For years, the song "Your Woman" by White Town intrigued me. From time to time, I would give it a spin on YouTube. Perhaps more than any other song in the history of recorded music, the lyrics grabbed me:Just tell me what you've got to say to me I've been waiting for so long to hear the truth It comes as no surprise at all you see So cut the crap and tell me that we're through Now I know your heart, I know your mind You don't even know you're bein' unkind So much for all your highbrow Marxist ways Just use me up and then you walk away Boy, you can't play me that way Well I guess what you say is true I could never be the right kind of girl for you CHORUS [C]: I could never be your woman I could never be your woman I could never be your woman I could never be your woman When I saw my best friend yesterday She said she never liked you from the start Well me, I wish that I could claim the same But you always knew you held my heart And you're such a charming, handsome man Now I think I finally understand Is it in your genes I don't know But I'll soon find out, that's for sure Why did you play me this way Well I guess what you say is true I could never be the right kind of girl for you [C] Well I guess what they say is true I could never spend my life with a man like you [C]
Then––completely by accident (more on this in a moment)––I stumbled across the Official White Town website, specifically the FAQ page. And what, pray tell, happened to be the first Q? You guessed it. See screencap at the top of this post for the A.
I could never have imagined a more complete, concrete response to a fairly random query which I've pondered on and off for nearly 20 years: What in the hell was this song about?! In a way, I guess I always knew the answer was something along the lines of "random/ambiguous/various perspectives," but the thoughtful response by Mr. White Town is still rewarding. It's a great song on multiple levels. A true hidden gem. And now I feel inspired to check out some of his other material.
So how did I stumble on that page without trying? Great Q. From time to time (read: all the time), I get bored, ADD or whathaveyou kicks in, and I can't be bothered to work on one of the 999 unfinished projects I should be completing or anything else, so I'll start something completely new. Whenever I get around to kicking EP Series 4 tires, the theme is gonna be... (and this is breaking news) ... CONCEPT EPs!
The first EP of Series 4 is gonna be called All Truth is White and the Green Room is Red. Here's the tracklist:
❶ Atari Marxists ❷ A Tokyo Jokester Broke My Heart, Sir ❸ How Timid is Your News? / The Gaijin Times ❹ Pop Rock Nazi Dropkicks (To the Dome, c. 2004) ❺ Move (One Letter Away from Love) ❻ A Horse Built Heaven ❼ Īe & Then Yes Some Other Day ❽ Vulnerability
That tracklist was created before anything else: the title, the cover (below), the actual songs... everything. This strategy happens a lot, ie. thinking up song titles for songs that don't exist. Anyway, I really liked the track titles and thought, "Shit, let me just make them real songs" (I was in one of them states of distraction I wrote about earlier). So I googled "Atari Marxists" looking for inspiration. At the top of Page 2 of the search results, was a link to the White Town FAQ (note how he mentions "marxist" in the first entry on "Your Woman").
Talk about killing two birds with one stone! I instantly knew the answer to a question that had bugged me for years + I had the content of Track 1 for this EP. (The word "White" in the title of the EP is also a nod to this discovery.)
Naturally, I used Google Translate and my iMac's Quicktime screen audio recorder to get a text-to-voice file of a robot Japanese lady speaking the "Your Woman" explainer FAQ bullet points in her native tongue (above). But hey, listen for yourself right here:
» "Atari Marxists" [MP3]
And here's the cover art:
Tentative release date: April 13th, 2037.
