As Dolby has said, the whole album is about the "sense of a relationship that's going on as being overwhelmed by something on a grander scale", but that fits each song in a different way. He's also said the song has "a very strong wartime atmosphere to it", and that it's in part about how strange it is to grow up only one generation away from WWII.
It's not a coincidence that the girl is named Europa, or that she's French. In late 1972 (9 years before Thomas Dolby wrote this song, when he was 14 years old), the UK was in negotiations to join the European Community. Even if you missed all the "my
country, ta république" on the news, you couldn't miss the references in everything from Doctor Who to the Wombles.
Of course to 14-year-old Thomas, major geopolitical events like that are just unimportant backdrop to what really matters: him and his Pirate Twin.
Meanwhile, "war took her away" is phrasing from WWII-set romances, but obviously she's not being shipped off to fight the Nazis, she's just going off with her French diplomat father to Tokyo to try to arbitrate between the US and North Vietnam, and he's romanticizing based on movies he's seen on telly. (Especially since most of the French girls he's seen on telly have been in those movies.)
To 14-year-old Thomas, summer 1972 isn't about the EEC and Vietnam negotiations, it's about him and Europa. To 23-year-old Thomas—he knows there were momentous things going on, and putting them unnoticed in the background is a way to remind us of what it felt like to be 14.
And the great thing is that it works even for people who don't get any of the connections. You don't have to know why the girl is named Europa, you can even mishear "ta république" as some nonsense phrase in English, and the feeling still comes across.
@falcotron Beautiful explanation. I love this song. Very bittersweet. I can picture the two of them as young kids, oblivious to the rest of the world but living great fantasy as adventurers. Just a great use of the language. Funny how perfect language can put full "movies" in your head. There was the kid in "Mrs. Peregrine's School..." that could project thoughts as movies. What a great power that could be!
@falcotron Beautiful explanation. I love this song. Very bittersweet. I can picture the two of them as young kids, oblivious to the rest of the world but living great fantasy as adventurers. Just a great use of the language. Funny how perfect language can put full "movies" in your head. There was the kid in "Mrs. Peregrine's School..." that could project thoughts as movies. What a great power that could be!
As Dolby has said, the whole album is about the "sense of a relationship that's going on as being overwhelmed by something on a grander scale", but that fits each song in a different way. He's also said the song has "a very strong wartime atmosphere to it", and that it's in part about how strange it is to grow up only one generation away from WWII.
It's not a coincidence that the girl is named Europa, or that she's French. In late 1972 (9 years before Thomas Dolby wrote this song, when he was 14 years old), the UK was in negotiations to join the European Community. Even if you missed all the "my country, ta république" on the news, you couldn't miss the references in everything from Doctor Who to the Wombles.
Of course to 14-year-old Thomas, major geopolitical events like that are just unimportant backdrop to what really matters: him and his Pirate Twin.
Meanwhile, "war took her away" is phrasing from WWII-set romances, but obviously she's not being shipped off to fight the Nazis, she's just going off with her French diplomat father to Tokyo to try to arbitrate between the US and North Vietnam, and he's romanticizing based on movies he's seen on telly. (Especially since most of the French girls he's seen on telly have been in those movies.)
To 14-year-old Thomas, summer 1972 isn't about the EEC and Vietnam negotiations, it's about him and Europa. To 23-year-old Thomas—he knows there were momentous things going on, and putting them unnoticed in the background is a way to remind us of what it felt like to be 14.
And the great thing is that it works even for people who don't get any of the connections. You don't have to know why the girl is named Europa, you can even mishear "ta république" as some nonsense phrase in English, and the feeling still comes across.
@falcotron Beautiful explanation. I love this song. Very bittersweet. I can picture the two of them as young kids, oblivious to the rest of the world but living great fantasy as adventurers. Just a great use of the language. Funny how perfect language can put full "movies" in your head. There was the kid in "Mrs. Peregrine's School..." that could project thoughts as movies. What a great power that could be!
@falcotron Beautiful explanation. I love this song. Very bittersweet. I can picture the two of them as young kids, oblivious to the rest of the world but living great fantasy as adventurers. Just a great use of the language. Funny how perfect language can put full "movies" in your head. There was the kid in "Mrs. Peregrine's School..." that could project thoughts as movies. What a great power that could be!