bit of a wine
English students at Cambridge University have been asked to analyse lyrics by singer Amy Winehouse in a final-year exam. They were told to compare Winehouse’s Love is a Losing Game to songs by Bob Dylan, Billie Holiday and 16th century explorer Sir Walter Raleigh.
Winehouse recently won a prestigious Ivor Novello award for the song.
A university spokesman said English students had always been asked to compare writers of different times.
He said the question was ‘interesting, but not news’.
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CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY EXAM BOARD
COMPARATIVE ENGLISH, MODULE II.
May 25th, 2008
1. Critique these lyrics:
‘Love Is A Losing Game’
For you I was a flame
Love is a losing game
Five story fire as you came
Love is a losing game
One I wish I never played
Oh what a mess we made
And now the final frame
Love is a losing game
Played out by the band
Love is a losing hand
More than I could stand
Love is a losing hand
Self professed… profound
Till the chips were down
...know you’re a gambling man
Love is a losing hand
Though I’m rather blind
Love is a fate resigned
Memories mar my mind
Love is a fate resigned
Over futile odds
And laughed at by the gods
And now the final frame
Love is a losing game
The author of these lyrics is not, in my opinion, a stable person. The major themes of the song are a love lost, arson (or at least a certain combustibility) and poker. I think the author is a very keen poker player. In fact, the poker puns (’a losing hand’, ‘the chips were down’, ‘though I’m rather blind’) are the best bit of the song. This shows that the author sees love as a game of chance, although many others may feel that the love game becomes significantly easier when you don’t snort the powdered equivalent of a semi-detached house up your nose on a weekly basis.
There is also a certain fatality to these lyrics. The repetition of the phrase ‘and now the final frame’ suggests that the author sees no great future in life beyond her latest set-back. Either that, or she’s massively into snooker.
The author is also a big fan of rhyming couplets. For example, the line ‘Played out by the band / Love is a losing hand’ shows acute awareness of traditional rhyming structures used by all the lyric writing greats (see also: Des’ree, Vengaboys) over the years.
Essentially, the depth of these lyrics is endless, in much the same way as the depths of despair are endless when suffering a broken heart, or when you realise, whilst covering your tear-soaked face with your over-worked hands, that a decent voice makes people think you’re a certified song-writing genius.