Nobody writes better backhanded love songs to a city than Shane MacGowan, the frontman of the Pogues. Shane was responsible for such odes to London, in all her seamy glory, as Transmetropolitan, London You're a Lady, and Dark Streets of London... among others. This week, I heard a song that I overlooked when it came out seven or so years ago, Lily Allen's LDN, which is a bouncy number about how appearances in the city can be misleading, even on a beautiful, sunny day:
When you look with your eyes
Everything seems nice
But if you look twice
you can see it's all lies
I have always loved uptempo songs about slightly depressing subject matter- the juxtaposition's always appealed to me. Anyway, here's LDN in all of its mixed-message glory:
The song samples Tommy McCook and the Supersonics' Reggae Merengue:
Which is an adaptation of the 1954 Colombian cumbia Cogeme la Caña:
Here's a backhanded love song to a city...
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All of those Cleveland tourism videos are great.
ReplyDeleteLDN's a great song. Her songs are about the same after that but the production style got awful.
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