Marianne Faithfull’s 10 Greatest Musical Moments
The musical career of Marianne Faithfull, who died today at 78, is as seasoned and diverse as her inimitable voice. Here are 10 highlights.
What makes a Marianne Faithfull song great is something an artist can’t buy or learn: It’s the sound of experience. Faithfull’s most haunting (and haunted) quality as an artist was the raspy world weariness in her voice and phrasing, the sense that this elegant woman — who passed away today at the age of 78 — had seen things, good and bad, and had the wisdom to show for it, even as an angelic 17-year-old girl singing “As Tears Go By.” That 1964 song, her first hit (written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards), was recorded when she was just 17, but its mood set the tone for the rest of her long and diverse career as a singer. Here are ten of Marrianne Faithfull’s finest musical moments.
“As Tears Go By” (1964)Already an “It Girl” at the height of the Swinging London era, Faithfull’s newly-found producer, Andrew Loog Oldham, famously wanted a song from his newest managerial charges, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, that reflected something untouchable and unattainable – an image of someone who sadly watches the world go by. As Faithfull said of the song in her 1995 autobiography, “It’s an extraordinary song for a 21 year-old to have written.” She was referring to Jagger’s age at the time, but the same holds true of her timeless delivery as a 17-year-old.
“The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” (1966)Recorded not long after her first encounters with Bob Dylan, this song from her second album, “Come My Way,” reflects her desire to be considered as a folk artist, and often split her label’s desire for pop hits with her own musical leanings. “North Country Maid” was one of Faithfull’s more pastoral, folkier discs, and with hit Brit producer Mike Leander and engineer Gus Dudgeon (before his days as Elton John’s primary producer), Faithfull took a clarion-clear approach toward English activist-songwriter Ewan MacColl’s love song, “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.” Faithfull’s high, sly vocals may have more in common with Peggy Seeger’s woodsy original, but the ornate track also contains a poignant, slow-motion soulfulness that made Roberta Flack’s version a hit several years later.
Popular on Variety“Dreamin’ My Dreams” (1976)This 1976 album “Dreamin’ My Dreams” – re-released in the US as “Faithless” with additional tracks in 1978 – is notable for several reasons. It’s where the huskiness in Faithfull’s singing voice begins to show its smoky throatiness. It’s where you can sense a genuine commitment to storylines and lyrics (her own on “Lady Madelaine”). And, by far, its fame stems from the phrase “Marianne Faithful country album” with its songs from Waylon Jennings, Jessi Colter and Allen Reynolds, the Nashville producer and songwriter behind this twangy, stringed title track.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ee52vNqnlI
“Broken English” / “Why D’Ya Do It” (1979)The entirety of Faithfull’s “Broken English” album of 1979 is a manic study of coming back from the hell of a serious heroin addiction, and it marks the beginning of the next phase of Faithfull’s career. With taut, electronic-based production from Mark Miller Mundy, the album finds Faithfull’s vision clear and her words vengeful. While the title track and her cover of John Lennon’s “Working Class Hero” are rough paeans to survival, “Why D’Ya Do It” – co-written by Faithful with British playwright-poet Heathcote Williams – is a harrowing, unforgettable tale of betrayal.
“Ballad of the Soldier’s Wife” (1985)If anyone was born to sing Kurt Weill and follow in the footsteps of his wife, Lotte Lenye, it was Faithfull. On the Hal Wilner-curated multi-artist album “Lost in the Stars: The Music of Kurt Weill,” Faithfull and razor-sharp British guitarist Chris Spedding approach the woe of a military man’s love for his bride and the precious trinkets he sent – from the bejeweled start of his victorious campaigns to the grave and her “widow’s veil” – with tart drama. By the song’s end, Faithfull has you feeling worse for her loss of furs and fine footwear than she does her dead husband.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Of2bofp8ND0
“Strange Weather” (1987)Produced again by Wilner, with an all-star crew of musicians ranging from arid jazz guitarist Bill Frisell to Band accordionist Garth Hudson, the morose match of Faithfull’s broken bassoon of a voice to the dark cabaret song-stylings of neo-Beat Gen composers Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan are as stunning as that match-up portends.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_U4XoLlrn8
“She” (1995)David Lynch’s musical brother Angelo Badalamenti produced the whole of Faithfull’s 1995 “A Secret Life” and gave the shimmering proceedings his trademark noirish symmetry. No busted romance-filled lyric of Faithfull’s, however, gets the tender, chilly orchestration and grand, tension-filled melody (composed by Badalamenti) that “She” has as it moves in crepuscular fashion to its finish.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWG2WIZR3oI
“Alabama Song” (1998)Faithfull’s aching way with Weill was so acclaimed from “Lost in the Stars” that by 1998, the she performed his “The Seven Deadly Sins” opera live at St. Anne’s Cathedral in Brooklyn, then recorded it with producer Malgorzata Kragora. The standout track is “Alabama Song,” a lusty song previously covered by the Doors and David Bowie, yet Faithfull’s search for the “next whisky bar” is far more believable.
“The Stations” (2011)The ‘00s saw Faithfull coming full circle by collaborating on a series of albums with a number of young musicians she’d influenced — notably PJ Harvey, Beck, Nick Cave, Blur, Billy Corgan, and here, the Afghan Whigs’ Greg Dulli and Screaming Trees/ Queens of the Stoneage singer Mark Lanegan. The pair pennedthis bleakly ethereal gothic ballad for Faithfull, one where the grace of God and the men who left her – fathers, lovers – collide in a hush of gauzy guitars and rumbling drums.
“She Walks in Beauty” (2021)The last studio album that Faithfull would record featured the most rousing of British authors and poets in Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Wordworth and John Keats, the grey cloud production of Bad Seed violinist Warren Ellis and accompanists such as Cave and Brian Eno. Faithfull haughtily sing-speaks Lord Byron’s florid iambic tetrameter in dedication to radiance in 1814, as if she herself was the subject of the poet’s devotion.
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