Counter-Currents
1,740 words
See part 1 here
Dreamin’ My Dreams (1976; re-released in 1978 as Faithless) ***
Imagine Lotte Lenya singing Patsy Cline’s greatest hits and you’ll get a sense of Marianne Faithfull’s first comeback, Dreamin’ My Dreams. Faithfull’s voice had changed strikingly from her Sixties albums.
Subscribe here to keep reading
Enjoyed this article?
Be the first to leave a tip in the jar!
4 comments
Dr Johnson, You fail to mention her greatest song, “Why d’Ya Do It,” off of 1979’s Broken English, the nasty words of a betrayed woman seething with rage. Darkly comic.
That was in the “Best of Marianne Faithfull” installment, though I only mention it. It is a good song. I’m just glad my mom didn’t walk in when it was playing.
Okay, because I used to listen to lots of music, incl. classic rock, as a teen, & hadn’t heard of her, I thought I’d give her stuff a listen…
Interestingly, at the height of Metallica’s fame, they decided to feature (the caterwauling ?, idk) of a 48yo Marianne Faithfull as the finale on their The Memory Remains music video. This is strong evidence that Marianne had some serious ”’connections”’ helping her within in the music industry.
(Along these lines, a classic rock music commentator on rumble happened to make mention that Marianne had a Universal Records label deal in 1995, while other bands at the time, like Dave Matthews & Nine Inch Nails, had not-nearly-such-famous labels backing them.)
Her biggest hit was her singing The Rolling Stone’s song “As Tears Go By.” She also did a cover of Bob Dylan’s “It’s All Over Now.” She had lots of ’60 “hipster” sounding stuff.
The music to her song “Broken English” reminds me a lot of Madonna’s “Material Girl”. It seems like major music producers loved to find a hit & then re-package it as often as possible, esp. with girl rockers. (Think Pretender’s lead singer Chrissy Hynde & later, Walking on Sunshine singer Catrina (& the Waves) who even copy-catted the look of Chrissy’s long bangs.)
2018’s “Came at Night”, is done in spoken-word style. Marianne’s music just reminds me of every female singer/musician I like more than her. I’d recommend Laurie Anderson’s Big Science album for spoken-word songs.
Once she re-launched her career with Broken English, Faithfull’s status in rock was sort of like Woody Allen’s in film: she was a prestigious “name,” so even though her albums were not huge sellers, she always had a label, got generally positive reviews of her recordings and performances, received frequent invitations to contribute to other people’s albums, and found it easy to get “names” to collaborate on her albums.
If you have a Subscriber access,
simply login first to see your comment auto-approved.
Note on comments privacy & moderation
Your email is never published nor shared.
Comments are moderated. If you don't see your comment, please be patient. If approved, it will appear here soon. Do not post your comment a second time.