Discarding her clothes in the plastic flowers
Pornographic and tragic in black and white
My Marilyn come to my slum for an hour
I'm aching been dying for hours and hours
Complicating the boys in the office towers
Rafaella or Della the silent dream
My Marilyn come to my slum for an hour
I'm aching been dying for hours and hours,
been dying for hours and hours
Hypnotising the silence with her powers
Armageddon is bedding this picture alright
My Marilyn come to slum for an hour
Aching, been dying for hours and hours
I'm 18, I need my heroines
Aching, been dying for hours
Oh and I'm never alone now
Now I'm with her
Umm... you are all totally off.
The song is based from the Lord Byron poem which begins with the same line, "she walks in beauty, like the night".
This song really doesn't have anything to do with a prostitute. It's more about a boy who is becoming a man (I'm eighteen and I need my heroines) identifying his notions of women with his female idols - who are actresses and pin-up girls pinned to his wall. These women are traditional femmes fatale, as shown by the reference to Raphaella, the pre-Raphaelite princess. Femmes fatale have traditionally shown up in art as symbols of the downfall of men, which is evident by his "dying." Yes, Anderson and Butler are quite arty in their references.
I agree on the Byron quotation and the pre-Raphaelite stuff but I guess Brett is playing with the different layers of meaning one can read with both those references and his own context.
I agree on the Byron quotation and the pre-Raphaelite stuff but I guess Brett is playing with the different layers of meaning one can read with both those references and his own context.
I think the song is about the discovery of sexual attraction and the idealisation of women, which is constructed from the references you already mentioned, Hollywood stars like Marylin Monroe but also prostitutes, who might be the actual women to whom the boy is attracted to as he lives in a slum.
I think the song is about the discovery of sexual attraction and the idealisation of women, which is constructed from the references you already mentioned, Hollywood stars like Marylin Monroe but also prostitutes, who might be the actual women to whom the boy is attracted to as he lives in a slum.
The most interesting thing about thins song is how all those references work together, going...
The most interesting thing about thins song is how all those references work together, going from the innocent attraction described in Byron's poem to the unbearable longing caused by desire in pre-Rafaelite paintings to the tragic figure of Marylin Monroe and, finally to the prostitutes and the unavoidable reference to heroine. One meaning doesn't exclude the other and actually that's one of the great things about this song, it is about a young man who is so attracted to a woman that she is like heroine to him and at the same time about an addict whose desire for the drug is as strong as that of a teenager for an idealized woman.
I think that as the band liked to give out a sort of slummy, low-rent glamour type of image, it's no coincidence that the song is called Heroine. I presume they wanted to have this kind of thing associated with them, and have an obvious link, whether or not the song is actually about the drug or not.
well.. you know the dudes in the band were junkies for quite a bit, so i wouldn't be surprised if it was one of those "songs about drugs that sound like they're about women"..
but whatever, i say interpret it however you want. music is personal like that.
At a guess... heroin?
doubt that
hmmm heroin yes i think so , with maybe some prostitute references
Just because the song uses a line from a poem doesn't mean it's based on it. It could simply be influenced by it, or neither of these. Morrissey used a lot of references and quotes without basing the song using the quotes on the source.
Wow, this actually has several meanings!
What is 'Rafaella or Della' a reference to?
Nothing at all to do with the drug Heroin....! The album this comes from (Dog Man Star) heavily features references to Hollywood's more tragic figures - Marilyn Monroe in this one - and is a simple homage to the sexualisation of her. Monroe was the ultimate fantasy woman for many men and was rarely seen as more than that, sadly.