Katie Melua - 'If You Were A Sailboat'
Hmmm. Popstars are going a bit overboard (no pun intended) with the transport-related metaphors at the moment, aren't they? Rihanna's currently comparing herself to a car, and now Katie's imagining her beau as a sailboat. What can we learn from this, I wonder? Since it's clearly all not-so-subtly referring to the act of physical lovemaking (seriously: everything relates back to that. Ask Freud if you don't believe me), are we to conclude that a romp with Rihanna is slick, stylish and noisy, while copping off with Katie is wet, wobbly and prone to inducing nausea? Bet Katie's really wishing she'd at least plumped for a motorboat, or a yacht. Or a catamaran!
Let's turn back the clock a little bit, back to around 2004, when I was living with my friend Holly, who happens to be a Katie Melua fan, and when you couldn't go more than half an hour watching the telly without seeing an advert for 'Call Off The Search' (unless you were watching the ´óÏó´«Ã½, obviously). This was perhaps not one of my finer moments, but overexposure to that advert and, in particular, Katie's super-irritating faces of faux-sincerity in the video for 'The Closest Thing To Crazy' instilled in me a rather violent Pavlovian reaction, in that whenever I saw the advert I would spew a torrent of expletives and throw a sofa cushion at the screen. This, obviously, did not endear me much to Holly, but you'll be pleased to know that we agreed to disagree on the subject of La Melua.
My stance has softened somewhat since then, since there's absolutely no point in railing against the things you cannot change (also, an interview-related meeting with Katie revealed her to be a very nice person), just in case I've tarnished my sense of impartiality by the above revelation. And you know what? I really don't dislike this song. In fact, it's growing on me quite a bit. What the heck?
Well, Katie's toned down the "I EMPATHISE AND FEEL YOUR PAIN, DEAR" faces in her videos since the early days, which helps enormously, and has lucked in on an actually quite pleasant song. Admittedly, lyrics have always been Katie's Achilles' heel: '...Crazy' incited riots with the nonsensical lines like "feeling 22, acting 17" and 'Nine Million Bicycles' had the most pedestrian rhyme scheme (oh the irony!) imaginable.
True to form, this song is full of lines that make less sense the more you think about them ("If you were a cowboy I would trail you/If you were a piece of wood I would nail you...to the floor" - whuh?). As much as I never expected to say this, it's actually the sincerity and clarity Katie's voice brings to this tommyrot that sells it. She's somehow developed the ability to snuffle out the basic emotional message under the incoherent mess of the words and focused on that part, and, well, good for her.
It's still a tad too MOR for my tastes, but I've got to admire her for the career progression thus far of irritant -> inoffensive -> bearable, because it's easy to go in the opposite direction entirely. She's trying, bless her, and that's the important part.
Download: Out now
CD Released: September 24th
(Steve Perkins)
Comments
that review was like a psychology lesson
thought i'd point that out =P
Me, I'll stick to downloading the video, drawing the curtains and turning the volume down.
'physical lovemaking'? why does it always have to go back to that, hm?
Hello,
Physical lovemaking? Is there another kind? Meta-physical lovemaking?
As for the song, bizarre lyrics, but really fancy Katie so forgive her anything.
The lyrics kind of remind me of Neil Hannon's "If" from A short album about love. (Which was intentionally funny - "If you were a dog I'd feed you scraps from off the table...")
John
[Course there's other sorts of lovemaking. Verbal, textual (or whatever the word is for phone texts), imaginary, you name it. - Fraser]
Well yes Fraser but they all reference physical lovemaking don't they. And most of them result in something physical, e.g. being slapped, running away in horror etc.
Anyway I guess imaginary is the closest I'll get to Katie... ah well.