Female Narrator

Pretty self-explanatory
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jardine
Posts: 801
Joined: Sat Sep 11, 2010 12:59 pm

Female Narrator

Post by jardine »

Apologies in advance if this is a repeat topic. I'm just thinking about Elvis songs that he has recorded who have a female narrator. Not sure what I have to say except that the utter emotional beauty of some of these is quite amazing.

For a long time, Elvis has written long, sometimes rambling melody lines/chord structures that would sometimes make me lose my way. But more recently, his ability to craft these so that I get drawn along and don't get lost about where we are in the song...is quite amazing. I think the melodic, verse/chorus/middle/intro structure of Whirlwind is, well, just astounding.

...anyway, there is a link...maybe?...to this recent female narrator tendency. I realize it is part of him writing parts for characters in shows/plays/etc. So...well, I'm not sure what point I'm trying to make. Any thoughts.

Small list. Please add others I've missed
Whirlwind
Don’t Look Now
He’s Given me Things
You Shouldn’t Look at Me that Way
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And No Coffee Table
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Re: Female Narrator

Post by And No Coffee Table »

For Other Eyes
I Almost Had A Weakness
The Letter Home
Pardon Me, Madam, My Name Is Eve
The Scarlet Tide
I Dreamed Of My Old Lover
Stripping Paper
Unwanted Number
Photographs Can Lie
WindUpWorld
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Re: Female Narrator

Post by WindUpWorld »

Sleep of the Just (partly)
London’s Brilliant
Fill In The Blanks
Mistress and Maid
I’m Going To Stand Forever
bronxapostle
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Re: Female Narrator

Post by bronxapostle »

i would like to add a little comment pertaining to this...

some things are better left unspoken, just take it for what it says to YOU and embrace it...

"THAT'S JUST SOME GUY I USED TO KNOW
I WAS NEVER HIS
HE WAS ALWAYS MINE
BUT I WROTE HIM OFF BY LINE BY LINE"
jardine
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Re: Female Narrator

Post by jardine »

Really? The problem with "it" being unspoken is, frankly, I have no idea what you might mean and that may be worse than what you're insinuating. Huh? All I'm suggesting is that these are some of his most wonderful songs and his ability to take that point of view is really interesting and, I think, really good work. I am taking it for what it says to me, but I'm interested in what it says about e.c.s ability. What's the secrecy, ba? I honestly don't understand the hush hush. I do understand that that Byline quote might be arriving from multiple directions all at once, full of ambiguity and myriad points of view. That's what makes it so good, right? Me taking it that way, you citing it, isn't just what it says to you or me. IT is a great lyric that leaves me floating in wonder and admiration for him and his work over so many years.

Actually, I'd be interested, too, in the thoughts of female forum members of a male writer taking on this point of view and whether it feels effective or weird or ambiguous or "off" or whether this inquiry is simply silly...not sure. Or whether it is a suppressed, indirect gay lamentation? "Better left unspoken" is a strange thought for a fan forum, but, hey, I find your message as interesting as your posts always are, sincerely meant. It makes ec seem even better at his crafty craft, yes?

Please PM me if there is some closet door I need to stay away from or some other piece of unspoken info i don't have. Are you worried that I'm outing myself or something or that noticing this says something unseemly about me? I'm glad to simply back off here if need be. I just thought it was interesting, is all.
jardine
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Re: Female Narrator

Post by jardine »

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bronxapostle
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Re: Female Narrator

Post by bronxapostle »

jardine wrote:Really? The problem with "it" being unspoken is, frankly, I have no idea what you might mean and that may be worse than what you're insinuating. Huh? All I'm suggesting is that these are some of his most wonderful songs and his ability to take that point of view is really interesting and, I think, really good work. I am taking it for what it says to me, but I'm interested in what it says about e.c.s ability. What's the secrecy, ba? I honestly don't understand the hush hush. I do understand that that Byline quote might be arriving from multiple directions all at once, full of ambiguity and myriad points of view. That's what makes it so good, right? Me taking it that way, you citing it, isn't just what it says to you or me. IT is a great lyric that leaves me floating in wonder and admiration for him and his work over so many years.

Actually, I'd be interested, too, in the thoughts of female forum members of a male writer taking on this point of view and whether it feels effective or weird or ambiguous or "off" or whether this inquiry is simply silly...not sure. Or whether it is a suppressed, indirect gay lamentation? "Better left unspoken" is a strange thought for a fan forum, but, hey, I find your message as interesting as your posts always are, sincerely meant. It makes ec seem even better at his crafty craft, yes?

Please PM me if there is some closet door I need to stay away from or some other piece of unspoken info i don't have. Are you worried that I'm outing myself or something or that noticing this says something unseemly about me? I'm glad to simply back off here if need be. I just thought it was interesting, is all.


HUH??? i think you are overthinking. all i was stating was... why think too much on the lyric? it is what it is, to use a very haggard expression. i love the lyric, in the moment. probably sung from a female vantage point. but in 2020, not much concern regarding it's origins. only the enjoyment of the beautiful lyric. assuredly NOT worth the three paragraphs you shared here. and i dread to contemplate your deleted post. are u ok? best, Benny
jardine
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Re: Female Narrator

Post by jardine »

That phrase "some things are better left unspoken" just hit the wrong way, is all and I misunderstood it. It sounded like something was hush hushed and I should leave it alone. My apologies. "Just listen, don't think about it" didn't even occur to me.

And, actually, for me "just don't think about it" is not an attractive thing anyway, at least not here in a forum where thinking about stuff, discussing it, seems to be the point. I understand how some topics strike others as somehow despoiling the 'experience' and would prefer that something things not get talked uttered. So I do agree, this thread of his work "is what it is." But I'm still curious about what it is, because I find it slightly mysterious and brilliant [and, e.g., common in lyricists like Hal David or those who write for musical plays, etc.], and simply wondered what others thought about this, if anything. I posted my first query because many of you folks are brilliant and bring to these things I lack, and my own experience of his work gets better because of it. It helps me get over my own limitations now and again and see things more richly.

"Why think too much on the lyric?" Well, because, sometimes, and especiallly with amazing lyricists like Elvis, the more I think about them, the better they get and the better I understand them and the more depth I can experience in them and, of course, they then become even more mysterious and beautiful, not less. All I initially wanted to hear from folks about was this interesting thread of his work. That's all.

Given the thread reaction, though, maybe there ain't much "there" there.

Again, my apologies for my intial reaction. :oops: Partly based on a [obvously suppressed] similar run in/misunderstanding, a while ago, with an old friend. :( And, thanks for asking, but I'm not THAT okay, :? but surviving just fine. 8)

Here's to thinking too much!!!!! Oh, has Elvis ever broached this topic -- putting himself in the frame of a woman's voice and experience in his lyrics? I'd love to hear what Burt thinks about it, him having had so much practice in such things. The suppressed premise here is that I'm a writer, reasonably well-published in a very limited arena. And a retired prof --- c'mon, it's not obvious, is it? :mrgreen: .
jardine
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Re: Female Narrator

Post by jardine »

Even though this revives an embarassing misunderstanding of mine, as a writer, I'm still finding the original topic really interesting to think about. In the sort of work I do, i very often cite others and feel like i'm sort-of orchestrating multiple voices. I am struck by one other sentence from this interview: “You know, I’m not that fascinating.” A lot of the academic work I skirt around is often about "telling your story" and this often comes from a desire to bring forward voices that have been marginalized. A lovely, puzzling mess. Going to be citing this interview in something new i'm now trying to write about these things -- voices, citations, points of view, breathing in and out...

from https://happymag.tv/elvis-costello-interview/

ELVIS: The first record that I made with Sebastian Krys as my co-producer, and we have worked on what I think is 9 record albums worth of material over the last 4 years, including him mixing the live recording of the riot we had the first time we played in Sydney, you know the little 10 inch record that came in the Armed Forces box set that we put out in 2020. The whole of almost all of the first record that we did together, Look Now, was me trying to imagine the woman’s perspective in a series of scenarios. Almost every song of Look Now is written from a woman’s point of view. Like folk music songs often change gender without any self-consciousness so I decided to try and do that to see whether I could. Some of the songs I had already written, but certainly the two songs I wrote with Burt Bacharach on that record, Don’t Look Now and Photographs Can Lie were definitely written from the perspective of a young woman who discovers her father has been unfaithful to her mother and the song Don’t Look Now was written from the point of view of a life model who is looking into the eyes of the painter who’s painter her and saying, ‘Is he looking at me as a woman or as an object?’  Now that’s a presumptuous thing maybe for a man to try and write but that’s what I tried to do and I didn’t do it in some… to try and be clever, I did it because I wanted to know what that feels like. To impose myself into that experience except in words. Crime writers kill people all the time but they never go to jail.
HAPPY: *laugh* Of course.
ELVIS: So you’ve got to think about why you’re writing. The point of doing that, Look Now record in that way was that for all the differences, the evident differences between us across gender, across time, across race, across language… The humanity between us is the linking thing and all those other definitions are something else that makes us who and what we are but there’s one thing in which we’re all the same. We’re breathing in and out and thoughts are coming in and those other things that give us the colour and the fascination for whoever it is that loves us or whoever it is that doesn’t love us, that’s also stuff you have to negotiate and that’s also stuff that songs need to be sung about.
cwr
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Re: Female Narrator

Post by cwr »

I think this is a very interesting topic when it comes to EC, especially considering how much he was pegged as just being the "angry young man" character in his early days of music fame.

The first full Costello LP I ever listened to was The Juliet Letters, so I started out with thinking that it was cool that he could sing and write so comfortably from the perspective of any character, and I think it affected the way I thought about all the other records and songs along the way.
jardine
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Re: Female Narrator

Post by jardine »

that [what? early 70s?] thing about "i don't know about anyone but myself and my own experience" so my songs are about me and it is me talking...there was an old story about lennon and mccartney re: eleanor rigby, lennon protesting, basically, who are these people, you just made this up...and that being portrayed, ages ago, as somehow "dishonest" or some such thing. Meanwhile, Hal David writes "Alfie." I had the same thing happen as you w. costello, that there was this lovely shift to the invention of the work, and e.c.'s often said reminder that the songs aren't simply "about" him. and, when i'm hearing a new song he's singing and i didn't know it was in a woman's voice and a line betrays that, it is actually chilling in a lovely way and crashes back through all the lyrics i thought I'd "heard" but kind-of didn't.
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