It Could Have Been a Brilliant Career Lyrics

Lyric discussion by Kyomara 

Cover art for It Could Have Been a Brilliant Career lyrics by Belle & Sebastian

I'd never thought about the stroke/stroke thing. I always assumed it was the medical variety as well. Now I see that for most of the song he's actually talking about a stroke of genius. The artist has a stroke of genius at 24, and it's all downhill after that. By the last verse he's old and weak, apparently having had an actual stroke.

How clever.

Apparently a dansette is a kind of old multi-disk record player: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dansette

Safeway is actually an American supermarket chain, with stores in the U.K. and Ireland.