Named after
Alistair Cooke's seemingly eternal
BBC Radio show (which I was researching when I discovered this song wasn't noded),
Letter from America was the first song that brought twin brothers Craig and Charlie Reed,
The Proclaimers to public notice. Playing on Channel
4's
The Tube they were like nothing "
pop" had seen or heard before.
For a start, they were
geeky – they wore
chunky sweaters, and chunkier glasses (probably the biggest, thickest glasses seen on musicians since
the day the music died,
Elvis Costello notwithstanding).
Secondly, and more arresting – they sang in their own thick Scots
accent. Popular mainstream musicians from Scotland at the time put on an English accent or, even more likely, a homogenous one that indicated that they had grown up in Anytown, Middle America. The only time you’d hear an accent in music at that point was in folk or comedy songs where the '
Ethnic Element' was a key part of the humour or point (q.v.
The Pogues or
The Cheftains).
Letter from America was acoustic, it was protest, but it most certainly wasn’t
folk – the feel was entirely
contemporary. There was no doubt, however, that the Reed twins gloried in their roots, and the richness of the accent added immeasurably to the
power of the song.
And that was the third thing –
Letter From America was powerful.
Political, and
passionate in a way that most artists, apart from perhaps the aforementioned
Elvis Costello and
Kirsty MacColl, had given up, the song is a
lament for Scotland – for the thousands who emigrated, for the closure of the nation’s
industrial heart, for
Highland clearance.
The combination should have been a death
knell – a pair of speccy Scots, shouting in thick accents about what had happened to the owd country – but they seemed to connect with the nation:
these things matter they were saying, and people believed them. Their
enthusiasm and the
heartfelt nature of both lyrics and
performance hurtled
Letter to America to the top of the charts in December 1987. Of course, the fact that it’s a damn good song and the
chorus is spectacularly singable might have helped...
Letter From America
The Proclaimers
Chorus:
When you go will you send back a letter from
America?
Take a look up the
railtrack from Miami to
Canada.
Well
broke off from my work the other day
I spent the evening thinking
About all the blood that flowed away.
Across the ocean to the
second chance
I wonder how it got on when it reached
the promised land.
Chorus
I've looked at the
ocean
Tried hard to imagine
The way you felt the day you sailed
From
Wester Ross to
Nova Scotia.
We should have held you
we should have told you
But you know our sense of
timing
We always wait too long.
Chorus
Lochaber no more
Sutherland no more
Lewis no more
Skye no more!
Lochaber no more
Sutherland no more
Repeat last four lines
Lewis no more
Skye no more!
I wonder my
blood
Will you ever return
To help us kick the life back to a dying
mutual friend?
Do we not love her
I think we all tell you about
Do we have to
roam the world to prove how much it hurts?
Chorus
Bathgate no more
Linwood no more
Methil no more
Irvine no more
Bathgate no more
Linwood no more
Repeat last four lines twice
Methil no more
Lochaber no more