Showing posts with label Madness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Madness. Show all posts

Friday, 17 April 2009

Incompetent ignoramuses

The Guardian's Film and Music section has a weekly feature: Songs about… . This week, it's actors. I didn't contribute because I assumed that good liberal readers of a certain age would definitely pick the right one. But no. The Go-Betweens' 'Lee Remick' isn't there. It's a wonderful, eyes-wide-open ingenue piece of Australian pop-rock, featuring my favourite line of bathos ever:

'She comes from Ireland, she's very beautiful.
I come from Brisbane, and I'm quite plain'.

It just works - the scansion and the meanings work together to encapsulate that feeling of not quite making it. When Robert Forster married a German heiress from a brewing family, he quipped 'I'm living every Australian's dream. I'm marrying into beer'.

Madness also wrote about an actor: 'My Name is Michael Caine'. It's not their best, but I like it.