I have a complicated relationship with Marie. Randy Newman is a really interesting artist, as his narrators can be quite funny, but they're also frustrating. Ever since I was introduced to this track, I knew Marie was a beautiful song. The melody seemed pretty, the words heartfelt. I just couldn't get past a dislike of the narrator.
Marie is taken from Newman's fifth studio album, Good Old Boys, which was released in 1974. It was originally devised as a concept piece about Johnny Cutler, a fictitious and flawed figure from the deep south. Ultimately, though, Newman examines the contradictions of the male pysche on a wider scale. Marie is sung from the perspective of a man who's been drinking too much, and is rambling ("I'm drunk right now baby, but I've got to be"). He also idealises women in all the wrong ways: Marie is remembered in the small details, with her hair up, looking "like a princess". I heard the song of a shallow man, which annoyed me.
Although it never made the finished record, I struggled desperately to record Marie for my new album Boys Don't Cry, but I just couldn't understand the character. We went through 40 takes very late at night, and I cried and cried. All of a sudden, I had this amazing moment of clarity. I realised: "I know this person. I know someone like this, and just maybe this song is being sung to me, as a sort of drunken apology." At that moment, I found sympathy for the character. The search for Marie had genuinely awoken me to the male psyche.
I now understand there's both a shallowness and a depth to Newman's narrator. It's because the character has been drinking that he can be so honest, and tell Marie – in his own fallible way – how he feels: "I loved you the first time I saw you/ And I always will love you, Marie."
• Rumer's album of cover versions, Boys Don't Cry, is released on Monday on Atlantic.
You can read the rest of Rumer's Old Music pieces here
