She Was No Good - really is quite good

[Poor Deportee]

I know next to nothing about Jenny Lind, nor what happened on her famous American tour. But I like the sense of darkness and menace that builds through the progress of the lyric. The atmosphere is sordid in the first verse, but some tatters of civility still cling to the proceedings ('reciting scriptures'). A night descends, though - and is 'Cumberland' deliberately sung so that it sounds like 'crumbling,' I wonder? - this slips into outright drunken violence. Then we hit the line upon which the song hinges: 'I received a blow that was unkind/it turned my cheek the colour of gentian violet.' Coming on the heels of crew and drunken musicians rampaging around the deck, we're left to infer what happened. Could have been a simple physical blow, I suppose. But (keeping in mind that I don't know the history, or whether EC is trying to be faithful to that history) it seems suggestive of something more traumatic. I suspect the story being told - albeit tastefully and discreetly told, as behooves the narrative voice - is of a genteel European artist coming to a ruder country and being raped.

And then forced to go on. The last two lines practically carry us into Heart of Darkness. The horror isn't over, it just widens out as the riverboat is swallowed by the nightmare slave plantations, the alien and blood-drenched land.

(Conversely, this could all be a total misreading. The narrator is given in the liner notes as an 'eyewitness' to the tour. And 'that precious one' in the first verse, likely Lind, seems to be presented as somebody else; having said that, the voice could still be that of Lind, looking back at herself as another person, before the traumatic event).

Plus, what with 'tinctures,' 'gentian,' and 'proceniums,' it displays a prodigious vocabulary!

Anyone have any thoughts to share about this cunningly-constructed little number?

She could be no good, I'm telling you
Gather round boys for a tale that is tragic and true
On the Mississippi riverboat, Magnolia
No one onboard was smelling too sweet
That precious one must have been stamping her feet
Dictating demands all well and fine
A few rods west of the Bridgeport line
But the veil was drawn and the halo slipped
Tippling tinctures and reciting scripture

Faces where slapped just as kid gloves were suffered
Vile threats were uttered and challenges offered
On the Cumberland riverboat, E.W. Stephens
Daggers were drawn on pistols pulled
Staggering til dawn filled up with whiskey and rum
And several drunken players ran amok
Rampaging with the crew around the deck

And I received a blow that was unkind
It turned my cheek to the colour of gentian violet
I wouldn' t say that this journey had quite been the highlight
Of the All-American Tour
Teetering on the edge of war
Out of the genteel Northern prosceniums
Filled up with imitation Europeans
Down along the river of rough damnations
By the blood-stained cotton and the slave plantations

[Jack of All Parades]

Am not quite as enamored of this lyric as you but I think you do point out some intriguing aspects.

Lind first made her landing in America in 1850 triumphantly before a crowd of over 30,000 in NYC under the tutelage of Barnum as his signed star to promote and promote he did. She gave her first American concert at the Castle Garden on the battery at the tip of Manhattan. Her tour took her down the eastern seaboard and then down to Havana, Cuba where she performed before coming back to America and New Orleans where she performed before embarking upon a river boat up the Mississippi, performing in Natchez and St Louis before going up the Ohio River for more concerts in the midwest. She parted company with Barnum in 1852 and went back to her native Sweden after that- the initial swelling of interest in her appearances long since subsided.

You make a nice suggestion with the up river voyage- not unlike Heart of Darkness- although much of the depicted violence and degradation is on the boat and not on the shores. I think the narrative voice is that of Barnum and a Barnum that is now angered by his protege's slipping away from his control- in fact the recollection in the lyric may be occurring well after Ms Lind returned to Sweden. That would account for the 'vocabulary' you cite- something I cannot perceive coming from Lind-Barnum being the showman extraordinaire. He would know a proscenium is that area of the stage in front of the curtain where the audience consists of
" imitation Europeans" trying to catch the supposed latest Old World new thing. It would also account for the acerbic tone in the voice. The scripture citing is I think a reflective counter slap, the first slap occurring in the third stanza and happening, I think, to Barnum as related by him after the events depicted in the first stanza.

That would explain the bitterness and badmouthing of the protege in the first stanza whose 'halo has slipped". The almost cartoon violence in the second stanza seems comical in hindsight. I think you have Barnum, in reflection, in the third stanza, maybe having been struck by his protege ruminating and feeling sorry for himself and the impending loss of his protege and his influence over her painting that coming separation against the backdrop of the impending Civil War that will engulf the country in the coming years.

As I said not as excited by this lyric as you are. I am not engaged by the attempt to position the struggle between the patron and his protege within the broader context of the national struggle over race, slavery and state's rights that would culminate in the Civil War.

[Neil.]

Fab lyric - love it! Love how he packs so much in, as on its companion piece, Red Cotton. Elvis has always managed to give impressionistic, image-packed lyrics about mysterious situations (After the Fall sprang to mind, and there are loads of others) but it's just the amount of detail that gets packed in these days: they just seem even more vivid than usual, if that's possible. I think that may further alientate cover version artists, so I hope he still does simpler, more universal lyrics, too - aw, anyway, I love Elvis, and hope he continues to produce and album per year, for life - which I hope, obviously, is a long life (and, just as obviously, I hope I'm around long enough to lap 'em up!)

[Ypsilanti]

I'd say it is a story told from the perspective of an eye witness--neither Barnum nor Jenny Lind, but perhaps another passenger, a crew member, or even one of the drunken musicians who run amok. He's a raconteur, telling the story after the fact. He says, "Gather round boys for a tale that is tragic and true".

I also find it much less menacing, even a little comical--Jenny Lind's delicate European sensibilities are impinged by the coarse behavior of her companions on the boat. Her fancy, lady-like manners start to crack as the boat travels further and further away from civilized, European-like New York. She loses control of her circumstances and of herself. Perhaps she's not all that fine after all, since she finds it necessary to secretly turn to her tinctures in times of stress.

This part...

Faces where slapped just as kid gloves were suffered
Vile threats were uttered and challenges offered
On the Cumberland riverboat, E.W. Stephens
Daggers were drawn on pistols pulled
Staggering til dawn filled up with whiskey and rum
And several drunken players ran amok
Rampaging with the crew around the deck

And I received a blow that was unkind
It turned my cheek to the colour of gentian violet

I take as a pretty straightforward account of a series of events...An argument ensues. One man challenges another to a duel. They draw their weapons, but the other drunks on the boat join in and it becomes a wild, out of control brawl. During the fight, the narrator gets socked in the face and develops a big, purple bruise. That seems pretty clear--the narrator tells a great story--at his local barber shop or general merchandise store--about his encounter with the famous Swedish soprano--engaging, lots of action--it has a whiff of Mark Twain about it, and I imagine that was Elvis' intention given the time period and the riverboat setting.

[Poor Deportee]

I'd say it is a story told from the perspective of an eye witness--neither Barnum nor Jenny Lind, but perhaps another passenger, a crew member, or even one of the drunken musicians who run amok. He's a raconteur, telling the story after the fact. He says, "Gather round boys for a tale that is tragic and true".

I also find it much less menacing, even a little comical--Jenny Lind's delicate European sensibilities are impinged by the coarse behavior of her companions on the boat. Her fancy, lady-like manners start to crack as the boat travels further and further away from civilized, European-like New York. She loses control of her circumstances and of herself. Perhaps she's not all that fine after all, since she finds it necessary to secretly turn to her tinctures in times of stress.

This part...

Faces where slapped just as kid gloves were suffered
Vile threats were uttered and challenges offered
On the Cumberland riverboat, E.W. Stephens
Daggers were drawn on pistols pulled
Staggering til dawn filled up with whiskey and rum
And several drunken players ran amok
Rampaging with the crew around the deck

And I received a blow that was unkind
It turned my cheek to the colour of gentian violet

I take as a pretty straightforward account of a series of events...An argument ensues. One man challenges another to a duel. They draw their weapons, but the other drunks on the boat join in and it becomes a wild, out of control brawl. During the fight, the narrator gets socked in the face and develops a big, purple bruise. That seems pretty clear--the narrator tells a great story--at his local barber shop or general merchandise store--about his encounter with the famous Swedish soprano--engaging, lots of action--it has a whiff of Mark Twain about it, and I imagine that was Elvis' intention given the time period and the riverboat setting.

This might be the best reading so far. There's no question the song has a 'pathetic' quality to it - it always sounds like it's about to break apart (generally a virtue in a tune, I find ). It straddles some bizarre four-way crossroad between the pathetic, the tragic, the comical, and the truly horrible. (I have trouble seeing the second verse as primarily comedic in intent, though; nothing funny, really, about daggers and pistols coming out).

There's something a bit too genteel (feminine?) about the vocabulary for me to accept the 'crew member' interpretation, which may have been what led me to my rather dramatic 'rape' hypothesis in the first place. Of course, the speaker needn't be Lind - there were other ladies present, I'd assume. A suave classical musician might adopt these lyrics as well, though, so that's a thought.

Like Neil, I quite enjoy the intricate historical re-creation Costello engages in with these lyrics. He captures these very precise moments with unusually elaborate tones and colours. I can, however, see what puts off Christopher a bit: there may be too cerebral a quality to this material - is the feeling real, is the emotional punch there? The very sophistication, erudition and complexity of the whole edifice may get in the way of its emotional power. That was my initial reaction to many of these songs. But as you can gather, I've tended to come to a different view over time, one that deeply enjoys the lyrical and musical embroideries Elvis knits for us...for the most part, anyway.

[Ypsilanti]

Like Neil, I quite enjoy the intricate historical re-creation Costello engages in with these lyrics. He captures these very precise moments with unusually elaborate tones and colours. I can, however, see what puts off Christopher a bit: there may be too cerebral a quality to this material - is the feeling real, is the emotional punch there? The very sophistication, erudition and complexity of the whole edifice may get in the way of its emotional power. That was my initial reaction to many of these songs. But as you can gather, I've tended to come to a different view over time, one that deeply enjoys the lyrical and musical embroideries Elvis knits for us...for the most part, anyway.

I'm also enjoying these newer songs which bring little slices of history to life. It seems to be something he's doing more and more--I presume because now that his own life isn't such a quagmire he doesn't need to wrestle his demons through song anymore and is looking elsewhere for material. He did tell Mary Louise Parker on Spectacle that while he doesn't read much, he does read some history.

I love the way he's using language to help bring his historical characters to life. I suspect this new album will feature quite a bit of this kind of story-telling. He does it, for example, in "Jimmie" (Brilliantine, tuberculosis) and "Josephine" (armistice, codeine, ballyhoo) and it's wonderfully effective. I have been wondering if on the new record, each song will evoke a different era, or maybe a different decade of the 20th Century.

[alexv]

Analyzing EC’s lyrics is always a tricky proposition. He is not the most direct lyric writer: within one lyric you get sudden shifts in points of views, themes etc. I’ve always loved his lyrics for their stream of consciousness feel, and their sheer venom. So, when he writes stuff like this it’s enter at your own risk. But it’s Friday, so here goes.

By the way, I don't like this lyric. Any song with "tinctures", "gentian violet" and "prosceniums" turns me off, automatically. Pretentious. Now, since it was intended for a piece that can be viewed as an opera or art song I give him a pass. But to put in on Secret, he should have altered it somewhat. But let's analyse.

Warning: this is just me doing some purely alexv analyis. EC's songs, even this type, can always be attacked from different angles, and no one take is definitive. That's why, even when pretentious, he's really good. Anyway...

This one may be easier in that it comes from that Secret Songs thing. So maybe we can right away come up with the narrator. I looked it up, and it looks as if EC intended it to be sung by the Barnum character. So, the first stanza is him just being the showman (gather round boys), letting us in on Jenny. It’s a Mississippi riverboat, so (at least in EC’s eyes) there’s a lot of drinking going on and all around debauchery. Barnum contrasts this with the supposedly pure Jenny, and her demands (according to what I’ve read she was a shrewd business woman and got a lot of money out of PT). But, this being EC after all, the key line is the last one: but the veil was drawn and the halo slipped. No one is pure in EC’s universe. So forget Jenny’s purity: she’s been driving Barnum nuts with her financial demands. No angel she. No angel Barnum. No angel me. No angel you.

In the second stanza we get down to business, dirty, steamy, sweaty Mississippi riverboat stuff. Jenny is causing havoc as are the drunken sailors. But now we are on the Cumberland riverboat and not on the Magnolia anymore. How did that happen? Poetic license I guess. I tried to find a reference to this boat in the rest of The Secret Songs but couldn’t come up with one. John may know. Help!! A face gets slapped at the beginning: is it Jenny slapping our narrator over some demand? Stay tuned

Anyhow, in the third stanza, Barnum (presumably he’s still our story teller (at least that’s what the Secret Songs say)) appears to be the one getting slapped around. On the Magnolia? E.W.Stephens? some other boat?, and EC’s goes off into a contrasting lyric. Barnum’s cheek turns “gentian violet”. I had to look that up, and I guess it turned the color of a showy flower. Why the detail? Maybe to connect with the rest of the stanza that now shifts to the beginnings of the Civil War, slave plantations, “blood stained cotton”. Red is the theme: Barnum’s cheek is red; the cotton is red; slave blood contaminating everything, even sweet Jenny’s triumphal tour.

In the Secret Songs, the song continues, and we get Barnum running to his Mrs. For aid who gives us some gems on what she thinks of ballet and operand then we are back to Jenny.

So what is the song about? EC is cryptic. On his site he says that after reading an out-of-print book about Jenny Lind’s 1850 All-American Tour promoted by P.T. Barnum (JFoyle alert: John is there a way to get this book? It may provide details) he wrote the song, describing it this way: “Tales of duels and fisticuffs over unpaid bills and a star who was rather more the tenacious businesswoman than her pure reputation suggested, provided the background for, "She Was No Good".”

Background to what? Well, one way to look at it is to connect a shrewd crass American showman, with a shrewd, definitely not pure singer, with a definitely not pure boat or boats of drunken American sailors, and an upcoming war. How do you do it? How about a slap, amid daggers and pistols? Who’s slapping whom? Our virginal, money-wise starlet is slapping our nasty American entrepreneur, whose face turns red, the color that permeates the South in which they travel. A color that spells doom. An All-American tour indeed.

[wordnat]

Stone-cold masterpiece.

[Jack of All Parades]

Not surprising you did your homework Alexv. Would expect no less. Funny thing about reading, you often pick up knowledge and information.

I too remembered EC's previous comments about this aborted project and his writings on his website. Clearly Barnum if you want to take the artist at his word. You wrote a while back on the books thread about a book you enjoyed on the Five Points area of lower Manhattan, a book I too have enjoyed. There is a nice discussion in that book about Barnum's Museum in lower Manhattan off of what is now Ann St with its menagerie of animals and other exhibits including the elephant that so entranced Ypsilanti[she may want to visit Somers, NY and the tribute to that elephant there in the Bailey[and Barnum] circus museum including a remarkable elephant sculpture] in another thread and the big blue whale[cetacean] that caught Neil's attention in the same thread. It builds upon the material EC used for inspiration as you note in the Lind tour history tome.

The Cumberland reference may very well come from the itinerary of that tour which ended with a run through middle America up the Ohio and adjacent Cumberland River. To this day riverboats are there albeit as gambling casinos. Which brings me to 'players'. They need not be taken to be musicians but perhaps just what they are gamblers and card players who filled the many steamboats that plied those waters. The cartoon aspect of drawn daggers and pistols is a long time cliche- just think back to any western or period piece- someone around the card table accuses someone else of cheating and voila chairs are kicked back and the weapon of choice appears. Like you have little love for this lyric and for much the same reasons. Poor Deportee puts it right for me in that the 'edifice' of this song is much too artificial for my ears and eyes; it is feigned and assumed or 'pretentious' as you say. I know what the vocabulary that PD cites means but those words seem inserted into the lyric just to show off. Most off putting for me. I agree that the usage may be attributed to the operetta form that the songs were originally intended to fill. But that is the most telling aspect of this lyric and the album he wound up putting this and other songs from that aborted project on as a finished product. Think about it. EC himself says in his recent Italian interview that he has grown beyond the SPS album and its material. He does not even perform many of the songs in concert these days. "Sulfur to Sugarcane" is performed because it gets a rise out of any audience as he can insert the name of the town he his performing in that night into the lyric. All that song is though is a variant of older material like Dylan's "Wanted Man" or Johnny Cash's "I've Been Everywhere Man". Think about it again; EC aborted the operetta project. Those songs from that project I suspect no longer engage him and his failure to perform them is most telling. 'Pretentious' indeed and the worst kind of 'purple' which may very well echo the color of a tincture of iodine or the bruise you cite and that is showed off to much better effect in the song "Heart Shaped Bruise" on a better project and album. As you say 'an All-American tour indeed'!

What has me buzzing is the improvement I see with songs like 'Jimmy' or 'Josephine' as they move back to EC's real strength for me- writing about men and women and their infinite interactions. I do not think you can call these songs 'historical' as they are clearly fictional efforts about imagined characters. What they do and do quite well is make characters come alive with a telling detail and do not lie flat on the page or in the ear unlike the operetta songs which are forced and artificial for me. Words cited by Ypsilanti are nothing extraordinary and just because they are used they do not lend a historical context to the given song they inhabit as they are words that have not left the everyday lexicon. As EC grows in his American style I look for more of this everyday context and intelligent exploration of the sexes.

[Poor Deportee]

Poor Deportee puts it right for me in that the 'edifice' of this song is much too artificial for my ears and eyes; it is feigned and assumed or 'pretentious' as you say. I know what the vocabulary that PD cites means but those words seem inserted into the lyric just to show off. Most off putting for me. I agree that the usage may be attributed to the operetta form that the songs were originally intended to fill. But that is the most telling aspect of this lyric and the album he wound up putting this and other songs from that aborted project on as a finished product. Think about it. EC himself says in his recent Italian interview that he has grown beyond the SPS album and its material. He does not even perform many of the songs in concert these days. "Sulfur to Sugarcane" is performed because it gets a rise out of any audience as he can insert the name of the town he his performing in that night into the lyric. All that song is though is a variant of older material like Dylan's "Wanted Man" or Johnny Cash's "I've Been Everywhere Man". Think about it again; EC aborted the operetta project. Those songs from that project I suspect no longer engage him and his failure to perform them is most telling. 'Pretentious' indeed and the worst kind of 'purple' which may very well echo the color of a tincture of iodine or the bruise you cite and that is showed off to much better effect in the song "Heart Shaped Bruise" on a better project and album. As you say 'an All-American tour indeed'!

What has me buzzing is the improvement I see with songs like 'Jimmy' or 'Josephine' as they move back to EC's real strength for me- writing about men and women and their infinite interactions. I do not think you can call these songs 'historical' as they are clearly fictional efforts about imagined characters. What they do and do quite well is make characters come alive with a telling detail and do not lie flat on the page or in the ear unlike the operetta songs which are forced and artificial for me. Words cited by Ypsilanti are nothing extraordinary and just because they are used they do not lend a historical context to the given song they inhabit as they are words that have not left the everyday lexicon. As EC grows in his American style I look for more of this everyday context and intelligent exploration of the sexes.

Well, I don't find EC's vocabulary in 'She Was No Good' to be pretentious. Lord knows he is no stranger to this vice - despite his endless snarling denials in interviews, a number of his projects over the last two decades have had a definite whiff of the precocious about them. And I agree that it's tricky to use too sophisticated a vocabulary in popular song because it's a fundamentally 'common' or popular idiom, and when the listener is confronted with a word like 'tinctures' she either ignores it (likely with irritation) or reaches for either her mental or actual dictionary. When not simply off-putting, the net effect is cerebral rather than emotionally engaging. And that amounts to what, in literary circles, is known as author intrusion: the shattering of the reader's/listener's suspension of disbelief caused by self-conscious and therefore false notes in the prose or lyric.

Having said all that, I view EC as 'not guilty' of this charge on this particular track. The words in question are all words that a 19th century impressario would be familiar with and likely to use. Now whether PT Barnum, huckster extraordinaire, would ever resemble the slightly delicate and effete soul ('oh dear, it turned my cheek the colour of Gentian violet!') who seems to be the narrator is another question. If I were to discuss 'author intrusion' on this album as a whole, I wouldn't use She Was No Good as my main exhibit; I'd point to the repeated use of '[glass of] grape' or 'grape and grain' as synonyms for wine and beer as a rather mannered rhyming trick that I can't see coming from the lips of either a brain-damaged boxer or the coarse souls depicted in 'Sulpher to Sugarcane;' and more damagingly, the very Costello-ish and disproportionate concern with England's implication in the slave trade in the album's centrepiece, 'Red Cotton.' Not only is this arguably unfair to Britain, which played a leading role in the abolition of the slave trade, but I can't believe that PT Barnum would be particularly preoccupied with Britain's past sins when there were so many contemporary and American atrocities to agitate against. Ironically, that song might have worked better as a straight EC number without the narrative pretense.

All of that being said, I basically disagree with Christopher's assessment of the album. I enjoy the tonal consistency that runs through most of the lyrics and them as baroque historical narratives. I find it does take you some interesting 19th century places and I find a number of the tracks both fascinating and moving. For my money, the only abject disaster is 'She Handed Me a Mirror' - overwrought, boring, and yes, pretentious; even the melody runs out of steam after the first two couplets - while 'All Time Doll' is a nice tune crushed by dull by-the-numbers lyrics. As I've said before, I'm also not nuts about the rehashes of 'Complicated Shadows' and 'Hidden Shame,' both middling compositions in the first place that scarcely repay the attention he seems to want us to keep showering on them. But I don't think it's fair to slag 'Sulphur to Sugarcane' as derivative. It's an enjoyable entry into the tradition of rakish songs - good worldly fun. Cuts 7-13 represent a run of six impressive and satisfying tunes, it seems to me, sweeping us from the Victorian airs of a lost Southern belle across a landscape of civil war, the PT Barnum/Lind/Abolitionist stuff and then taking us home with a communal dance and the closing intimacy of 'Changing Partners.' For my money there's a great album in the second half of this record - unfortunately he went erratic and piecemeal for the first half. Like Chris, I hope the next one is The Big One that puts it all these wonderful new approaches, themes, and sounds together.

[Jack of All Parades]

Have always been most appreciative of your reasoned and balanced responses to posts, this one included, particularly enjoyed your comments on 'authorial intrusion'. For this album I will leave it with an agreement to disagree. With an oeuvre as extensive as EC's, I know that there are albums I share an appreciation of with you[one for certain, "Get Happy"] just not this one. Do find the closing number "Changing Partners", as previously noted on another thread, as diminutive as you do.

Not the most informed on Barnum but I do doubt he was an 'abolitionist'- I think he worshiped the 'almighty dollar' and that alone. Must have been so frustrating for him to find that his 'Swedish Nightingale' turned out to be as shrewd a business person as he was fabled to be.

Those two new songs have me juiced up. If there are more of their quality on the new album, I will be a frequent listener of the 'new' product.

[Neil.]

So true - one man's pretentious is another man's interesting!

There are a zillion pop songs that don't attempt anything beyond "I love you". I've no problem with that, but because so many other artists stick to that narrow focus, it's great that Elvis attempts something else.

I think the (so-called) pretentious vocabulary suit the Victorian/Edwardian feel of the songs they tend to be included in. Elvis has long loved to write in a third-person character from a more mannerly era - eg. lots of stuff in the Juliet Letters - nearly twenty years old, now. Harpie's Bizarre, before that...

If it doesn't suit you, that's cool - he still does a ton of other more straightforward stuff.