24 July 2025

The Wild Rover artwork
The Wild Rover
The Pogues
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What's your favorite song about second chances?

I was thinking about this song In a different context this week.

I listened to an excellent Lost Notes podcast on 'the True Story of Tainted Love'

The show features a recording of Gloria Jones' version of the song being played in a Northern Soul club, so you can hear the crowd's handclaps, which morphed into the blasts of synth on Soft Cell's hit

This made me think, again, about bits that have been added into songs by the audience.

So, there are extra handclaps for Whisky in The Jar, a rude chant in Living Next Door to Alice, clapping and a 'Chelsea' for the Liquidator, and four claps, and at Pogues shows, 'God Bless the Pogues' for this one.

In each case it takes you back the first time you hear it, but sounds completely integral thereafter

Anyway, coming back to the point, this song is classic of second, or third, or umpteenth chances

I'll go home to my parents, confess what I've done And I'll ask them to pardon their prodigal son And when they've caressed me as oft' times before Then I never will play the wild rover no more

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