Thursday, November 26, 2009

Noughties By Nature #103: Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds - Breathless

To be honest I feel a bit of a fraud writing this induction. I'm sure that every hip groovy person reading this will own a least one Nick Cave album, I don't. I do own this song, but only from iTunes. I can't even pretend to know all of his back catalogue and yet here I am writing the entry that will seal Mr Cave's place in Noughties by Nature. I bet you really wished that you wrote that e-mail now eh?

But for me Nick Cave's Breathless really is a song of the noughties as it's impact on my life has spanned six years. I remember first hearing it on Mark Radcliffe's late night Radio 2 slot some time in 2004 when he would always remark about if he was playing the version with the crazy flute playing at the beginning or not. Either way the song was beautiful. Light and peaceful to the ear but with a real bite to the lyrics, which had Nick saying that without the love of his life he's breathless.

At some point during this being on Radio 2 near-constantly I found myself a girlfriend (or rather she found me). I played her the song, she liked it and liked the video with the bunnies even more.

So when I proposed and she foolishly accepted there was only one choice for the music of our first dance*. And it fitted perfectly. After telling my family and friends in June 2008 how much I loved my wife, having a song to reinforce that declaration made the day even more perfect.

So thanks to Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds for playing at our wedding. I'm sure you'll be played at every anniversary as well.

* Rilo Kiley's I Never came close but there wasn't much of a beat to awkwardly dance to.
Ben Hall

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