Yr Pop Questions Answered PART ONE

[mostlyconnect.livejournal.com]

I had an idea of doing a series of these? Let me know if it is unwelcome.

[Poll #907692]

(EDIT: I cannot edit the poll now but I meant the return train, w/ original boyfriend? Also plz to submit any other PRESSING POP QUESTIONS you can think of, LJ paid account has gone to my head)

Comments

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

i don't know this song but this idea is a brilliant one!

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Seconded. Other questions:

If you were in Girls Aloud, which would you prefer to receive?
- negligé
- a squeeze a day (presumably this is a permanent arrangement)

What time is it?
- 3AM, eternally
- Midnight, but only if you are in (an) oasis
- Unsure, but Flavor Flav will undoubtedly know

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

11.30 and the club is jumpin' jumpin', surely.

[mcarratala.livejournal.com]

I like the idea of the series, but I am dubious about this question. As far as I understand the song, she's in a long-distance relationship, fallen for another bloke, but her original boyfriend is arriving by train from KC because she hasn't had the bottle to tell him she's moved on. So why would she be getting on the train, either way?

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

It's quite a good way of avoiding the boyfriend though! Last place he'd think to look.

[mostlyconnect.livejournal.com]

Oh! I was talking about the song with cis, we both felt that our gut feeling was that she'd end up heading back to Kansas City on the return train, that she didn't mean to and didn't want to, but that she'd get talked into it somehow, that that was what the song hinted?

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Meanwhile, how about Overload? Do the Sugababes get on the train, even they don't know its destination? OK, they know its metaphorical destination. Maybe the whole train is a metaphor! Maybe only Siobhan got on.

Maybe only Siobhan didn't.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

What I don't like about "Overload" (a minor quibble really) - the "tension is incredible" bit, which actually diffuses the tension. The tension in "Kansas City" (and most Shangri-Las songs) doesn't diffuse.

[mostlyconnect.livejournal.com]

Wait hang on, surely it is the original boyfriend coming from KC to demand a resolution?

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

Here are the lyrics (per the Neko Case cover, but I assume she didn't change them):
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/nekocase/trainfromkansascity.html

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

i've only read the lyrics but surely the story is that she's living with her boyfriend, receives a letter from an ex-beau who’s moved away saying he’s visiting town (from Kansas City, presumably to return) – she doesn’t reply BUT she is going to meet him, ostensibly to show him her ring but it’s clear that she’s considering going off with him. So the options are: a) get on train to Kansas City and run away with ex-beau, b) be a Good Woman, meet him, show him the ring, maybe sob a bit, return home to fiance and always dream of what might have been. I wish she would do a) but I think in the context of the song she will do b) – but obv I cannot tick because I haven’t heard it sung! And that might make all the difference.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

The implication seems to be that he's not quite an ex, or at least that there's some reason he'd expect her not to have moved on.

Sung by the Shangri-La's the emphasis isn't really on either of the men she's choosing, it's about the existential horror of events catching up to you.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

It strikes me as being a kind of war widow type situation: she's assumed that for whatever reason (death?) that Beau 1 won't be coming back, that she is free to move on, and has done so, and that this letter from the past has come out of the blue.

[mcarratala.livejournal.com]

I don't know – if I'd come all the way from Kansas City (to wherever – Chicago or St Louis are the most obvious places to catch a train to, although you can go all the way to LA, still), I think I'd want to stop and see the sights. I may not have the romantic urgency of the characters in the song.
The position of the old boyfriend is the flip of the guy in the Box Tops' The Letter, whose girlfriend has decided she likes him after all, and he's so excited he's getting a plane because he ain't got time to catch a fast train.

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

Ha, now you've got me thinking of Frank Sinatra's Watertown LP, the climax of which is another great emotional drama involving a train.

Only this time it's a guy whose wife has left him (and their kids) and he's somehow got it into his head that she's coming back to him, and he even goes down to the station to meet the train she's supposedly arriving on. Only she never arrives: it was all a fantasy on his part.

[mcarratala.livejournal.com]

Other point about the song, of course, is that is addressed to the new boyfriend: do we trust Ms SL's account of what has been happening with the old chap?

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I don't think I believe her when she says she never answered his letter.

I'm going to d/l this song asap when I get home.

[martinskidmore.livejournal.com]

The song is unequivocal about this - "I'll be back in the time it takes to break a heart." You can make up stories that she is lying, or lying to herself, but I can't detect the slightest shred of support for that in this song, which I love enormously.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Have listened to it now and I agree with this position. That line is brilliant.

How does it feel to treat me like you do? good/bad/discuss

[getbacknow.livejournal.com]

What do we need the least?:

-education
-thought control
-dark sarcasm in the classroom