This is Chords & Conflict: Exploring Song Drama, where I discuss songs I like that have drama triangle angles in them.
If I’m picking songs apart, I’m doing that because I like the particular song. The song will definitely be on my playlist, which means I’m listening to it which is why my mind is begging me to write about it. I won’t dissect songs I hate and never hear.
This edition is about the song, “Winchester Cathedral” by The New Vaudeville Band.
According to Genius.com, these are some of the lyrics:
Winchester Cathedral, you're bringing me down. You stood and you watched as my baby left town. You could have done something. But you didn't try. You didn't do nothing. You let her walk by.
Now everyone knows just how much I needed that girl/gal. She wouldn't have gone far away, if only you'd started ringing your bell.
The lyrics are humorous because the singer is suggesting that if an inanimate object (the church) started ringing its bells, then the girl wouldn’t have left him. In this case, he is playing the “victim,” and is lamenting that the church was his “persecutor” since it let his gal walk away from him. If the church had rung the bells and stopped the girl, he could be singing about it being his “savior” instead.
You could also say that the girl leaving him was a sort of “persecutor” because everyone, including her, knew that he supposedly “needed” her. I sort of touched on this in the last Chords & Conflict. I wrote, “He should be able to part without a guilty conscience. What if he dies and leaves her alone? A lot of people idolize their mates in the sense that they think if their mate died, they wouldn’t be able to live.” A lot of music has that theme of being unable to live without another person, and how they’re lost without someone now. So if the girl knew he needed her and left, wouldn’t he consider her a “persecutor” doing him wrong?
Buildings Or Institutions As Saviors
When I hear this song and envision a guy complaining that a building didn’t save him, I think about people who complain that their government is not doing enough.
In this case, I think everyone would see how silly this is. If the woman is breaking up with him and leaving town, the responsibility was clearly his and hers for how the relationship went. You wouldn’t normally think that a building would be responsible for a woman breaking up with you. And, was he right that if the bells started ringing she wouldn’t leave him? That seems highly unlikely too. He’s just complaining because he doesn’t want to take responsibility for how things turned out.
Is it that different for people who look for the government to save them and others? Do they really think that if the government forced everyone to get a COVID vaccine we could have had less COVID? Or were they just complaining because they didn’t want to take personal responsibility for their own health (such as decreasing chances with changes in diet and exercise)? Is it any less silly to complain that the government is not doing enough to “save” people?
I think it’s a cute, funny song with a unique feel. Have you heard it before? What do you think of my interpretation? Would you see things a different way?
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Winchester Cathedral - Chords & Conflict