"The Blower's Daughter" by Damien Rice

This is kind of a sad song but I wanted to make sure I included it this month because it's really beautiful. "The Blower's Daughter" was featured in the film "Closer," which is one of those grown-up movies that I'm not sure I'm deep enough to understand. I'm not even sure if it was a good movie, but it has both Julia Roberts and Natalie Portman, so my assumption is that it probably was. The movie was about two couples whose stories interweaved as they cheated on each other with their counterpart from the other couple. Even after reading the plot summary, I'm not sure I quite get it.

Jude Law plays Dan, who meets Alice (Portman) in the beginning. After they've been dating a couple years, he writes a book about her. Then he meets Anna (Roberts) when he is getting his picture taken for the book cover. Dan tries to convince Anna to have an affair with him, which Alice overhears while she's in the bathroom. Anna refuses and in an act of revenge, he tricks a random sex addict from an online chat room, Larry (Clive Owen), to meet Anna. To Dan's dismay, Larry and Anna actually do start a relationship after meeting. Then, Dan and Anna finally have an affair before leaving Alice and Larry to be with each other. Paths criss-cross and you're meant to think that Dan and Anna are supposed to be together, as are Alice and Larry. However, in the end, Anna and Larry reunite and - although back together briefly at the end - Alice and Dan ultimately break up.

Now, Dan is clearly a manipulative sociopath - the audience realizes this from the very beginning. But the twist in the story is that Alice was lying about her name the entire time she was in a relationship with Dan. The only person in the story that knows her real name is Larry, who didn't believe her when she told him. The film begins and ends with scenes that mirror each other - Alice/Jane is walking down a busy street. The camera is fixed so that everyone around her is blurry and she stands out. Whereas in the first scene, she's dressed to stand out - she's wearing a wig, a lot of makeup, and a loud outfit - in the final scene, Jane appears more natural. This signifies an embrace of authenticity for the character, that she is singularly beautiful, whether she uses tricks to call attention to herself or not. She's made an impact on Dan and Larry, and they won't forget her any time soon.

And so it is just like you said it would be

Life goes easy on me

Most of the time

And so it is the shorter story

No love, no glory

No hero in her sky

It's fairly clear what "The Blower's Daughter" is about. A relationship has ended - maybe it was mutual at the time, but the singer still misses the girl. There are a lot of theories surrounding where Damien Rice got the inspiration for "The Blower's Daughter" from. I won't repeat the biggest one, because he's already said that it was complete fiction. But the other popular theory is that he fell in love with his clarinet teacher's daughter, who was younger than him. Not by much, nothing sordid or anything, but she couldn't be with him. Eventually, he stopped taking lessons from the teacher, but he was still a bit obsessed with her. Whatever happened, Rice was in a lot of pain when he wrote this song. I think you can kind of hear it - the sadness as he strives to accept that it's over, the waver in his voice as he sings the first couple lyrics. That's what you look for in a good tragic love song. I know I keep saying this but....this is definitely in my Top 10 favorite songs. I'm pretty sure I'm up to 20 now, but....meh....who cares.

"The Blower's Daughter" Video