I’ve meaning to raise this for a while – in fact, ever since World War II forces sweetheart Vera Lynn topped the charts again a year or so back.
I met her once, when I was a child, and her WWII heyday seemed impossibly distant but was, in fact, just 30 years past – about the same time that now stands between us and, say, Adam Ant. To those of us of a certain age, these sort of comparisons seem scary.
But I’ve never really heard Vera Lynn’s music, apart from ‘We’ll Meet Again’.
Of course, it’s music from another time and we can’t really hope to understand what it really meant to the people who loved it first time round.
And yet… Listen to this song:”When I grow too old to dream, your love will live in my heart.” I’m not convinced that Vera Lynn doesn’t achieve everything in these three minutes that our old pal Morrissey has spent 25 years trying to do. (Apart from alienating a loyal fan-base by playing regular two-minute concerts etc etc.)
The sense of hope mixed with impending doom and long-term, inevitable poignancy is, well, heartbreaking, no?
The song – lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein – was written in 1934, so it’s not, at least in its original intention, about the War and the potential death or long-term departure of one’s lover. It’s probably the whole context of the Vera Lynn version that really makes the song.
I can certainly hear a Morrissey cover of this; or hear this version being used as the scratchy as-if-on-the-radio play-in for one of his piano ballads (an aspect of his solo productions that I have never seen discussed anywhere.)
Have I strayed too far from my brief here? I don’t think so. I mean: listen to it.
Ridicule, apparently, is nothing to scared of because Adam Ant’s making (made?) a comeback. Don’t know where, don’t know when. I’ll have to look it up.