I posted this on the SMO Facebook visitor wall, so I may as well add it here too.
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Jim…I just need to write again about Speed Your Love To Me on the Acoustic vinyl.It is the most beautiful, tender, sweet, gorgeous thing I’ve heard since…well, Spirited Away, probably.
And like Spirited Away, I just keep having to play it over and over (and over…and over). It is almost too beautiful in fact, it kind of puts me beyond tears. I’m sure that doesn’t make any sense. The first few times I listened to it, I cried…because it is just so frigging beautiful…but it is now just…astonishment…disbelief…that something can be this beautiful. That’s the feeling.
I take myself back to April and hearing the snippet from Zermatt and hear myself being dismissive, thinking “No. that doesn’t work”…and I just feel peeved at myself for being so dismissive.
I really did think (for me personally, anyway) Glittering Prize was the best rework of the songs on the Acoustic CD…and then I get the vinyl and play Speed Your Love and Light Travels, and that conclusion gets TOTALLY blown out the water. MASSIVELY! Don’t get me wrong, I still ADORE Glittering Prize. It’s the antithesis, in a way, to Speed Your Love. It’s tender too, but upbeat, sunny…GLITTERING, as the title very aptly suggests.
But with Speed Your Love, what was once rocking and crashing and anthemic – a youthful, urgent, passionate celebration of young love has now been turned on its head into this soft, yearning, fragile…just. I can’t put it into words! It’s just beautiful. I’m sorry to go on…but it is just the best thing. It really is.
The song was in my Top 50. It’s on my 50 list art piece…but instead of being (if I was really THAT methodical and listed them in a strict 1 to 50 order…I couldn’t do that!) probably around the 20s somewhere…it has been CATAPULTED waaaay up! It’s definitely Top 10 now! Maybe in that hallowed Top 5! (Could it slot in somewhere just below my solid Top 3? YES!)
Again…thank you for such a gift. To Charlie, Gordy…both of them if they worked on the rearrangement together. It’s beautiful.
(Top 50 deliberately blurred for hightlight purposes.
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And added to the comments:
Oh, forgot to mention. Each time I watch the Hackney gig…you saying “Beat THAT, Sarah Brown! Ha!” makes me giggle every time. Such bravado!!! Lol. But, rightly so! (Sarah DOES sing with you on it, you do realise that, don’t you, Jim? Lol)
Thank you, Sir. It always means so much when you reply. And…I think we can safely say that “like” is an understatement! Lol
