If you were alive in the early 80s, I am sure you could not have missed hearing synthesizer whiz Thomas Dolby's near-novelty song "She Blinded Me With Science," taken from his debut release "The Golden Age of Wireless," an album steeped in a retro WWII feeling in both narrative (look at the title alone!) and imagery. However, the opening track on the US release far outshines "She Blinded Me With Science." This song, "Europa and the Pirate Twins" is an entire lifetime of a story condensed down to three verses and a chorus. It is the moving story of two young people in love and how they are tragically torn apart. Dolby has described the song to the now-defunct webzine Drowned In Sound, along with the tone of the album, as reflecting "a sense of relationship that's going on as being overwhelmed by something on a grander level", adding "there's a very strong wartime atmosphere to it."
Europa and the Pirate Twins
by Thomas Dolby
I was fourteen, she was twelve
Father travelled, hers as well, Europa...
Down the beaches, hand in hand
Twelfth of never on the sand
Then war took her away
We swore a vow that day
We'll be the Pirate Twins again, Europa
Oh my country
Europa
I'll walk beside you in the rain
Europa
Ta république
Europa
Nine years after, who'd I see
On the cover of a magazine? Europa...
Buy her singles and see all her films
Paste her pictures on my windowsill
But that's not quite the same - it isn't, is it?
Europa, my old friend
We'll be the Pirate Twins again, Europa
Oh my country
My country, Europa!
I'll walk beside you in the rain
Europa
Ta république
Europa
Blew in from the hoverport
She was back in London
Pushed past the papermen
Calling her name
She smiled for the cameras
As the bodyguard grabbed me
Her eyes were gone forever
As they drove her away
We'll be the Pirate Twins again, Europa
Oh my country
Europa
I'll walk beside you in the rain
Europa
Ta république
Europa
https://www.thomasdolby.com/
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