God Help the Girl

A very long time ago, I bought my first and only Marianne Faithfull album, Broken English. What I remember is how bleak the album sounded--the songs delivered in Faithfull's cracked and weary voice, the expression on her face on the cover while shielding her eyes with a hand holding a cigarette just gave off the vibes of a defeated person. So I was surprised to hear this:

The Jagger-Richards penned song launched her career at age 17. The following year, the Stones recorded their own, now more famous, version. Around that time Faithfull gained sympathy for the devil, getting romantically involved with Jagger and with heroin. It all led to the person who recorded Broken English.

I've been listening to her eponymous debut album a lot lately, which I picked up in the dollar bin a while ago. It's a bunch of sad songs sung in her then sweet and innocent voice. It's not artistically notable, but charming nonetheless. There's something refreshing in her understated delivery that is the opposite of, say, Whitney Houston. It also makes the sad songs not so sad, quite the opposite.