"I haven't ever really found a place to call home ..." -- Dido, 'Life For Rent'

About In the comments to the Dido post, Matthew wondered where the lyrics "The implication I mistook, told on whose side you took; and now with paper in my hand, I'm beginning to understand..." are from. I can say with some confidence (admittedly after a hunt round Google), they're from The Housemartins's track Freedom and should read:

"But the implications I mistook
Until I found out whose side you took
And now with paper in my hand I'm beginning to understand "

I'm listening to the song as I type from their compilation, Now That's What I Call Quite Good. They're right. I can't quite believe how good The Housemartins were and unlike some bands I can mention, they knew when to call it a day (after just five years) before their talent turned to mush in the face of success. There is not a single poor song on this album and despite the vintage, the mid-80s, doesn't sound at all dated largely because they didn't give in to voguish temptation to include any of the electric noises which were in vogue at the time even on ostensibly acoustic albums.

Lead singer Paul Heaton's later band was of course The Beautiful South and one of their lost classics is a cover version of Dream A Little Dream which appears on the soundtrack to French Kiss (the Meg Ryan/Kevin Kline rom-com). It's on there twice in English and French and I can't help but prefer the latter simply it's so unusual to hear the style of the group with a vocal in a different language.

Incidentally, Amazon are listing a new Dido release for September called TBA. It looks like a single judging by the price -- unless they're so worried about sales that they're discounting an album even before it's released. Which is unlikely.

1 comment:

Matthew Rudd said...

Good work. They are still wworshipped here in Hull, and rightly so. I should add that my version of the lyric comes from the inlay of London 0, Hull 4 and so I kind of go along with that. But it's a mere detail.