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| Souvenirs - trying to work out this song | |
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angie 11:51 am UTC 09/21/16 |
| One of those interviews with Meat had Paul Crook saying that Meat was acting like a complete bastard when he was in character for this song. And yeah, that totally makes sense. And Meat was saying that he was trying to act it out as a 19 year old.... but regressing to 13 when it gets to "I won't play with you no more". What do you make of the relationship in this song? It's all a lot less solidly defined, compared to the songs it spawned - Two Out Of Three and Left In The Dark. The... whoever's singing... starts out by chucking out their lover, and the reason cited is excessive coldness. But is that the real reason? I dunno, there seems to be some real panic and venom here. Or is that just what I'm getting from the delivery rather than the lyrics? And then... poor poor girl, sir, jewels, babies and dads, games, toys and playing. I'm having trouble putting it all together. I thought - I don't think this one person is really addressing two people - a "poor little girl" and a "super dad", so maybe it's supposed to be a duet, or at least... a two-person song. Like - there's one person throwing the other out, and the other's retorting with their side of it. But that doesn't really fit, because it seems to be the same person doing all the offering. So... I am thinking "super dad" seems much more likely to be literal than "poor little girl". I mean, it could be a sugar daddy, especially since gifts of jewels are involved, but I don't know where a baby would fit into that. So is Jim a girl in this song? Maybe? I mean, he could just be gay but this song is from the early 1970s so it seems far less likely that two men would have a baby and have equal say as to who gets the baby. Unless the baby is some kind of metaphor I don't get? "Poor little girl" seems far more likely to be non-literal. You can hear in the demo there's an actual woman right behind Jim doing backing vocals (and doing a good job of it! Like, they sound like proper soul singer vocals!), but I am still hanging on to the idea that maybe Jim is a girl in this song. So how about... Jim was actually a "poor little girl" at the start of this relationship? Little-Girl-Jim has been lured into seeing this older fellow through gifts of jewels and they've had a baby together, which has fucked up her life choices as it often does. There's allusions to power games and maybe S&M in the master / slave thing, "may I be excused" and use of the word "game" and "play", and I think she's sick of having been coerced into that dynamic and that having a baby has locked her into it, so she's taking her life back and is throwing him out. Maybe she's calling him a "poor poor girl" in a role reversal kind of way, or a "I never needed your pity when you called me that, see how it makes you feel!" kind of way? But then, how come in that situation she's managing to throw him out? I mean, if she's not the one in control and has been relying on him as a sugar daddy, she's probably throwing him out of his own house here. Maybe she gets to keep the house since she has a baby? I love how unashamedly ugly this song is. I mean, Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad is beautiful. It's personal, it's tired, and it's almost destiny in a circle of failure to truly love. This one's just flailing and mad and confusing and aaaargh. I did wonder for a little while... could this song be the other side of Two Out Of Three? I mean, it involves one person throwing the other out on a cold / snowy night... and the singer in Souvenirs is ready to give up anything but love. (A~ny~thing! But! Lo~ove!) But I don't think it's that. No, I don't think it's that. | |
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