The best video for this week is definitely Cyndi Lauper's "Girl's just want to have fun". The video itself tells quite a funny story of the long suffering parents of a daughter who gathers up all and sundry from the her local street and ends up holding a massive party in her room.

Time to return to some classic rock. A while back Grace nominated me to do ten classic album covers so I shall combine this into my Covid Island discs. The first album cover is from the classic Eagles album Hotel California. Funnily enough Hotel California looks a lot like the Trafford Centre in Manchester. Also spot the conjoined 6 string/12 string electric guitar. Very cool.

Staying on a fairly dark theme I am afraid there are times when I can relate to this song. While intellectually I am a Christian and emotionally I shall never surrender my final hope in goodness ultimately triumphing over evil, sometimes the darkness of the world feels quite overpowering as we witnesses the suffering of millions and the constant seeming success of wickedness, in the form of mostly evil men who hold the reigns of power. As the Chinese curse says (and boy does the Chinese church suffer under President Xi) we live in interesting times.

So today I was sitting in my living room and my daughter had the TV on and it was playing some 80s music and this classic came one. A song that I very much enjoyed listening to all those years ago and which until now had completely slipped my mind. A song that captures the pain of a love that has died.

Now five years later on you've got the world at your feet
Success has been so easy for you
But don't forget it's me who put you where you are now
And I can put you back down too.
Don't. Don't you want me?
You know I can't believe it when I hear that you won't see me
Don't. Don't you want me?
You know I don't believe you when you say that you don't need me

Another classic from Evanescence. This song kind of reminds me of my father because lithium is the main drug they use to treat bipolar disorder. Lithium is a mood stabiliser removing both the highs of hypomania and the lows of depression in bipolar disorder. This song of course piqued my curiosity so I did a search on the meaning behind the song and this is what came up from the website songfacts.com

Amy Lee has been quoted saying the song is about losing the comfort of sorrow. Lithium is a mood stabilizer that would take away the sorrow that the writer holds inside and she is not ready to let go of it. She has lived with sorrow so long that losing it now would be like losing a part of herself. That is what the whole refrain is about: "Lithium, Don't want to lock myself up inside, Lithium, Don't want to forget what it feels without, Lithium, I want to stay in love with my sorrow." Lee's lyrics are often metaphorical and the words consist of double meanings. It's about her inner feelings toward herself.

One thing that fascinates me about very arty and successful people is how much they suffer in terms of their mental health. It appears to be part and parcel often with a strong gift in a particular area.

My late mother used to relate to this song in that she felt that my own father spent too much time with his mates to the cost of his relationship with his own children. Sadly this view was largely correct because when I had my first child Grace, as I enjoyed my own father/daughter relationship, I came to realise just how much it was missing from the relationship with my own father. Having said that, as my Dad got older he did become a lot more attentive to his children so I guess the story had a happy ending although sadly you can never fully get back the years of your child's childhood.

This song was also covered by Ugly Kid Joe in 1992. The remake version is also very good and well worth listening too.

Cat's in the Cradle, Ugly Kid Joe Version

So this is a song that was released by Alan Parsons after 15 years of musical silence. The video of this song is also really worth watching because it really is in some ways Parson's musical autobiography. I watched this song just after preparing Parson's biography for Covid Island Discs (Week 23) and what is fascinating about the video is seeing all the important landmarks of Parson's life in the imagery of the video, including Abbey road and his past famous albums. In fact, even the very opening scene of the video has a piece of old ship paper with the words "Dark Side of the Moon" inscribed on it as this was one of the early albums Parson's helped to produce along with the iconic Beatles album, "Abbey Road", when he first went to work at Abbey road studios as a young man.

So this is one of Neil's protest songs against the USA southern state racism. This song would lead Lynyrd Skynyrd to decry Young name in his most famous song Sweet Home Alabama (see tomorrow's post).