Shelley Winters won two Oscars and was nominated twice more. She appeared in Pete's Dragon, Lolita, The Diary of Anne Frank, and Night of the Hunter, opposite inaugural Celebrity Jukeboxer, Robert Mitchum. But for me, she'll always be most famous as Belle in The Poseidon Adventure, saving Gene Hackman's life then dying of a heart attack. Tragedy. Shelley did her own stunts in that movie, though she never lost the weight she put on for the role. Double tragedy.
The Poseidon Adventure gets name-checked in both My Name Is Prince by TAFKAP, as he would soon decide to call himself... and Release Yo' Delf by Method Man. But it gets a full retelling from Killdozer...
But today's winner... and OK, some might dispute this... comes from Merle Haggard. Seriously, I'm not buying this as an accident or a coincidence. Merle knew exactly what he was doing when he wrote this tune. Clearly he was a fan...
Is this a dagger I see before me? No, it's the answers to this week's Saturday Snapshots. Ten songs named after some of William Shakespeare's finest plays...
Great song. Terrible video, in which they choose to represent the lyrics literally, from exploding die to gold and silver chains. Clearly directed by a 6th Former.
Dire Straits - Romeo & Juliet
To be or not to be more Snapshots? That is the question that will be answered next Saturday.
This week proved to be most problematic. Normally, I just put a number into the Search Title box on my music player and it gives me a clear list of all songs with that number in the title. When I did that for 19 though, I got thousands of songs - including all the year songs from the 20th Century, from 1901 to 1999, plus any Live recordings that featured a date (Live 1987) or similarly dated remixes (1996 remix). As such, finding songs that featured the number nineteen in the title became an impossible task. I kinda gave up and went by ones I could remember off the top of my head and your suggestions. Luckily, there were some crackers among those.
Bandwise, it proved similarly tricky. The 1975, 1990s and 1910 Fruitgum Company were all disqualified for having their 19 in the wrong place, and the only caveat I allowed for a dated 19 was that I would allow the year 1919. Fortunately, there was a postpunk band from Bradford with just that name...
Girl -19
Sadly, John, I couldn't find that anywhere on the internet, since putting the words "girl" and "19" into
a search engine led me nowhere. The only info I have is what you gave me...
I used to love this when I was, er, 19. It was their riposte to Alice Cooper's 18. Speaking of which...
Hold your horses, John, we'll get to next week soon enough.
OK, still before we get to the obvious choices, here's the few leftovers I managed to scrape from my hard-drive before the exercise became too futile...
To be honest, all three of those were in contention this week... along with the above-mentioned belter by The Courteeners... but it's Martin who takes the prize this week for recalling one of my favourite minor hits from the post-Britpop era, although lyrically it owes a debt to 70s singer songwriters such as Rupert Holmes... and a splash of Scott Walker to boot.
Next week we become adults at last... or do we? Your 18 suggestions are welcomed... and yes, I will allow the 18th Century to get a look in, as I'm hoping there are far fewer songs with dates in from that century than this one... and not many 18th century remixes or live recordings either.
After last week's Top Ten Songs About American Writers, I thought a list devoted to British wordsmiths would be easy. After all, we invented English Literature... surely Shakespeare, Dickens, Chaucer and Roger Hargreaves must have been name-checked by songwriters aplenty? And if Prince and Ryan Adams can write dirty love songs for Dorothy Parker and Sylvia Plath, surely Tom Jones must have, at some point, fancied getting into Elizabeth Barrett Browning's knickers?
However, while there are plenty of songs inspired by the works of British writers (from Wuthering Heights to all those Rush songs about Middle Earth), it proved much trickier to come up with songs dedicated to the authors themselves. In the end, I had to cheat and include Irish writers as well... for two good reasons. Firstly, the chances of me coming up with a separate Songs About Irish Writers Top Ten were slim to non-existent... and secondly, how could I leave out Oscar? Apologies to any Irish readers who object to being lumped in with us Brits... but you guys helped me out of a hole here.
After beginning my American list with Danielle Steele, it seemed only fair to open this time with her British equivalent. That is, until Radiohead record a song about Jilly Cooper. Go on, Thom, you know you want to...
MBD are one of those frustrating bands whose songs never sound as good as their promising titles. This comes from an album called Like The Exorcist But More Beakdancing which also includes tracks called Flamenco's Fuckin' Easy, Intergalactic Menopause and Holy Lord, Shawshank Redemption Is Such A Good Movie... none of which quite live up to their potential.
Still, I always thought To The Lighthouse was overrated too.
One more reason Warren Zevon deserves a posthumous sainthood (if that's not tautology).
Lord Byron had a lot of luggage He took it when he travelled far and wide He didn't get to bathe very often But he liked to change his clothes all the time
And if that's not good enough for you, check out the bit where he rhymes Henley Regatta with persona non grata. Byron would blush.
You'd think a lyrical philosopher as smart as Burt would have the answers to the woes of the world, yet here he confesses that while ignorance may be the curse of God and knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven... his own words fly up but his thoughts remain below. To paraphrase his muse...
I keep hoping for a better day It's a long time coming, but I wait anyway Life's a miracle or a foolish tale I don't know, go ask Shakespeare
See also... Shakespeare's Got A Gun by Dan Bern in which the Bard gets bent out of shape that a monkey just outside Pittsburgh finally typed out Hamlet... and goes after it with an uzi.
Dexys' 1980 debut single was a fiery statement of intent that name-checks a litany of famous Irish writers in its defiant and rebellious lyrics. But it's got a great Northern Soul beat...
Never heard about, won't think about... Oscar Wilde and Brendan Behan, Sean O'Casey, George Bernard Shaw. Samuel Beckett, Eugene O'Neill, Edna O'Brien and Lawrence Stern. Sean Kavanaugh and Sean McCann, Benedict Keilly, Jimmy Hiney Frank O'Connor and Catherine Rhine.
1. The Smiths - Cemetry Gates
No, Morrissey can't spell cemetery... but that's (one of) the point(s). Mozzer's famous ode to plagiarism has Keats and Yeats on your side, but Wilde - of course - on his. T.S. Eliot apparently said "Mediocre writers borrow. Great writers steal." (echoing Picasso's "Good artists copy. Great artists steal.") and in his early lyrics, Morrissey stole lines from the likes of Shelagh Delaney, Elizabeth Smart, Noël Coward and even Jeffrey Archer (“I was only joking when I said...you should be bludgeoned in your bed.” comes directly from Archer's novel First Among Equals). He even lifted a good chunk of the lyrics for this song from the movie The Man Who Came To Dinner.
Apologies to those of you who were expecting another Smiths song, Shakespeare's Sister, to make the top slot... but I gave that a Number One already.
Finally, I can't let this one go without playing you this excellent tribute to Charles Dickens from "The Smiths"... courtesy of the BBC's Horrible Histories programme. Almost makes me want to give Dickens another go...
