
It's so hard to disconnect
When it's electronically reprocessed
To give a more life-like effect
Oh come on
Ah, sing your song
About all the sad imitations
That got it so wrong
It's like a later Tom And Jerry, when the two of them could talk
Like the Stones since the Eighties
Like the last days of Southfork
Like Planet Of The Apes on TV
The second side of Til The Band Comes In
Like an own brand box of cornflakes:
He's going to let you down, my friend
If he looks nothing like me
I'm so happy for you
I heard an old girlfriend
Has turned to the church
She's trying to replace me
But it'll never work
'cause every touch reminds you of
Just how sweet it could have been
And every time he kisses you
It leaves behind the bitter taste of saccharine
A bad cover version of love is not the real thing
Bikini clad girl on the front who invited you in
Such great disappointment
When you got him home
The original was so good
The one you no longer own
And every touch reminds you of
Just how sweet it could have been
And every time he kisses you
You get the taste of saccharine
It's not easy to forget me
It's so hard to disconnect
When it's electronically reprocessed
To give a more life-like effect
Oh come on
Ah, sing your song
About all the sad imitations
That got it so wrong
It's like a later Tom And Jerry, when the two of them could talk
Like the Stones since the Eighties
Like the last days of Southfork
Like Planet Of The Apes on TV
The second side of Til The Band Comes In
Like an own brand box of cornflakes:
He's going to let you down, my friend
Lyrics submitted by typo, edited by WasntReallyYou
Bad Cover Version Lyrics as written by Jarvis Branson Cocker Candida Doyle
Lyrics © BMG Rights Management, Universal Music Publishing Group, Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd.
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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"A bad cover version of love is not the real thing Bikini-clad girl on the front who invited you in"
This refers to the budget-priced compilation albums released on Britain's Hallmark record label in the late sixties and early seventies, which featured extremely bad cover versions of current chart hits.
These albums were titled "Top of the Pops" (not to be confused with the BBC television show) and usually featured pretty bikini-garbed girls on the cover. One of the strangest of these LPs I have seen had a gorgeous bikini-wearing twentysomething girl on the front cover and a hairy, ugly thirtysomething man on the rear cover. The man had a dog leash around his neck and was clad only in underpants. I am not making this up, that's the 1970s for you.
All of the cover versions on these albums were by anonymous session musicians rather than named acts Famously, one of these anons was a young singer and pianist named Reginald Dwight, nowadays better known as Elton John.
Jarvis' comments: The main tune came from Candida. I wrote the words at night, then I went to bed, woke up in the morning and thought, 'I bet they're really shit, them words'. But then when I sang them they worked alright. When we recorded it with other people it never sounded right - it sounded like a pastiche of something. It's just a pop song but I find it quite emotional. Doing [this song] was probably the most embarrassing moment on the record, for me, because the song had been written a long time before we knew we were gonna work with Scott Walker, and in the end section of the song there's a list of inferior things, but unfortunately in this litany I included Scott Walker's fifth solo LP, 'Til the Band Comes In. Because that record's always mystified me, because it starts off with original material, and it's pretty good, and then suddenly on the second side he just does six cover versions, and it's like he just kind of gets sick of the whole thing and just gives up half-way through the record. So I've always found it a very strange album for that. Then of course when we were working with him, this became a problem for me, because I felt that I had to mention it to him. I didn't want him to suddenly realise it himself, and then come and punch me or something. So I was thinking about it, and it was coming closer to the day when I was gonna have to do me vocal, and I was really trying to find the right moment to broach the subject, but it never seemed to come along. And then one morning, it was getting to be a bit of a problem for me actually, so I was travelling there on the train and thinking: "Right, first thing, as soon as I get into the studio, I'm gonna have it out with him, I'm gonna tell him, I'm gonna tell it how it is." So I was thinking to myself: "Yeah, gotta do it, gotta do it, gotta do it." Got off the train, walked into the studio [...] pinned him up against the mixing desk, and just kind of blurted it all out: "Er, Scott well, I've just got to apologise for something, because, like, okay, at the end of the song, like, I make a reference to 'Til the Band Comes In, right, in a list of crap things, and, what I was trying, y'know, obviously..." And just kind of said all this stuff. And he just kind of looked at me in a very mystified way, of like, "What is this nutter ranting on about?", and then it kind of clicked with him what I was on about, and he just laughed and said: "Well, gee thanks guys, that's the way you repay me." I think he doesn't actually own any of his old records so I think he'd kind of forgotten that he'd made that one. But for me, it was embarrassing.
The cartoon series started letting them talk and it is generally accepted was never as good after that point (Jumped the shark)
The Rolling Stone have not put out anything good since the end of the 1980s (or 1960s in many people's opinions)
The famously bad end of TVs Dallas where The Devil confronted JR to try to get him to kill himself.
As opposed to the movies which are pretty good.
The Scott Walker album which - vinyl fans - had a good first five tracks and a weak second five
Kellogs famously so they never make Cornflakes for anyone else meaning that no other brand of Cornflakes will taste like a Kellogs box.
@michaelwood <br /> The 'Til The Band Comes In' line does NOT refer the second five Scott-penned songs, but rather the five cover songs tacked on to the end of the album, which are generally seen as a massive letdown after the brilliance of Scott's songs.
This song has my favourite lyric ever:
I heard an old girlfriend has turned to the church She's trying to replace me, but it'll never work
It just makes me laugh everytime I hear it.
haha. anyways, i like this video
does anyone know what the line
"like the last days of Southfork"
refers to?
"The last days of Southfork" refers to the TV show Dallas. Southfork was the ranch the show was shot on.
The best part of this song is the saccharine taste. Just brilliant
I think the video is brilliant. And while I can easily tell that some of the people are impresonators (including Jarvis himself), I honestly can't tell if some of them are the real thing (Elton John, Robbie Williams, Kylie, etc.) Does anyone know for sure?
It's probably worth mentioning that Scott Walker produced the album that features this song; this is a typical Pulp in-joke.