SESSION 23: A SONG
JAMES BLUNT: YOU´RE BEAUTIFUL
The song:
The lyrics:
Song meaning:
James Blunt explained that the song was written about his ex-girlfriend. He saw her in the London subway after they broke up and she was seeing someone else. She's beautiful!! They exchange stares (looks) but do not speak. Apparently, she dumped him (left him) because he had a drug problem.
In the unedited lyrics he says, "she could tell by my face that I was fucking high!!!" (under the effects of drugs). So he says he’s seen her with another man but he won't lose no sleep on that because he's got a plan... Right he's just going to commit suicide (brave plan, uh?). So in the video he’s freezing standing in the snow by a cliff, where he takes off all his clothes, takes everything out of his pockets (including his soldier identification plate, as a goodbye letter), and jumps off the cliff. He’d rather die than live without that girl anymore.
Some expressions explained:
Notice the pronunciation of the intervocalic T in the word "beautiful" and how the vowel in the syllable "-ful" /fəl/ is pronounced with a schwa, not with the vowel in COOK. The same pronunciation of the T is found in other intervocalic T's as in: "of thaT I'm sure", "I've goT a plan", "thaT I was", "when she thoughT up", "buT it's time".
brilliant: fantastic (also "brill" in colloquial youngster's British English)
"My love is pure"- Notice the pronunciation of the word "love" and "pure"
subway: an underground passage under a street or a road. In America it's the word for the underground or tube. For some strange reason, in this song, the British singer uses "subway" with the American meaning because he says "on the subway" (on + public transport: on the bus, on the ship, on the plane, on the train, on the subway), so he means that they met inside the train of the underground.
I won't lose no sleep: a double negative is not correct in standard English, but we sometimes hear it in colloquial English (this sentence should be "I won't lose any sleep on that" or "I will lose no sleep on that") : I'm not worried about it
she caught my eye: I saw her and she got my attention, her vision made me interested.
to think up: to plan
Remember that in BrE the R is only pronounced before vowels. Notice there's no /r/ in words like: pure, sure, another, you're, never. But in "from" and "her again" it is pronounced because it is followed by a vowel
It could not be other way, a very beautiful song.
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