#dear prudence

Dear Prudence (1983)

Siouxsie & The Banshees, Dear Prudence, 1983

Siouxsie & The Banshees - Dear Prudence

Like imagine your Beatlemaniac mother naming you fucking Prudence. 😭

Dear Prudence - Siouxsie and the Banshees (1983, cover of The Beatles)

Released on this day (8 June 1984): Hyaena, the sixth studio album by essential British punk band Siouxsie and the Banshees. Coincidentally, THIS was the first Banshees album I ever bought as a teenager, and it absolutely entranced me! Hyaena’s biggest hit was the Banshees’ gothic reinterpretation of the Beatles’ “Dear Prudence”; high priestess of punk Siouxsie’s frosty delivery suggests she doesn’t give a damn if that brat Prudence comes out to play or not. (The song reached number three on the UK singles chart, blocked from going further by “Karma Chameleon” by Culture Club!). The rest of the album finds the band at its most experimental, exploring bad-trip psychedelia (think Grace Slick in hell and “Paint it Black”-era Rolling Stones): “Dazzle” (“Skating bullets on angel dust / In the dead sea of fluid mercury / Baby piano cries / Under your heavy index and thumb / Pull some strings / Let them sing!”), “Swimming Horses”, “We Hunger” (“As the rust creeps / Corrosion seeps a rotting seed / Eat me, oh, feed me / With your belching foul breath …”). Scary fun times! Pictured: portrait of Siouxsie by Anton Corbijn from the Hyaena photoshoot.

this dear prudence is a ride from start to finish for people with their own little specialist websites where people can send them their own little specialist anonymous messages