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Belle & Sebastian - The Cat with the Cream

Belle & Sebastian - The Cat with the Cream Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance
Released: 2015

The Cat with the Cream Lyrics

Sitting at the old kitchen table
Peace and health and dreams
Stretching out in the darkness
Mother's up the stairs with her ageing new boyfriend
Cathy's staying in to make sure nothing happens
All aboard the freak parade
I cover up my head and pray
I'm praying for the light
Down amongst the old city chambers
Men in frocks debate all the policy changes
Everybody bet on the boom and got busted
Everybody bet and in the government trusted
Grubby little red MP
Yellow flapping hopelessly

Tory like The Cat with the Cream
Tory like the cat with the cream
I studied you in history
I studied in the library
In days of old when knights were bold
They'd settle it with sword and shield
In days of old when knights were bold
It's settled by the king

Praying for a friend is contagious
Specially when it comes at the old kitchen table
Listening for the swoosh of his quickening paces
Watching for the smile on the bravest of faces
How I wish you'd read to me
s rich in swallows and trees
Get me though the night

Waiting at the old kitchen table
Listening for my code listening for my instructions
Surely now I'm here, I am destined for greatness
I want to be the Queen pulling kids out of rivers
All aboard the freak parade
I cover up my head and pray

Praying for the cat with the cream
Praying for the cat with the cream
I studied you in history
I studied in the library
In days of old when knights were bold
They'd settle it with sword and shield
In days of old when knights were bold
It's settled by the king
It's settled by the king
It's settled by the king
It's settled by the king

Writer/s: SARAH MARTIN, CHRISTOPHER GEDDES, ROBERT KILDEA, STEPHEN JACKSON, RICHARD COLBURN, STUART MURDOCH
Publisher: Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd.
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

The Cat with the Cream Song Chart

This song is a take on modern politics through the eyes of a young woman. Belle & Sebastian vocalist and songwriter Stuart Murdoch explained to The Independent: "It was after the 2010 (UK) elections and I was thinking about how there was a massive crash and [yet] nothing had changed. So I wrote 'The Cat with the Cream', but I actually only started when I imagined myself as a younger person, what she thought of the political situation. If you can imagine a very naive character and what they feel about things, that translates very nicely to pop."

Murdoch recalled the story of the song to Drowned in Sound : "In the aftermath of the 2010 UK general election I thought to myself, 'one of these days I'm going to write a political song.' Or at least 'one of these I'm going to have to write down how I feel about current events.' And then I didn't do it."

"But I did get a picture in my head of a girl. She was sitting at a big old wooden table in a basement kitchen in an old house. She was alone, comfortable, just finished a big bowl of ice cream, pondering at that ponderous kind of age. And I wondered what she thought of politics and the whole situation. So I wrote the song through her and it turned into Cat With The Cream."

"It was a good thinking table, and for a person in dark times, it was also a good praying table, and we will forgive her if most of the praying she did was for herself."

"I guess, she was praying for someone bigger, braver, wiser to come along than the average 'leader' of the day. In the books she had read there was always a King."

If someone looks like the cat that got the cream, that person is very pleased with him or herself as they have achieved their objective.

Back in the 1950s it appears people were easily satisfied. In 1956 The Four Lads sung on "Standing On The Corner," a hit song from the 1956 musical The Most Happy Fella:

Brother you don't know a nicer occupation
Matter of fact, neither do I
Than standing on a corner watching all the girls
Watching all the girls, watching all the girls go by
I'm the cat that got the cream.
Haven't got a girl but I can dream
Haven't got a girl but I can wish
So I'll take me down to Main street
And that's where I select my imaginary dish