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Marianne Faithfull’s 10 Most Essential Songs (Critic’s Picks)
Best Marianne Faithfull songs: 10 classics from the late icon of the '60s.
On the 1987 album of the same name, Faithfull takes this Tom Waits composition and casts it in the skin of a warped, wry Weimar cabaret; at first, Garth Hudson’s accordion seems to waft in and out, but before long, the entire recording seems like a half-remembered tune pieced together in the midst of a morning-after hangover, presided over by a raspy chanteuse existing just outside the boundaries of time. Faithfull’s voice, at this point capable of tossing out a tremulous trill without batting a lash, turns from introspection to siren seduction on this beguiling piece of ethereal folk-pop: “Silver petals of porcelain rose/ Cobwebs of filigree/ Where I get them from nobody knows/ No one but you can see.” On 1979’s Broken English, she would sing a “Witches’ Song,” but she started gathering the ingredients for that intoxicating cauldron with this 1966 gem. There are countless anti-war songs, many of them deeply heartfelt, but few are as brutally dismissive as this one: “Cold lonely, Puritan/ What are you fighting for?/ It’s not my security.” Similarly, her voice doesn’t bother with the familiar mournful trappings of most protest singers — listening to her curt, firm delivery is more likely to elicit exasperation with the entire human endeavor than a desire to reform it.
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