Sunday, December 06, 2020

Charley Stone


Found this one on Loud Women blog. London's Charley Stone says about this song:

So I was playing the guitar, and just idly started singing “Merry Christmas”, and before I knew it these words had spilled out all about the guy in Love Actually who is infatuated with his best friend’s wife and turns up on her doorstep at Christmas, professing his love and expecting it to be their little secret. It’s like, he genuinely thinks he’s being very romantic and chivalrous or something, to just put it out there, “without hope”.
The song is sung from his point of view, but with an awareness that he’s basically idealised her to the point of denying her any agency. He thinks he’s Dante Gabriel Rossetti or something (who I quote in the middle of the song, yes, well, that’s just the kind of person I am). Oh woe is me, I’m lost in your beauty, it is all terribly tragic and pure – no ssssh be quiet I don’t even want to think about how this affects you. That’s what always annoyed me about the film – we’re expected to believe that Keira Knightley’s character just smiles at him indulgently and then goes quietly back inside? That she wouldn’t have paced around the kitchen in a rage telling her husband “your so-called friend has just planted an emotional bomb on our doorstep and I can’t even”? Etc.

The result is a reverb-erating, very sweet and to 50s girl groups referencing GLORIUOS song. I'd imagine Kirsty MacColl singing this:

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