Goddess

Lyric

She was a telephone girl,

She was a goddess to a certain mind,

She couldn’t claim to be Minerva,

But be sure that she was sweet and kind.

And I know beauty lives below.

Not even William Friedkin make a head turn quite like her,

Seemed the kind of girl who’d never give a second glance.

 

I took a call up from Olympus with my tea,

So she could have her say.

She didn’t need to be Diana,

For a while I was a willing prey.

Beauty pushed me to a doubtful fall.

And Venus would’ve blushed at the lengths that she went to,

And her Myrtle was as sweet as a winter wine.

 

And If I could take the throne of Saturn and return,

Bacchus would be my sober wingman as I burned.

I’d be good, I’d be bad, I’d be better than I had,

Wouldn’t care, wouldn’t fuss, it’s OK to be in lust

Sometimes.

 

And now Moneta doesn’t help me,

As I flounder for a memory.

I don’t recall the day we parted,

Just the fact that we were chalk and brie.

Beauty is a distracting flaw.

If Psyche sees the wonder that is only found within,

Why’d I find it hard to worship perfect skin?

 

And if she taught me one good lesson,

(I’m looking at you while the cat’s away)

Beauty makes men do ugly things.

Story

My hero – certainly from a lyrics perspective – is Andy Partridge of XTC (and his music is brilliant too, don’t get me wrong). He is the best writer of lyrics of anyone, from any time, in any genre of music. In my humble opinion of course! Goddess is where I think and hope I get close to his brilliance. I remember him reading about Easter Theatre and how he was finally happy he’d got as good as McCartney in terms of tune and that stuck with me.

I was so excited by this song  when I first did it, the drums were a kind of happy accident in that I wasn’t sure what to play and ended up with all these syncopated parts that sounded great on the demo but were really out of time in parts. There was a really weird thing that the tighter I played it the more it lost something. 

Rather like Cecilia, this was originally written with the assumption someone else would sing it, so I took some singing lessons to enable me to consistently hit the higher notes.

I’m not sure where the idea for using all the different Goddesses came from, but some of the references are way more risqué than people realise! I did learn in a vineyard in Alsace a few years ago that Bacchus was the god of wine and was absolutely delighted when I came up with the idea of him being the sober wingman.