From Robyn on Patreon in 2023
Tanya Donelly has written some enchanted songs, especially on the debut Belly album. The seem to be fuelled by dark joy, the exhilaration of a spooked child running through a nightmare. I was musing on them when this one came to me, as I was sitting at a table in my mother’s house in the autumn of 1993. I had tuned the top and bottom strings of the guitar down to D, which gave it a healthy drone. I wasn’t thinking of Tanya or my mother specifically, although their birthdays are just one day apart. The central character in this song isn’t a hybrid of people I know - they’re someone I’ll never meet or understand. Or maybe I’ve lived with them and it’s just escaped my memory.

Evil people don’t - to me - look very cheerful. The great malefactors tend to have an expression in their eyes as if one part of them knows and judges the rest: on some level they’re condemning themselves, which makes them act worse, I believe. But this character, she can still do wrong and feel right. She’s calm and confident - amused by her own transgressions. This makes her eminently qualified for leadership. Other villains admire her, because they always get flustered and angry when they’re caught out. She, however, cannot be shamed by morality: the law bends to accommodate her as she moves from scene to scene. She has no need to sugar-coat herself, and she carries no flowers. In a movie, she could well as be played by Jeanne Moreau or Bette Davis. If I had the gift for writing fiction I’d put her in a novel, but I don’t have the patience so here she is in a song…