Lyrics
Do
you remember chalk hearts melting on a playground wall
Do you remember dawn escapes from moonwashed college halls
Do you remember the cherry blossom in the market square
Do you remember I thought it was confetti in our hair
By the way didn´t I break your heart
Please excuse me I never meant to break your heart
So sorry I never meant to break your heart
But you broke mine
Kayleigh is it too late to say I'm sorry?
And Kayleigh could we get it together again
I just can't go on pretending that it came to a natural end
Kayleigh oh I never thought I'd miss you
And Kayleigh I thought that we'd always be friends
We said our love would last forever
So how did it come to this bitter end
Do you remember barefoot on the lawn with shooting stars
Do you remember the loving on the floor in Belsize Park
Do you remember dancing in stilettoes in the snow
Do you remember you never understood I had to go
By the way didn´t I break your heart
Please excuse me I never meant to break your heart
So sorry I never meant to break your heart
But you broke mine
Kayleigh, I just want to say I'm sorry
But Kayleigh I'm too scared to pick up the phone
To hear you've found another lover to patch up our broken home
Kayleigh I'm still trying to write that love song
Kayleigh it's more important to me, now you're gone
Maybe it will prove that we were right
Or it'll prove that I was wrong
Do you remember dawn escapes from moonwashed college halls
Do you remember the cherry blossom in the market square
Do you remember I thought it was confetti in our hair
By the way didn´t I break your heart
Please excuse me I never meant to break your heart
So sorry I never meant to break your heart
But you broke mine
Kayleigh is it too late to say I'm sorry?
And Kayleigh could we get it together again
I just can't go on pretending that it came to a natural end
Kayleigh oh I never thought I'd miss you
And Kayleigh I thought that we'd always be friends
We said our love would last forever
So how did it come to this bitter end
Do you remember barefoot on the lawn with shooting stars
Do you remember the loving on the floor in Belsize Park
Do you remember dancing in stilettoes in the snow
Do you remember you never understood I had to go
By the way didn´t I break your heart
Please excuse me I never meant to break your heart
So sorry I never meant to break your heart
But you broke mine
Kayleigh, I just want to say I'm sorry
But Kayleigh I'm too scared to pick up the phone
To hear you've found another lover to patch up our broken home
Kayleigh I'm still trying to write that love song
Kayleigh it's more important to me, now you're gone
Maybe it will prove that we were right
Or it'll prove that I was wrong
Do you remember chalk hearts melting on a
playground wall
Do you remember dawn escapes from moonwashed college halls
Do you remember the cherry blossom in the market square
Do you remember I thought it was confetti in our hair
By the way didn´t I break your heart
Please excuse me I never meant to break your heart
So sorry I never meant to break your heart
But you broke mine
Kayleigh is it too late to say I'm sorry?
And Kayleigh could we get it together again
I just can't go on pretending that it came to a natural end
Kayleigh oh I never thought I'd miss you
And Kayleigh I thought that we'd always be friends
We said our love would last forever
So how did it come to this bitter end
Do you remember barefoot on the lawn with shooting stars
Do you remember the loving on the floor in Belsize Park
Do you remember dancing in stilettoes in the snow
Do you remember you never understood I had to go
By the way didn´t I break your heart
Please excuse me I never meant to break your heart
So sorry I never meant to break your heart
But you broke mine
Kayleigh, I just want to say I'm sorry
But Kayleigh I'm too scared to pick up the phone
To hear you've found another lover to patch up our broken home
Kayleigh I'm still trying to write that love song
Kayleigh it's more important to me, now you're gone
Maybe it will prove that we were right
Or it'll prove that I was wrong
Do you remember dawn escapes from moonwashed college halls
Do you remember the cherry blossom in the market square
Do you remember I thought it was confetti in our hair
By the way didn´t I break your heart
Please excuse me I never meant to break your heart
So sorry I never meant to break your heart
But you broke mine
Kayleigh is it too late to say I'm sorry?
And Kayleigh could we get it together again
I just can't go on pretending that it came to a natural end
Kayleigh oh I never thought I'd miss you
And Kayleigh I thought that we'd always be friends
We said our love would last forever
So how did it come to this bitter end
Do you remember barefoot on the lawn with shooting stars
Do you remember the loving on the floor in Belsize Park
Do you remember dancing in stilettoes in the snow
Do you remember you never understood I had to go
By the way didn´t I break your heart
Please excuse me I never meant to break your heart
So sorry I never meant to break your heart
But you broke mine
Kayleigh, I just want to say I'm sorry
But Kayleigh I'm too scared to pick up the phone
To hear you've found another lover to patch up our broken home
Kayleigh I'm still trying to write that love song
Kayleigh it's more important to me, now you're gone
Maybe it will prove that we were right
Or it'll prove that I was wrong
I am not a fan of modern so-called indie music. I mostly dislike the very sober, nearly timid arrangements/style. It's not surprising than that I like Kayleigh, and similar 80's songs quite a lot. You could call these songs overproduced maybe, but that's my favorite thing about them. As for linking it to a movie, I am glad it namechecks Belsize Park, which is apparently in Camden Town, London. There appears to be a romantic comedy about several people in Camden Town hooking up and breaking up.
The Movie: This Year's Love (David Kane, 1999)
IMDB describes This Year's Love as follows: "A group of thirtysomethings flirt around Camden Town, swapping partners in search of love, lust and life". This makes it seem like a typical British romantic comedy of the 90's, but This Year's Love is different, if not necessarily better, than the average Four Weddings and A Funeral. It takes its working class surroundings seriously, at least in the context of a romantic comedy. Its characters are genuinely flawed people who remain flawed at the end. It's also much less interested in dreamy notions of romanticism. Not everything needs to be nice, cute or beautiful. The movie makes this clear right from the opening credits which are set against a heavily tattooed body, while on the soundtrack we hear hard rock. I am not sure about this, but I do believe that tattoos weren't very mainstream in the UK/western culture in general in 1999, and I can imagine that quite a lot of people considered these opening credits to be relatively transgressive.
After the opening credits we cut to two people, Hannah (Catherine McCormack) and Danny (Douglas Henshall) oversleeping for what turns out to be their wedding reception. The movie doesn't show them excitedly preparing for it, nor does it present that day as the most important one of their life. The reception nearly immediately turns sour anyway, when Danny finds out his bride slept with his best friend a couple of days before the wedding. The enraged Danny leaves the wedding, ends up at an airport and meets Mary (Kathy Burke), cleaning lady by day, club singer by night. Hannah on the other hand ends up in bed with local Casanova Cameron (Dougray Scott). Cameron is the roommate of the pathetically insecure Liam (Ian Hart), who somehow earns the attention of Sophie (Jennifer Ehle), who may be a single mom, but is also the coolest, sexiest girl on the block. During the course of the movie, all these couples will change, but at the end to nobody's surprise Danny and Hannah will end up together.
The main problem with the movie, apart from the contrived coincidences through which all these people meet each other, is that Hannah and Danny are the dullest characters in the movie. Nothing even remotely surprising happens to/between these characters. On top of that Henshall is not a very charismatic or interesting actor, at least not here. I recently saw him in The Salvation in which he was quite good in a small role. The movie's MVP is Dougray Scott, playing Cameron. I have probably seen Scott in some movies, but never noticed him. Here he gives a wonderful comic performance. Cameron is an 'artist' who paints whatever he finds in a catalog, than sells the paintings at auctions, and the money he earns, he spends betting at horse races. He explains in a hilariously pretentious way that he doesn't care about a career, just about the process. What is wonderful about this is that he truly does live like a liberated, 'enlightened' bohemian, only he is too dumb to realize it. He believes that he is a bum, who successfully conceals his true nature. He conceals nothing though, least of all his true problems, namely that he is really dumb and shallow. The scenes in which Cameron tries to be honest about himself are probably the film's highlight. It's helped by Scott's great performance. At first I thought he was horribly overacting, without paying any attention to his co-actors. It takes a while before you realize Scott is acting precisely in the same way as if Cameron would act if he were to portray himself on film.
As for the other characters. Kathy Burke gives a very sympathetic performance as the slightly plump and unattractive Mary, though the movie comments way too much on how it should not be a big deal that she is plump and unattractive, thereby making it a big deal. But it's quite rare for a romantic comedy to treat someone like Mary as an ordinary woman who enjoys sex. It's even rarer for it to present her as an ordinary woman who is not pathetic or sad, because she doesn't get to have sex or find love. The film does not pity Mary and presens her as a confident, intelligent woman, who can deal on her own with aggressive men such as Liam. Liam only becomes aggressive by the third act of the movie. Before that he is a rather timid nerd, who does not really know how to behave around women. Director Kane deserves credit for showing his aggressiveness as simply the other side of the same coin. Both his timidness and his aggressiveness are born out of his extreme fear of women and sex. It's a rather dark plot point all the more so, because it is not presented as all that surprising. Liam's aggressiveness is just as natural as his timidity.
As for the other characters. Kathy Burke gives a very sympathetic performance as the slightly plump and unattractive Mary, though the movie comments way too much on how it should not be a big deal that she is plump and unattractive, thereby making it a big deal. But it's quite rare for a romantic comedy to treat someone like Mary as an ordinary woman who enjoys sex. It's even rarer for it to present her as an ordinary woman who is not pathetic or sad, because she doesn't get to have sex or find love. The film does not pity Mary and presens her as a confident, intelligent woman, who can deal on her own with aggressive men such as Liam. Liam only becomes aggressive by the third act of the movie. Before that he is a rather timid nerd, who does not really know how to behave around women. Director Kane deserves credit for showing his aggressiveness as simply the other side of the same coin. Both his timidness and his aggressiveness are born out of his extreme fear of women and sex. It's a rather dark plot point all the more so, because it is not presented as all that surprising. Liam's aggressiveness is just as natural as his timidity.
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