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Topic: Crime of Passion meaning, What is it about?< Next Oldest | Next Newest >
Tieò_mesaèného_svitu Offline




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Posted: Aug. 09 2002, 15:12

What is Crime of Passion about? I don't understand the lyrics very well. I have read an interview with Barry Palmer recently. He said it was about Mike's cousin who had died of muscular dystrophy at age of 19. But it seems to me to be about murder. Although there was hope('But she would not give up the fight for a long time' ), her boyfriend (or somebody else) did kill her because he loved her and he couldn't bear her suffering so he commited 'crime of passion'. He seems to me to be waiting for her death ('he stood to see if he could catch her breathing' ). Possibly I am wrong.
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Korgscrew Offline




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Posted: Aug. 09 2002, 19:21

I would imagine that what Barry Palmer said is about as close as you're going to get to knowing what the song's intended meaning was. Songs can mean more than one thing even to the writer, and sometimes the meaning is clearer than at others...

I believe that the person with the dying girl is not so much waiting for her death as trying to spend those precious last moments together with her - he's been holding her hand all night ("he took her hand through every midnight hour"). I think that he's trying to catch her breathing in the faint hope that she might be still alive, despite the fact that he knows she's dead (and it's not an entirely expected death either - she's been "[taken] away with no warning").

This brings us to the title, though, and the line in the chorus "taken away in a crime of passion". The story I've detailed above, and the one given by Barry Palmer, involves no crime as such. Indeed, the event seems all rather inevitable ("we couldn't have changed it with second sight"). It could be said that it seems like some kind of crime that a person should die so young (and indeed, that would be my favoured explanation of the crime aspect of the song...), but a crime of passion is usually one committed out of extreme passionate feelings...
Perhaps he's thinking it's like a crime of compassion, that her death was an end to all the suffering.

Barry Palmer said himself, though, that Mike didn't want the meaning to be clear - he likes hiding things in songs and making them more mysterious. Many of his songs are like this - they seem to tell some kind of story, until you start to look at the details and see that they don't actually add up to anything in particular (Moonlight Shadow would be one, The Time Has Come would be another). It's more like a song based around a general mood than a particular series of events. In the end, they mean what you want them to mean...
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Ugo Offline




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Posted: Aug. 19 2002, 17:34

A friend of mine, who's a university researcher in English history, told me the following story:

"Once upon a time there was an Italo-English 19-year-old girl named Elizabeth Jane; she was married with a Portuguese man, but, in spite of her marriage, she kept her habit of living a reckless life, to put it that way. Her husband had lots of patience, but one time, in 1852, he lost it all and he challenged the last one of a long series of 'friends' to duel with him. The beautiful lady happened to find herself on the place where the thing was taking place and, oddly, she threw herself between the two men to avod that her lover killed her husband... but of course her end was not what she expected. :) Her husband, love-crazied as always, lived for the next three years continuously obsessed by her ghost, which was usually summoned from the bottom of a liqueur bottle, and then killed himself."

Don't you think that this sounds very like some of the lyrics to CoP? ;)


--------------
Ugo C. - a devoted Amarokian
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a_r_schulz Offline




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Posted: Sep. 20 2002, 06:24

BTW: the complete Barry Palmer interview is at http://www.barrypalmer.com/interview_9_1997.htm
Andreas
P.S.: nice site, btw. Trivia question : which 70s teenie band featured Barry Palmer as singer ?
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Tieò_mesaèného_svitu Offline




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Posted: Oct. 05 2002, 13:39

Thank you for replies.
Very interesting story, Ugo. It seems to me to be more probable. There are too many accidents.
a_r_schulz, do you ask me? It was Triumvirat, I think.
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