Music / Nerina Pallot

If love is a drug I guess we're all sober,
If hope is a song I guess it's all over,
How to have faith when faith is a crime?
I don't want to die...
If God's on our side then God is a joker,
Asleep on the job his children fall over,
Running out through the door and straight to the sky,
I don't want to die...

"Everbody's Gone to War"

Nerina Natasha Georgina Pallot (pronounced pa-low with a silent "t") (born 26 April 1974) is a British pop Singer-Songwriter who originated from Jersey in the Channel Islands but is currently based in London. She is best known for her hit song "Sophia" from her second album Fires which came out in 2005, though as of 2017, she has released 4 more LPs and over 15 EPs since.

Her musical style is either acoustic guitar or piano-based pop music, with lyrics that tend to include various literary references owing to her degree in Literature, which she earned in 2009, around which time she released her aptly-titled third album The Graduate.

Aside from being a very prolific songwriter herself (best exemplified during 2014 wherein she devoted herself to releasing a 5-song EP for every single month of that year), she has also written many songs for various artists, the most famous of which was the song "Aphrodite" for Kylie Minogue, which became the title track of Kylie's 2010 album. Said album included another song originally by Nerina, "Better Than Today."

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Discography

• Dear Frustrated Superstar (2001)
• Fires (2005)
• The Graduate (2009)
• Buckminster Fuller (EP) (2009)
• Junebug (EP) (2009)
• Skeleton Key (EP) (2010)
• Year of the Wolf (2011)
• Yes, December (EP) (2011)
• Lonely Valentine Club (EP) (2013)
• We Made It Through Another Year (EP) (2013)
• 2014: The Year of EPs
  • The Hold Tight
  • We Should Break Up
  • When the Morning Stars Sang Together
  • Free As You Wanna Be
  • Grand Union
  • When I Grow Up
  • Rousseau
  • Little Bull
  • Small Things
  • Spirit Walks
  • Live at the Union Chapel
  • Winter Rooms
• The Sound and the Fury (2015)
• Stay Lucky (2017)

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Nerina and her music provide examples of the following tropes:

• Anti-Love Song: "My Last Tango" has the line "It's better, better than music/Better than words to be with you/But better that we're apart." Two songs from Nerina's anti-Valentine EP We Should Break Up — the title track and opener "Dead to Me" — also fit the trope.
• Author Appeal: Nerina's songs tend toward the moody and melancholy, given her predilection for Lonely Piano Pieces, to the point that it's easier to name her more overt love songs, like "Sophia" and "It Starts" for example.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: The theme of "Real Late Starter", particularly the lyric "I'm a genius loser".
• Cover Version: Live at the Union Chapel includes a cover of "Moments of Pleasure".
• Face on the Cover: Except for her 2015 release The Sound and the Fury, every full-length album has featured her on the cover. The EPs, in turn, feature her own artwork on their covers instead.
• Football Fight Song: "The Right Side" is her take on this trope. Speaking of football, she's a self-professed Arsenal FC fan.
• For the Evulz: "When Did I Become Such a Bitch?". The title is mostly rhetorical for the singer, as the bridge indicates: "And being so cruel/is all the pleasure that I get..."
• Four More Measures: "That's Really Something" has a somewhat lengthy intro considering its simple acoustic melody.
• Genre Roulette: Her 2014 "Year of EPs" project gives a nice glimpse of the genres she's tried her hand at, ranging from pop-rock to adult contemporary, and even to 70's-disco.
• Intercourse with You: "Turn Me On Again", though it's mostly about a man who's making the woman lust after him rather than obvious sexual overtones. "Come Into My Room", despite the apparent lack of subtlety from the title, is actually quite the heartwarming song.
• Literary Allusion Title: Her Twitter handle is @ladychatterley, which isn't quite a direct allusion since Chatterley is her husband's surname (which would technically make her Sir Chatterley's lover.)
• Lonely Piano Piece: At least a fourth of her discography is this trope, including her biggest hit "Sophia".
• Love at First Sight: According to Nerina, she and her husband Andy were engaged within a half-hour of their first date.
• Love Makes You Stupid: The sentiment behind "Man Didn't Walk on the Moon": "You could tell me man didn't walk on the moon, and I'd believe you/When you do what you do so well..."
• Love Nostalgia Song: "It Was Me" is about a woman admitting to having ruined her relationship with someone only after they've broken up. "Seventeen" is probably one of the most lighthearted takes on this trope, looking back on happy memories simply for what they were and how they felt, without dwelling on how they're gone.
• Lyrical Cold Open: Done in "Better Than Today" and "Real Late Starter".
• Mars and Venus Gender Contrast: Discussed in "Men Are Not From Mars", as a way of teaching men about the peculiar behavior of women when in a relationship, which also includes an admonition for them to get over the apparent misunderstandings and simply stick by their women.
• Named After Somebody Famous: Two EPs, Buckminster Fuller and Rousseau (which, according to Nerina, alludes to both the painter Henri and the philosopher Jean-Jacques). Also, her son's name is Wolfgang Amadeus Chatterley.
• New Sound Album: The Graduate has a much happier mood to it than her previous albums.
• Non-Appearing Title: "My Last Tango", "Everything's Illuminated!".
• One-Woman Song: "Sophia", wherein the singer is trying to convey to Sophia the full measure of her love for a particular man.
• Overly Long Name: Nerina's full name is Nerina Natasha Georgina Pallot.
• Pep-Talk Song: "No Harm Done".
  "You know you're really trying when you fall but you get up again,
  You sort the man from the boys, cause the boys, they're just talking their game
  Hey now, you're really living cause you know what it's like to feel pain
  No harm done, come on and do it again..."
• Precision F-Strike: "Jump", where the second line is "I go for the suckers, those mean motherfuckers, I can't resist..." She also has a song titled "Sorriest MF in Town", where "MF" is the censored form of the actual word in the lyrics, "Till my baby's back, I'll be having none of that/I'll be the sorriest motherfucker in town." The song which truly exemplifies the "precision" part of this trope is "When Did I Become Such A Bitch?", however, wherein she pauses at just the right moment:
  "But I
  Hate everyone, and everything all of the time,
  And being so cruel
  Is all the pleasure that I get, my wicked tongue helps me forget
  Myself and all my foolish ways, cause being good is just so fucking
  Boring, la la la, it's boring..."
• Religion Rant Song: Nerina admits to being a very lapsed Catholic at best. As a result, some of her songs are thematically atheistic, including:
  • "God", which questions the intent of a creator responsible for such flawed creations.
  • "Everybody's Gone to War", in which the second half of the chorus has the lines "If God's on our side, then God is a joker/Asleep on the job, his children fall over/Running out through the door, and straight to the sky..."
  • "Damascus", in which the singer sees no point in claiming to be saved, considering the apparent hopelessness of this world, being the only world that we know.
  • "Free As You Wanna Be", which has an overt humanist theme, with the lines "I don't believe in God, but I got faith/That we're smart enough to fix this all one day..."
• Self-Empowerment Anthem: "One Foot Forward", about the simplicity of persistence. "If I Had a Girl" is a rousing feminist anthem, which highlights several double standards that women have to put up with even in this day and age, and declares at the end:
  "If I wear my skirt short, don't mean I don't have a brain,
  And if I cover myself from head to toe, don't mean that I'm in chains
  I don't have to hate men, to know that life ain't fair,
  And I see how far we've got to go, but I know, I know, I know that we'll get there..."
• Small Role, Big Impact: As mentioned above, she wrote "Aphrodite" for Kylie Minogue, which became the title track of her 2010 album.
• War Is Hell: The main point of "Everybody's Gone to War", which Nerina wrote around the time that Tony Blair decided to back George W. Bush in the Iraq War. "History Boys" was inspired by Nerina's sentiments toward becoming a mother, and imagining the chaotic and conflicted world her son was about to enter at the time she wrote the song.
• The World Is Just Awesome: "That's Really Something" is about being reassured and comforted by the beauty of the night sky and the dawn of a new day.

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