A love song like the way its meant to be

My 9-year-old son has just got his first iPod, and while I am really really resisting the urge to load it with Joy Division and some of my darker favourites, I have put him onto the Killers. Now he loves them and, as a result, they are playing all the time, and, as a further and related result, I have somewhat belatedly accepted that they are (in moderation) quite a wonderful pop band, sort of a Duran Duran for now, with real songs and real instruments and real talent, working on their own terms in a pop melieu (did I really just type those words!) and doing it rather well indeed. Every album has a few duds, but those that hit the mark do so quite impressively (for example, 'This river is wild', 'All these things that I've done', 'My list', 'I can't stay', 'Tranquilize', 'Spaceman', 'Mr brightside', 'Bones', 'Read my mind').



Today, I just want to focus on one song of theirs I was listening to (from the compilation 'Sawdust'), and it is actually a cover version, of Dire Straits' 'Romeo and Juliet', which can be seen here:

While this cover version is very respectable, this is quite simply a wonderful song in its original form. For me, Dire Straits represent something quite old and usually dull. with prolonged guitar solos and bandana-wearing band members, but this song stands out as something quite uniquely romantic and yearning, and the chorus is for me one of the most romantic ever written. The version on the live album 'Alchemy' is my favourite (hear it here), and the version below is not quite as good, but captures the song well.

As a final note on the song (no pun intended), the Indigo Girls did a nice version of it on 'Rites of passage' (resisting, presumably, the temptation to rename it 'Juliet and Juliet'), and I found the following solo version (by Amy Ray) of it on Youtube below.

This, in all its incarnations, genuinely is a love song, like the way it's meant to be.