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Psalm Lyrics
Try on your love
Like a new dress
The fit and the cut
Your friends to impress
Try on your smile
Square on your face
Showing affection
Should be no disgrace
Try out your God
Hope He will send
Kindness from strangers
On whom you depend
Try on His coat
A mantle most fine
Myriad colours
His harmony thine
"Believe in me"
Once seemed a good line
Now belief in Jesus
Is faith more sublime
Head in the clouds
But I can't see the Lord
Short of perfection
I'll try to be good
I'll stand at His gate
I'll wait for His sign
Then I'll walk in His garden
When it's my time
Drink from His cup
Hush now, don't you cry
His quiet waters
Will never run dry
Nearing Death's veil
He's here by my side
He leads me to paradise
A mountain so high
Don't be afraid
Just treasure His word
Singing His praises
I know that I'll be heard
He's gonna take you by the hand
He's gonna make you feel so good
Open up your eyes
And then you'll see all that you should
Forget all your troubles
You will feel no pain
He's all that you need
He's your everything
When I'm feeling all at sea
And deliverance is that distant shore
I will not be worried
Someday His house will be my home
For evermore
Like a new dress
The fit and the cut
Your friends to impress
Square on your face
Showing affection
Should be no disgrace
Hope He will send
Kindness from strangers
On whom you depend
A mantle most fine
Myriad colours
His harmony thine
Once seemed a good line
Now belief in Jesus
Is faith more sublime
But I can't see the Lord
Short of perfection
I'll try to be good
I'll wait for His sign
Then I'll walk in His garden
When it's my time
Hush now, don't you cry
His quiet waters
Will never run dry
He's here by my side
He leads me to paradise
A mountain so high
Just treasure His word
Singing His praises
I know that I'll be heard
He's gonna make you feel so good
Open up your eyes
And then you'll see all that you should
You will feel no pain
He's all that you need
He's your everything
And deliverance is that distant shore
I will not be worried
Someday His house will be my home
For evermore
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Mr Firey. Read more carefully! Any minor Roxy fan knows Ferry wrote all the songs on the first two albums. I said it was the first song he wrote. Not recorded. Wrote!!! So it is surely of some interest to fans that he chose to hold this song back until the third album. Don't you think? With all due respect... and a little knowledge.
Although this appears on Roxy's third studio album, it was the first song Ferry wrote. Maybe he needed to establish himself before he felt brave enough to commit it to vinyl. Superb, and very strange. Nothing like this could be accepted by a modern band's record company today. Glorious!
This song is blatantly ironic!
This always seemed obviously ironic to me, not only because of the lyrics, or because Bryan Ferry and Roxy Music as a whole is usually ironic about anything, but also Ferry's voice and expression while singing it. but I came across many people that called this a "truly spiritual piece".
I will explain my analysis:
--- Try on your love like a new dress; The fit and the cut, your friends to impress ---
Love treated as something shallow. Love is but an appearance one might keep. As the song goes on, expressions are referred to as a shell, as pure appearance as well. "Wear" kind faces and they might send kindness to you in return. Try out your god. The statement means: Try any god, and hope this god will send kindness from strangers. This is a contradiction and an ironic statement. If kindness should come from those strangers, it isn't under the power of that god. The god's coat is another allusion to the leather, the shell, the outer instead of the inner.
"Believe in me" - The narrator was one to trust in the past, before Jesus belief came in between. Now, with 'head in the clouds', the one with which he's talking to is trying to see "The Lord", but fails to do so.
What is to come then are random expressions of overdramatic adoration towards that god. I find funny the way Bryan says pa-ra-dise. It is very enphatic and satiric.
That first half of the song is enough to see Bryan's cynical approach of religion in this song, and also enough to intuit that all super dramatic religious admiration is a satire.
If Bryan has a spiritual side nowadays, he was a nihilist atheist back then while writing this song, which is highly anti-religious. Or maybe it's a satire of the religious institution and its followers.
You may be correct - and I think your analysis is on track and insightful. But I am still curious as to what Brian F. actually believes in. He does not seem like an atheist to me - but more a nihilist looking for faith What do you make of the lyrics for 'Triptych" and "In every Dream-home a Heartache?"
You may be correct - and I think your analysis is on track and insightful. But I am still curious as to what Brian F. actually believes in. He does not seem like an atheist to me - but more a nihilist looking for faith What do you make of the lyrics for 'Triptych" and "In every Dream-home a Heartache?"
Is it 100 % irony and camped-up satire?
Is it 100 % irony and camped-up satire?
@BogusMan I agree that there's irony in the song, especially in the opening verse but it goes on to offer something more complex. 'Believe in me once seemed a good line' can be read as a dismissal of belief, but it can also should be understood as the speaker no longer being able to rely only on himself as all he needs to be believe in. 'Once seemed' but no longer does and 'belief in Jesus' offers a better answer. The narrator can't achieve such a belief easily but he understands it as the only possibility of facing death without...
@BogusMan I agree that there's irony in the song, especially in the opening verse but it goes on to offer something more complex. 'Believe in me once seemed a good line' can be read as a dismissal of belief, but it can also should be understood as the speaker no longer being able to rely only on himself as all he needs to be believe in. 'Once seemed' but no longer does and 'belief in Jesus' offers a better answer. The narrator can't achieve such a belief easily but he understands it as the only possibility of facing death without fear. it scarcely matters if Ferry was a nihilist-atheist, this is a song from a point of view.
Bryan Ferry wrote ALL of the songs on the first two Roxy Music albums. He wrote all but two songs on this album. With all due respect, post comments on subjects you have at least a little knowledge of.
What a truly transcendent song.
I posted about it here: http://connecthook.wordpress.com/2011/09/15/a-psalm-of-roxy/
and also here: http://psalm151.tumblr.com/post/9332845904/roxy-music-live-performance-of-psalm-from-the
Greetings to all true Roxy Music fans!