Correct me if I’m wrong but I don’t think this week’s Song Lyric Sunday theme is the hardest challenge Jim has ever set us. As his post International Day of the Girl Child says, we are invited to play a song that mentions girls, for a very good reason. The hardest part about this was getting the field of many down to a manageable few, and in the end I have settled on two tunes to play you. I have played both before as Tuesday Tunes, and one of them before for SLS, but they are both favourites of mine so they’re getting another airing.

I’m opening with my favourite song by a guy whose music I have loved ever since his first record. Sadly he passed last December but he was awarded one of my tribute posts, and of course this song was a part of that:

That was Chris Rea with Stainsby Girls, and here are the lyrics, from genius.com.

The song was on Chris’ seventh album, Shamrock Diaries, which came out in May 1985, and as with most of his recordings it was written by him. This was the lead single from the album, which had been pre-released in March of that year. Shamrock Diaries did well across Europe: it reached #15 in the UK, going Silver for 60,000 sales, and #12 in Germany where it sold 250,000 and went Gold, and reached the top 20 in several other countries including Ireland, Czechoslovakia (as it was then), and Sweden, but did best by spending forty two weeks in the Dutch charts, peaking at #3. It was also successful in Australia. Stainsby Girls was a tribute to his wife, Joan, a former student of the Stainsby Secondary Modern School in Middlesbrough: they met in 1968 and were married right up until he died. The single reached #26 in the UK and #10 in Ireland, and for some reason it brings back a weird memory of listening to the album on my Walkman while I was gardening, and of having to keep taking off my muddy gloves to rewind the tape so I could hear this one again. Odd how music does that, isn’t it? And I knew a few girls like that in my youth, too!

My second choice for today is another that I have always liked:

Counting Crows with their brilliant song and video American Girls, for which the lyrics are, of course, available at genius.com.

I played this song for SLS just a couple of months ago, but it is so good that I’m going with it again. American Girls was a track on Counting Crows’ fourth album, Hard Candy, which came out in July 2002 and reached #5 in the US and #9 here in the UK: it is one of my favourites of theirs. This song was released as a single ahead of the album, in May 2002, and reached #33 in the UK, but didn’t make the main US chart, though it did feature in two of their airplay listings: #1 on the Adult Alternative chart and #24 on the Adult Pop one. If you listen really hard you may just be able to make out Sheryl Crow in the backing vocals, as the video credit promises. As is usual for the band Adam Duritz wrote this, and I love the song and the video, which is always a real tonic to watch.

That’s my twofer today, and I hope you enjoyed them. My thanks as always to Jim for running the SLS show and making it such an enjoyable place to be.

I’ll see you again for another set of Tuesday Tunes, with another new theme this week. Until then, take care 🤗