| Roxy Music – Mother of Pearl Lyrics | 1 year ago |
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@[Jillgiannotta:50848] Thanks, my friend, for this excellent, spot-on analysis. I would only add a big of context. Ferry’s I-want-it-but-I-loathe-it obsession is no doubt largely fueled by the driving force in his life, by his own admission: having grown up locked into the British working class, he felt almost doomed in his options, and was determined, like Gatsby, to break out and seize the money and position he’d been denied. But as he edges toward attaining it, as in “Every Dream Home a Heartache,” in the cold light of day, it’s as vacuous as a blow-up doll. In fact, it’s a nightmare, like that beauty in “The Shining” who’s revealed as a cackling ghoul. This is all part of the times, of course, with the unbridled freedom and joy of the hippy 60s coming up sad and disappointing. In the same period Joni Mitchell condemns that daydream asl little more than “Acid, booze and ass/Needles, guns and grass.” As you brilliantly point out, the mother of pearl is a cheap knock-off of the real McCoy. Yet, in the end, Ferry prefers this cheaper version - “No dilettante filigree fancy/Beats the plastic you.” Ultimately, he’s happy with the working class and the working girl striving, like Ferry, to be something they ain't. On one hand he worships at the altar of the posh woman and culture’s “highbrow holy,” but in the end he adores the lowly but lovely mother of pearl: “I wouldn’t trade you for another girl.” |
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| Roxy Music – Mother of Pearl Lyrics | 1 year ago |
|
@[Jillgiannotta:50847] Thanks, my friend, for this excellent, spot-on analysis. I would only add a big of context. Ferry’s I-want-it-but-I-loathe-it obsession is no doubt largely fueled by the driving force in his life, by his own admission: having grown up locked into the British working class, he felt almost doomed in his options, and was determined, like Gatsby, to break out and seize the money and position he’d been denied. But as he edges toward attaining it, as in “Every Dream Home a Heartache,” in the cold light of day, it’s as vacuous as a blow-up doll. In fact, it’s a nightmare, like that beauty in “The Shining” who’s revealed as a cackling ghoul. This is all part of the times, of course, with the unbridled freedom and joy of the hippy 60s coming up sad and disappointing. In the same period Joni Mitchell condemns that daydream asl little more than “Acid, booze and ass/Needles, guns and grass.” As you brilliantly point out, the mother of pearl is a cheap knock-off of the real McCoy. Yet, in the end, Ferry prefers this cheaper version - “No dilettante filigree fancy/Beats the plastic you.” Ultimately, he’s happy with the working class and the working girl striving, like Ferry, to be something they ain't. On one hand he worships at the altar of the posh woman and culture’s “highbrow holy,” but in the end he adores the lowly but lovely mother of pearl: “I wouldn’t trade you for another girl.” |
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