Artist: Robert Wyatt
Song: Shipbuilding
Album: Memories of you (45" - 1982), EPs (box set, 1999)
This deluxe box set includes five separate EP-length CDs housed in individual slip-cases. EPs spans Wyatt’s celebrated solo career through 1998 and contains a wealth of previously unreleased and hard-to-find material as well as alternate versions of his acclaimed songs.
On ‘Shipbuilding’, a song that will eternally strike a chord with the listener, Wyatt famously manages to sing a protest song with the kind of rapture you associate with altogether different subject matter – making the record twice as poignant and understatedly powerful in the process.
Wyatt released the song in 1982 and reached number 36 in the UK charts in May of that year. On the recording he is backed by Clive Langer (organ), Steve Nieve (piano), Mark Bedford (double bass), Martin Hughes (drums) and Elvis Costello (backing vocals).
Costello recorded his own version of the song for his 1983 album Punch the Clock, featuring a performance by jazz trumpeter Chet Baker. Other versions have been recorded by Suede, Hue and Cry, Tasmin Archer, Mark Mulcahy, Graham Coxon, and Swan Arcade.
Is it worth it?
A new winter coat and shoes for the wife
And a bicycle on the boy's birthday.
It's just a rumour that was spread around town
By the women and children, soon we'll be shipbuilding
Well I ask you
The boy said 'Dad, they're going to take me to task
But I'll be home by Christmas.
It's just a rumour that was spread around town
Somebody said that someone got filled in
For saying that people get killed in
The results of their shipbuilding.
With all the will in the world
Diving for dear life
When we could be diving for pearls.
It's just a rumour that was spread around town
A telegram for a picture postcard
Within weeks they'll be reopening the shipyard
And notifying the next of kin
Once again.
It's all we're skilled in
We will be shipbuilding.
With all the will in the world
Diving for dear life
When we could be diving for pearls.
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