1992 Shakespears Sister: Stay

"wasn't expecting that second bitch.. i may have nightmares now" - not a comment of mine, but one I saw posted in response to the 'Stay' video on YouTube when I looked it up today. And it made me smile because it more or less sums up my own reaction to this when I first heard it way back when. 'Stay' is very much a song of two halves; the first being an ambient meander led by an impassioned vocal from Marcella Detroit. But at precisely halfway through, other sister Siobhan Fahey barges in on the back of a violent change of key and tone to croon her sinister warning ("You'd better hope and pray that you make it safe back to your own world") over a fuzzy guitar that panics Detroit's earlier plea of 'stay' into a scream.

Unexpected certainly, but so is walking into a lamppost and both jar in their unexpectedness - not to the point of ruinous, but it didn't make much sense to me and it took seeing the video to set this house in order; Detroit is pleading those 'stay with me's to a dead/comatose male body on a gurney, wrapped up in her anguish until wicked witch Fahey appears, all wide eyed and grinning, intent to drag the poor chap to hell. As a visual compliment, the two catfighting over the body is striking and it brings the duality of the song to life with some satisfaction.

But then it also makes that satisfaction dependant on those images. That's not to say that 'Stay' isn't an enjoyable piece of nonsense in its own right, because it is - a low calorie Diamanda Galas workout of pantomime wailing and moaning with enough of a toehold in pop sensibilities to keep it on course despite that handbrake turn, it's the closest we would ever get to a Goth number one (not that I'm saying that's a desirable thing you understand). As a package of pop music as theatre though it's far more striking, a film short with accompaniment that packs wallop enough to get a reaction out of anyone. Even if they are just nightmares.