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OK... I'll nominate "Ansafone", a B-side classic from Pulp, in part out of a nostalgic memory of the days when people actually had answerphones. One of the strange things about the future as represented in 80s fiilms for me is that people in the 21st century have answerphones, with little red blinking lights. The song itself is, even by Jarvis Cocker standards, overwrought, detailing a lover on the outs, increasingly convinced that his loved one is cheating on him. Affectingly, despite increasingly melodramatic protests and paranoia:
You said you'd be home by ten-thirty,
But you'd rather stay out and be dirty
***
Are you really not at home?
Or are you there, but not alone?
Screening calls, yoou don't want to receive,
Meaning calls, calls that come from me?
the sung part is actually a rehearsal of of what he wants to say, and when he actually does leave a message, in speech rather than song, it is stunted and reticent:
Hello, it's me. I just wanted to call and say it doesn't matter what you get up to.
I just want you to stay in touch. That's all.
It's a lonely song, passionately addressed to an audience that isn't even there, and captures the feeling of knowing that your relationship with the person you love more than anyone else in the world is over - they've moved out, they're cheating on you, you never hear from them - but you can't stop trying to squeeze some sort of meaning out of it - incredibly well, along with the steadfast refusal to accept that this is the case. It's not the most imaginative of songs musically, but in part I think that's appropriate to its status as a kind of Pulp everysong. |
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