You and Your Perfect Life
(playing time 5:18)
music by David Palmer / words by David Palmer (except *from Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby)
This song was inspired by the Nick Hornby novel Juliet, Naked. The story involves, among other things, an American singer/songwriter named Tucker Crowe, who mysteriously disappeared from the music scene in the late 80s after the release of his legendary breakup album Juliet. Over the years a cult following has developed, and twenty years after his disappearance, a CD labeled Juliet, Naked arrives in England at the home of Duncan, an avid fan and blogger, with a note claiming that this is the guitar and vocal demo Crowe recorded when he first wrote the songs. I won’t tell you what else happens in the book (there are reviews on Amazon), but I found it to be quite a page-turner.
Tucker Crowe is compared by his fans and the media to Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Leonard Cohen. The album Juliet is described in great detail in the book, along with a track list, but there are no songs. So I thought it would be fun to go ahead and write some of them. I started with the final track on the album, You and Your Perfect Life, which chronicles the end of his affair with a married San Francisco model and socialite. There are three lines of lyrics for this song in the novel, so I used those as a starting point and wrote the rest of the song around them. My guitar. vocal and harmonica recording is in the spirit of Crowe’s demo. All of the lyrics refer to situations and events in the book.
Click on the link above, “You and Your Perfect Life”, to hear the song and read the lyrics.
David:
Now we’re getting more complicated. I’m not sure that I’m equipped to respond intelligently at this level.
This much I can say: there’s something in the structure and delivery of this song that puts me in mind of Meatloaf. And for those not familiar with the singer, Meatloaf was and may well still be a leading performer of storytelling music.
It’s funny about specific words. I go back and forth over whether the singer drowned in your ocean and washed up on your shore. “River” is euphonious, but a river has a bank. “Ocean” and the prior “beach” form a unity.
Congratulations on a fine song.
Jay, I do remember Meatloaf. Great singer and writer.
Glad you liked the song. If they ever make it into a film, it would be fun to work on the soundtrack (dreaming). There are 9 other songs listed in the tracklist for Juliet, some really good titles.