“It’s refreshing to hear the voice of the...

15th April 2012

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“It’s refreshing to hear the voice of the transgressor so clearly, but even more pleasing than this is the use of language in the song, seen in the use of the repeated phrase ‘some other girl’. After 17 weeks Kate surely knows the girlfriend’s name, but she’s deliberately not saying it - depersonalising the other, disassociating in order to commit crimes, to incite infidelity.

And you don’t have to have been trapped in a love triangle to identify with this linguistic tic - this is what people do with any love rival. We use language and tone of voice to invoke dismissal, disdain, and for self-protection. Try saying the name of someone you suspect your partner fancies. It’s hard to keep your voice neutral. There’s bound to be an inflection. Our voices carve quotation marks around the names of our rivals, as though we can’t quite bear to actually allow those names a space in our minds.

Jane, you say. Claire. Abigail. Steve. Or you replace the name altogether, as seen here. You may well know that the girl before you, the one who left fingerprints all over his heart, the one who’s fucking up your life even though she doesn’t know you exist, is called ‘Jane’, but ‘stupid Armenian ex-girlfriend’ just seems to trip off the tongue so much more comfortably.”

— Re-reading the always amazing Miss Amp’s piece on Kate Jackson’s “character” in Long Blondes songs. Join me.

Another Way To Breathe