1968
ELEANOR RIGBY * RAY CHARLES * STATESIDE 2120 * UK
Written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney and recorded by The Beatles, Eleanor Rigby is a powerful lament for lonely people, a song about solitude and isolation centered around a lonely detached man and an equally lonely woman who's paths cross twice in the grounds of a church the final 'meeting' being in death. The song is uncharacteristically bleak for a Pop song but when it was written in 1965 there were still many widows and bereaved fiancées still living in solitude and isolation as a result of the 1939 - 45 world war who could have easily fitted the description of Eleanor Rigby, and many empty and desperate churches still standing. Ray Charles brings to the song a profound depth of Soul and compassion; maybe because of his blindness he was able empathize more with the isolation.
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