I mean, have you seen the makeup looks in Liverpool? No, thank you. Neither of us do things that are portable-I can’t just uproot and go there. Because both of us are rooted in our cities. It’s like a candy-coating sprinkled with unicorn dust, but in reality it just doesn’t work. And just logistically, it’s not feasible long-term. I love him profusely, but he’s on the other side of the world. I was enamored with the fact you both said really nice things about each other even though you’re each other’s exes. And I was thinking to myself, oh dear god Valerie, what does this song sound like? And they picked it up as a single.” And he wouldn’t tell me any details.
It was like, “I kind of wrote a song about you. I remember when he told me about the song. We didn’t have a bad falling-out or anything.
It’s bizarre and crazy-and yeah, I love him to death. I always say it’s like we’ve got this really weird alien baby because we’ve got this connection until the day that we die. So this musician wrote a whole song about you that actually saw the light of day. On a breezy spring afternoon in, the Valerie-her hair still ginger as hell-sat down with me to spill everything about how a fateful fling became the sweet, enigmatic, ubiquitous track that it is today. McCabe tells me he never would have dreamed it’d blow up like this, but he’s thankful that it did, regardless of the avenue it took. Winehouse wasn’t in it-by that time, she was battling pretty severe heroin addiction. That very year, people remixed it, and a music video dropped. Mark Ronson produced the 2007 cover with Winehouse on vocals, and it surged past the original to number 2 on the UK charts. And that’s how the whole “why don’t you come on over, Valerie?” thing happened. McCabe corroborated everything Star told me about the song’s narrative: Star allegedly caught a charge after several driving offenses, nearly went to jail (hence the line Winehouse most notably sings as “Do you need a good lawyer-er-er?”), and couldn’t move to the UK to be with him. “She was in the States and I was home and it was kind of like a postcard,” he said wistfully. McCabe wrote the song about Star in 2006, for the Zutons’ second studio album, Tired of Hanging Around, in the back of a cab in about five minutes. “Oh yeah, that’s her,” he confirmed, in a thick Liverpool accent.
It is rare that I like a remake more than the original-but she didn't just stand up and sing it, she owns it and now, I believe its hers.So we got a hold of McCabe and interrogated him.
She's just come back to her old town and she wants her life to go back to how it was, which will only be the same when Valerie re-appears and stops playin like she has this complicated life and another man to find and "fix it". The passion and desperation in her voice when singing this song is so convincing and palpable that you can feel her heart bleeding when she pushes out, "come on over, stop making a fool out of me." and I love to think that she would feel like a fool if valerie doesn't come over.because if she doesn't she's been a fool to be in this kind of pain and torture for so long while they have been apart. This is a woman who is singing about the yearning and need of her old lover (who just happens to be another woman, think crimson and clover sung by joan jett and the blackhearts). General CommentZutons cover-yes, yes, we know, but the more important point is what happens to the song and to the audience when Amy W. Hope you found the right man who fixed it for youĬhanged the color of your hair, are you busy? I'm sorry, Charlie Murphy, I was having too much funĪnd I think of all the things, what you're doing