My Top Ten Dragonfly Songs

In the UK, we're currently struggling to cope with this long-forgotten concept (some of us remember it from our childhoods, but most had started to believe it a myth) of "summer". Our native insect population is certainly having a field day, with flying ants invading Wimbledon and huge butterflies and dragonflies being sighted in gardens across the country.

What better reason to dig out ten top tunes about dragonflies?


10. Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks - Dragonfly Pie

I like a good pie as much as the next Yorkshireman, but I'm not sure I could eat one made of dragonflies.

(I think this might be about drugs. Shh. Don't tell anyone.)

9. Paul Weller - Dragonfly

Also sounds like stoner-rock.

She's like a dragonfly with no fire

Diaphanous with no intent

Earthbound

She's like a horse with no rider

All this space

Without the chase

Or choosing

She's like a sea with no waves

All adrift

Upon a ship

Nowhere

Hardly Down In The Tube Station At Midnight, is it?

8. Fleetwood Mac - Dragonfly

Early Mac, after Peter Green's departure, when Danny Kirwan was briefly in charge. This is his song, though the lyrics are from a poem by W.H. Davies. Christine McVie had just joined the Mac and can be heard on backing vocals. God, this band must surely have the most convoluted history in the whole of rock!

And when the roses are half-bud soft flowers

And lovely as the king of flies has come

It was a fleeting visit, all too brief

In three short minutes, he had been and gone

He rested there upon an apple leaf

A gorgeous opal crown sat on his head

Although the garden is a lovely place

Was it worthy of so fine a guest?

7. Paul McCartney - Little Lamb Dragonfly

Sounds like an Abbey Road outtake. Which is a good thing, whatever you might think of Sir Thumbs Aloft now.

6. The Icicle Works - As The Dragonfly Flies

In another universe, U2 never made it and The Icicle Works were the biggest band of the 80s. I'd like to live in that universe.

5. Kasey Chambers - Dragonfly

And you went to the party and I was not invited

And everybody knows that the girls are one-sided

And the boys don't cry, neither do I

When you're picking off the wings of a dragonfly

Kasey Chambers - voice like an angel... with a little devil inside.

I've done everything that you could ever imagine

I've screwed all of my friends but I'm not bragging

I wish 'em well, don't kiss and tell

'Cause I don't really want nobody else

4. Red House Painters - Dragonflies

Kozelek. From before he became a grumpy old man. Still knows how to get into your head though.

I wonder in what fields today

You're chasing dragonflies at play

My little lost girl so far away

3. Devendra Banhart - Dragonflies

Very short, but very cool.

I don't owe me any money,

You don't owe me a thing.

When we drink beer,

Dragonflies appear.

Dragonflies appear.

2. Ron Sexsmith - Dragonfly On Bay Street

Ron gets funky as a dragonfly leads to a swift career change...

Used to work as a messenger

Spent my days riding elevators

In the heart of the business world

Till one day there came a sign

In the form of a

Dragonfly on Bay Street

Buzzing round from tower to tower

At the twilight of the working hour

Had he taken a wrong turn?

Was he lost without a trace?

Just like us

Dragonfly on Bay Street

1. Boo Hewerdine - Dragonflies

Mark Nicholas Hewerdine, Boo to us, one of music's great philosophers...

A lost summer's day, a lifetime away

What do you find?

Slow turning sun, with somewhere to run

On your mind

Not the flash that you saw

That was gone in the wink of an eye

As soon as we're here

We disappear like dragonflies

Their miracle blue can never tell you

How it came to be

Each different kind, accidental designed

Before you and me

And we ask the whole of our lives

Maybe there's no why

As soon as we're here

We disappear like dragonflies

Frequent Boo-collaborator Eddi Reader does a lovely version of this too.



Any dragonflies buzzing round your collection. (I'm taking bets on which one of you mentions The
S*****s.)