Spoiler Spice

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Since the column's actually called "Poptimist", I feel I can pimp it here.

This month's column was inspired by an episode of top radio show Freaky Trigger And The Lollards Of Pop, incidentally.

Comments

[martinskidmore.livejournal.com]

Odd example of plot-style spoiler effects in music, for me: Roy Orbison's titanic 'Running Scared', where he fears what will happen if her great previous love reappears - and then in the last verse he does, and we build up to the last line, the denouement, and he slows it down and goes for the big operatic finish on "My heart was breaking, which one would it be? / You turned around and walked... away..." and I won't tell you whether it finishes "from me" or "with me". It's one of my favourite moments in music, and one that still feels tense, having heard it hundreds of times, as if this time he might sing the other option. I always wished there were a vinyl version with that gimmicky double-spiral trick, so there could be two versions and you would never know which one was playing until the penultimate word.

(I have a live version where he does the big ending and gets rapturous applause, so he does the last couplet again, and again - six times in total, going bigger and more OTT each time.)