The build-up is painfully slow, finding stately vocalist Marcella Detroit (who, to her detriment as far as I'm concerned, also leant her vocals to Eric Clapton's godawful "Lay Down Sally" several years prior) cooing couplets of troubled devotion to a seemingly indifferent or oblivious lover. It doesn't really get interesting until Siobhan Fahey comes in a sinister lower register alongside a chugging guitar to deliver ominous intonations of making it "safe back to your own world."
After some some tastefully sparse pianos join the fray, the song bursts wide open (not unlike the finale of "Never Take Me Alive" by Spear of Destiny) with Detroit abandoning restraint and wailing in a maelstrom of the agony of seemingly unrequited love. It's epic.
In the summer of 1992 (see more about that here), I was a naive 25-year-old who stumbled into a botched and laughably ill-fated office romance that had 'disaster' written all over it from the get-go, but I was stupid and oblivious. As such, while I quite enjoyed this song prior to things going horribly wrong, once I'd been effectively given my walking papers by the young lady in question, this single became my veritable theme song. Any time I was out in bars with friends (which, suffice to say, after that was a lot), I couldn't stop myself from force-feeding quarter after quarter into any number of unsuspecting jukeboxes to once again summon Siobahn Fahey's vengeful growl and Marcella Detroit's jilted wail. The strenuous melancholy of "Stay" defined that summer
Twenty-one summers later, the reasons for all that torment are all quaint, silly ancient history, but to this day, I still cannot hear "Stay" without instantly being transported back to those balmy nights of youthfully bug-eyed, drunken angst.
As with the afore-cited "Shout to the Top," the video is frankly ridiculous, finding Marcella Detroit tending to a soon-to-be deceased paramour until Siobahn arrives to deliver a ridiculously over-the-top performance as the Angel of Death.
Raise a glass and enjoy your summer.
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