I wasn’t to know it at the time, obviously, but one of the consequences of not being involved in any plays between June and October 1992 was that this blog was deprived of the opportunity to run the rule over The Wedding Present’s singles releases over the same period. Considering that their last entry here was the majestic California, this could have been the cause of some regret. So, it has been a slight personal relief to discover just how underwhelmed I’ve been by Boing!, Sticky and Love Slave. Flying Saucer would have been a borderline miss, but the best of it has probably helped The Queen of Outer Space over the line and onto the metaphorical mixtape.
To be honest, I don’t think the song is anything particularly special. It’s a default piece of David Gedge romantic worship albeit with a slight trans/androgyny slant, When she began/She was a man etc which suggested that Gedge had been watching The Man Who Fell to Earth or something similar when writing the track. What appeals to me about it is the vocal. Forget about Anyone Can Play Guitar, Gedge’s strangulated attempt at a rawk vocal on the I feel beautiful beside her line would have, and still does, given heart to me that it doesn’t matter if you don’t sound like McCartney or Cobain when going for a throat shredder vocal line, just as long as you commit to it. In fact, Gedge was probably being very shrewd just to go for it and damn the consequences. For just as his writing, at its best, reflected the emotional and romantic concerns of The Wedding Present’s audience, so he correctly deduced that 98% of the audience which consumes rock music would sound closer to him rather than Robert Plant and in doing so furthered his claim to be the true voice (in both senses of the word) of the lives and emotions of the rock audience.
I don’t know if any of you reading this have a song which you sing along with in order to test your own “rawk” voice against. For me, I tend to try my luck with the McCartney parts on I’ve Got a Feeling.
Video courtesy of FernCardenas
Lyrics copyright of David Gedge
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