Shake your hair girl with your ponytail
Tags: Roxy Music, Love Letters, Love, Music, Lyrics

Dearest darlings,

A song with three acts: an incredibly gorgeous opus to love, youth and beauty.

Strap yourselves in: we are going for a musical ride with Roxy Music and their track “If There Is Something” from their first eponymously-titled album “Roxy Music”. You know, the one with the girl on.

Okay, they all had girls on the cover.

The track starts immediately with a honky-tonk country guitar and a western twangy sound, done with all the irony of a boy born in County Durham with an art school hair-flick and his mates having a bit of a laugh.

If there is something that I might find

Look around corners

Try to find peace of mind I say

Where would you go if you were me

Try to keep a straight course not easy

Immediately you imagine you’re in a spit and sawdust bar, probably holding a beer and eyeing up a cowboy. Well, I am. He’s seeking approval, validation even for his wayward behaviour, wanting someone to tell him he’s okay. But he doesn’t care, almost smirking at us and laughing out the final word “E-e-easy”, justifying himself to us. His words are weak: “might”, “try” which is repeated…he’s not really putting his back into this is he?

Somebody special looking at me

A certain reaction we find

What should it try to be I mean

If there are many Meaning the same

Being specific just a game

Oh now — now we cut to the chase. He’s worried what she thinks. And he can’t tell if she likes him or not, or how he should behave. Bryan Ferry, hung up on a girl? So he does care — and this time urges “ Being specific” but then “just a game” which seem to contradict each other. He’s accusing her of playing a game, or is he admitting he is? To trick her into thinking that he doesn’t care either way? Ahah. No wonder he’s fake laughing the last line out. He’s scared.

The country ditty squawks its way out into the second part of the track, with a real change of pace and sentiment, sax and guitar screeching to a crescendo with the famous three violin track behind:

I would do anything for you

I would climb mountains

I would swim all the oceans blue

I would walk a thousand miles

Reveal my secrets

More than enough for me to share

I would put roses round our door

Sit in the garden

Growing potatoes by the score

His tone has completely changed, now there is no “try” and he’s “would” ing. On the final word of each line, he’s almost ululating his basest desires. Suddenly this is serious, he’s smitten and you can hear the desperation in his voice as all these promises come tumbling out. He’s practically offering to do a triathlon for her. Or, settle down with her in some country idyll with roses growing potatoes. Bryan Ferry “sit in the garden”? Surely he’s too cool? Even reads a bit desperate now — in “Love Island” speak this would give me “the ick”. We are in no doubt that he is almost driven mad by this, and exposes his vulnerability to“ reveal my secrets more than enough for me to share”. He wants her badly. So much so he’ll settle into domesticity — the ultimate surrender and commitment. And potatoes — the most mundane and simple of produce to focus on. I just hope he doesn’t eat too many himself.

We’re still reeling as the track winds on, slowing, whirling with that dirty sax as we catch our breath, the maelstrom ending with just the piano as a backing and join him much later along the line:

Shake your hair girl with your ponytail

Takes me right back (when you were young)

Throw your precious gifts into the air

Watch them fall down (when you were young)

Lift up your feet and put them on the ground

You used to walk upon (when you were young)

That first line is an absolute belter: a mix of joy and complete abandon. He’s practically screaming it to us. Desire and control, obsession and voyeurism. Like Scottie in Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” who says to Madeleine/Judy in that famous transformation scene about her hair

“It should be back from your face and pinned at the neck, I told you that — I told YOU that”.

A man driven mad by his image of a woman just as he wants it. Is Bryan the same? The line is so visual and visceral — like the secretary who unpins her hair and removes her glasses. Don’t we all want to be told to “shake our hair”, not pin it back.*

I toyed with the idea of leaving no comment about “precious gifts” — Urban dictionary tells me it means “virginity” which could explain it.

The final verse becomes almost like a hymn to her, an adoration:

Lift up your feet and put them on the ground

The hills were higher (when we were young)

Lift up your feet and put them on the ground

The trees were taller (when you were young)

Lift up your feet and put them on the ground

The grass was greener (when you were young)

Lift up your feet and put them on the ground

You used to walk upon (when you were young)

He’s in control finally, giving her instructions. He wants to relive his youth, their youth, when everything was easier. Hills, trees, grass — a visual, natural yearning for the youth/green when things were simpler. Make her dance for him, like they used to. This is repeated to fade and his voices breaks with passion and delight. “Lift up” becoming just one word, one cried exaltation at the end. This verse is the final act in his love opera.

Beautiful. I’m exhausted and exhilarated — just how you’re meant to feel. Like you’ve fallen in love. Or just had an orgasm.