Nick Lowe – Faithless Lover
Guest post by Michael J Roberts,
Author of “33 Great Songs 33 Great Songwriters”
Nick Lowe – Faithless Lover
Nick Lowe was a product of the ‘pub rock’ scene of the early 1970’s in London, honing his skills with his band Brinsley Schwarz. Lowe’s gift with melody and inventive lyrics saw him rise to minor pop stardom with the wonderful Cruel To Be Kind in 1979. Lowe settled in to a period of great and underappreciated albums and continued to produce friends like Elvis Costello, who had a hit with Nick’s What’s So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding. Lowe married into Johnny Cash’s family and had his Elvis hit covered on the soundtrack of The Bodyguard, which went on to sell in excess of 45 million units.
Musically speaking…..
The song opens with a tremolo heavy electric guitar; before it’s joined by the sparest of piano’s played by the incomparable Geraint Watkins. The pattern is a simple three chord turnaround, Bm to Em to F#7 to Bm. The texture is a model of restraint as Nick mournfully intones, “Faithless lover, heartless thing for you I’ll swing, and for no other”, it’s an arresting and memorable opening gambit and the sympathetic and languid production lets the song breathe. Nick breaks up the mood with an instrumental bridging section involving the same chords but introducing drums (including the pesky snare) with descending bass notes added and a softly distorted lead. The song is understated in its tone and economic in its structure, the 2 minute 45 second running time harkening back to an earlier era when pop songs were never more than three minutes long.
This is an excerpt from my 33 Great Songs 33 Great Songwriters book available everywhere eBooks are sold.
