26 :: Before You Start to Cry :: A Slow Drag with "You Tripped at Every Step"

Today’s slow drag is with “You Tripped at Every Step,” from “Brutal Youth,” released in 1994. The songwriting is credited to Elvis Costello’s birth name.

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Appreciation written, produced, and narrated by Remedy Robinson

Twitter: @slowdragremedy

Email: [email protected]

Podcast music by https://www.fesliyanstudios.com

Rate this Podcast: https://ratethispodcast.com/slowdrag

References:

Elvis Costello Wiki Resource: http://www.elviscostello.info/wiki/index.php/You_Tripped_At_Every_Step

 

“You Tripped at Every Step” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEJEJ66Wyto

 

“Why Do People Like Sad Songs?”:  https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/hot-thought/201507/why-do-people-sad-songs

 

Semantic Pointer Architecture: http://compneuro.uwaterloo.ca/research/spa/semantic-pointer-architecture.html

What is the Minor Third? Music Theory #20 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aO1pBNC8ggw

The descending Minor Third: Meagan Curtis explains the science of sad songs: http://archive.ttbook.org/book/meagen-curtis-science-sad-songs Music and speech (musical interval) Tufts Music Cognition Lab.

Journal Article: The Minor Third Communicates Sadness in Speech, Mirroring It’s Use in Music: http://ase.tufts.edu/psychology/music-cognition/pdfs/Curtis&Bharucha2010Emotion.pdf

Mud in your eye idiom: https://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/23/messages/344.html

 

"You Tripped at Every Step" Lyrics 

Take your tiny feet out of your mother's shoes
Or there is going to be a terrible scene
It's not just the lipstick drawn on crooked
When they find how wicked we are
How wicked we have been
How I've been tempted
How you tripped at every step
You tripped at every step
You tripped at every step
How you tripped at every step

There's a merry tune that starts in "I" and ends in "You"
Like many famous pop songs do
And you would sing along with little tell-tale staggers
While balancing on daggers
Though they were killing you
You looked so deadly
As you tripped at every step
You tripped at every step
You tripped at every step
As you tripped at every step

And I would run to catch you
Anytime you call
Only you drank that potion
And went out of control
There's nothing to stop you
So how can you fall
Let me take your hand
Put down that frying pan

Darkness would become me
Underneath the table
As the fury raged around the house
Your despairing, treadless, angry, and unstable
You never suspected
Just as that cartoon mouse
Went undetected
So you tripped at every step

In another world of gin and cigarettes
Those cocktail cabinets put mud in your eye
Maybe that is why you find it hard to see me
And if you don't believe me
Before you start to cry
"Don't ever leave me"
As you start to lose your grip
(As you start losing your grip)
You will stumble and you slip
(And you will stumble and slip)
As you tripped at every step
You tripped at every step
You tripped at every step
As you tripped at every step

You tripped at every step
You tripped at every step
As you tripped at every
As you tripped at every
You tripped at every step
You tripped at every step
As you tripped at every
As you tripped at every step