"European Female" by the Stranglers

My favorite Stranglers song. This is a real beauty and, like many other songs here, sounds like something no human could write. It's a perfect song. They get nailed for being a "sexist" band ("Peaches" is a good song), but I think this proves that old "interpretation" wrong. It's about the arrival of unification, or individuation, as Jung called it. It's the loss of the concrete world and the embracing of the eternal, that which cannot be defined through mere language. The image-ideal has become reality and it is beautiful. Quite a step for a band with the reputation they have. "Golden Brown" isn't so different, either. People would probably tag the "feline" imagery as being sexist too, but I see it as empowering. They want the woman to be powerful. That's a turn on for them. Nothing wrong with that. To me she's only caged in the video to illustrate his effort to understand and define her. You see the cat moving around free more than caged, you know? Nice noir imitation too. Very appropriate. "We'll be together for a thousand years..." GREAT line. Time broken, in just a few words.

It's unfortunate that the video here is so quiet. The song truly is a classic. Track it down in a better form. The vinyl is very nice.