Surely one of the best singer-songwriters of her generation, four time Mercury Music Prize nominee Laura Marling just goes from strength to strength. As we await the release of Marling’s eighth solo studio album “Patterns in Repeat“, the songs released so far to preview that opus suggest another release packed with great songs. As her career progresses, Marling’s songwriting is a great strength; she left school at 16, when mainly due to her songwriting ability she secured a five album deal with Virgin Records. Marling continues to display an amazing talent for writing memorable songs. It has to be said, that her sound has developed over the years; her voice now sounding far more mature and the songs and overall sound are less folk tinged. At times during her career Marling has expressed doubts regarding her long-term commitment to a musical career. Indeed during her time in Los Angeles where she recorded 2015’s “Short Movie” and 2017’s “Semper Femina” she trained as a yoga instructor and she has also spent time studying for a Master’s degree in Psychoanalysis.
In 2011 Ryan Adams claimed to have scrapped most of the songs he had written for the album that became “Ashes and Fire” after Ethan Johns had given him a copy of Marling’s sophomore record, 2010’s “I Speak Because I Can” which Johns had produced. How the Adams album would have turned out had he not heard Marling’s album is anyone’s guess, but if this caused him to ‘up his game’ then the outcome was a positive one, with the resultant album containing arguably the strongest set of Adams-penned songs since “Gold“, some 11 albums previously.
In September 2020, Marling produced a stunning performance at a Prom event at the Royal Albert Hall with the 12 Ensemble, performing new arrangements of her songs with the string ensemble.
Marling has been known to say that her least favourite style of music is americana, so why is she the subject of this feature? Well genres can be tricky to precisely define; musical genius Andy Partridge, former front man of XTC described with, one expects, his tongue firmly planted in his cheek, XTC’s sound as “post punk funk, with a touch of modernist“. Americana more than most genres has some flexibility around its boundaries; it is a broad church and it’s not difficult to make a case to include Marling’s music within the boundaries of the genre.
Number 10: ‘Strange Girl’ from “Song for Our Daughter” (2020)
Mercury Music Prize winning album “Song for our Daughter” was produced by long time collaborator Ethan Johns. ‘Strange Girl‘ is uncharacteristically uptempo for Marling; the chorus is pure sing-a-long “I love you, my strange girl, my lonely girl, my angry girl, my brave“.
Number 9: ‘Goodbye England (Covered in Snow)‘ from “I Speak Because I Can” (2010)
‘Goodbye England (Covered in Snow)‘ is a beautiful ballad; Marling has claimed that she feels like she’s eight or nine years old when she sings this song, “free of the pressures of adulthood“.
Number 8: ‘Sophia‘ from “A Creature I Don’t Know” (2011)
Marling’s third LP reached number four on the UK album charts; while ‘Sophia‘ was the first single release from the record; it reached number 156. The song is influenced by Robertson Davies’ 1981 novel “The Rebel Angels” which references God’s female counterpart; Sophia is known as the Greek Goddess of Wisdom and God’s bride. Starting slowly and deliberately, Marling sings “Oh I have been wandering, where I have been pondering, where I’ve been lately’s no concern of yours“, but it soon picks up pace.
Number 7: ‘Song for Our Daughter‘ from “Song for Our Daughter” (2020)
“Song for Our Daughter” was Marling’s seventh full length release; it was nominated at the 63rd Grammy Awards. The song of the same title came about after Marling had read the 2009 book “Letter to my Daughter” by (American author and Civil Rights Activist) Maya Angelou. The book is essentially a series of essays written for a fictional daughter, based on Angelou’s experiences and what life had taught her. Marling too had no daughter at the time of the song and album, however that situation has now changed and there is a song written for Marling’s daughter on the forthcoming “Patterns in Repeat” LP, entitled ‘Child Of Mine‘.
Number 6: ‘Once I Was an Eagle (Suite)‘ from “Once I Was an Eagle” (2013)
Okay, cards on the table here; it’s an impossibility to select only 10 Marling songs for this feature, so I’ve cheated, just a little. The ‘suite’ comprises four songs that originally opened the “Once I Was an Eagle” LP but have tended to be played in sequence in the live environment and naturally flow into each other. There’s a strong possibility that each of these songs would have featured separately in this top 10, had they not been included as the suite. The songs concerned are ‘Take the Night Off‘, ‘I Was an Eagle‘, ‘You Know‘ and ‘Breathe‘ all from the 2013 release “Once I Was an Eagle“. On a different Marling release, the ‘Once I Was an Eagle (Suite)‘ forms the entire side one of 2020’s “Live From Union Chapel” release.
Number 5: ‘Nothing, Not Nearly‘ from “Semper Femina” (2017)
Released in March 2017, “Semper Femina” (a Latin expression of femininity) sees Marling utilising a full band and the sound is somewhat rawer than on previous records, as demonstrated on ‘Nothing, Not Nearly‘.
Number 4: ‘Once‘ from “Once I Was an Eagle” (2013)
Released when Marling was 23 years old, “Once I Was an Eagle” is a very mature album; the melodies are really strong and Marling’s acoustic guitar playing is greatly effective at driving the songs along; it’s also Marling’s highest charting release so far, peaking at number three. ‘Once‘ in particular has complex but memorable melodies. The chorus goes “Once, once is enough to break you, once, once is enough to make you think twice, about laying your love out on the line‘.
Number 3: ‘Wild Fire‘ from “Semper Femina” (2017)
“Semper Femina” was available on release as standard or deluxe editions; the deluxe version including an additional disc of the songs from the original album recorded live at Martyr’s venue in Chicago. The live versions are beefed up slightly and all the better for that. The lyrics betray possible insecurity; she mentions a friend, “She keeps a pen behind her ear, in case she’s got something she really, really needs to say, she puts it in a notepad, she’s going to write a book someday“, followed by “Of course the only part that I want to read, is about her time spent with me, wouldn’t you die to know how you’re seen? Are you getting away with who you’re trying to be?” The vocal performance (on both versions) is notable; making 16 syllables from the word ‘me’ being particularly impressive.
Number 2: ‘The Muse‘ from “A Creature I Don’t Know” (2011)
“A Creature I Don’t Know” was the first of Marling’s LPs to trouble the Billboard Top 200 in the US, reaching number 99. The song ‘The Muse‘ was intended to be quite light hearted and its uptempo feel makes it sound like the band were enjoying themselves on this one.
Number 1: ‘Soothing’ from “Semper Femina” (2017)
Marling received her first Grammy nomination in 2018 for Best Folk Album for “Semper Femina” although the Grammy was awarded to Aimee Mann’s “Mental Illness.” ‘Soothing‘ literally bobs along on the guitar line, with Marling beautifully singing the melody over the top. “I need soothing, my lips aren’t moving, my God is brooding”.
Look, I get it: subjective blah blah blah. It’s not easy to narrow down the top 50 Laura Marling songs, and at some point it’s an exercise in futility. Why bother, really? What are the top ten Beatles songs? Metallica? Opeth?
It can be fun, I know. But it can also be wrong! 😡
I don’t know where to begin: that there was one song from I Speak Because I Can; that it was “Goodbye England…” (a lovely song in its own right–but “Blackberry Stone”? “Alpha Shallows”? The whole rest of the album?; or that it ranked so low on the list?
Now, on a ranking of songs from that one album, “Goodbye England” might place tenth out of ten. “Rambling Man” is right there next to it — two 9s in a sea of 10s. First might go to “Hope in the Air”. It’s kind of a tossup.
The implication then is that “Goodbye England” is the best song on the album. I won’t attack “Soothing” – that would be disgraceful – but it’s not better than “Darkness Descends”, and neither is “Goodbye England”.
My question is this, if you replace “Goodbye England” with another song from I Speak Because I Can, will “Soothing” still top the chart?
Strangely enough, it was about “Goodbye England” that you had the least to say.
Will you rank I Speak Because I Can? Because, we have to figure out what is going on here.
This is almost as outrageous as the time Fantano gave Once I Was an Eagle a 9/10!
Thanks so much for reading the article and for taking the time to comment.
The Essentials piece is indeed meant to be fun and perhaps provoke debate.
But wrong? If it’s subjective, which of course it is, wrong doesn’t really enter into the equation; merely different to others’ choices.
It is also time dependent, in that it’s merely a snapshot at a point in time; a repeat of the exercise at another point in time would likely result in a different list, with the inclusion of different songs and/or songs shifting positions in the list.
I really like “I Speak Because I Can”, however to reinforce the subjective nature of this, my preferred songs on the album, in addition to ‘Goodbye England (Covered in Snow)’, are ‘Hope in the Air’, ‘What He Wrote’ and the title track.