How do you interpret this Beautiful South song?

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I"m whiling away time on a car journey. 'You Keep it all In" by The Beautiful South came in the playlist and DH and I have been discussing the lyrics. It's obviously about emotional repression, particularly in men, but the lyrics also have a dark side. The conversation starts with the female voice accusing her male partner of not being open, it then progresses towards him possibly 'confessing' dark secrets from his past. But its not clear if he's being serious or sarcastic/jokey, or just talking about things he's witnessed or seen in the news. I haven't been able to find anything online that explains that part of the lyrics. Interested in opinions.

Summarising:

1. The female tells the male that his problem is that he keeps everything in.
2. He responds by recalling a conversation in which he wanted to kill the female, but didn't express it.
3. We get the husband preparing to fight and the frightened daughter who hears it but also keeps it in.
4. Then come the murder in '73 and robbery in '62.
5. He says that last week the female gagged and bound him to a seat.
6. These are immediately followed by the speaker's statement that these are things that have happened to him and that he has kept inside.

You realise this Housemartin's song is having a go at men!

I always assumed it was alternating dress sizes with “marks out of 10”.

Thinking about it I must be wrong about dress sizes because that would only work for a U.K. audience.

But I assumed the “perfect 10” was “she’s a 10 out of 10” rather than a dress size 10.

Aw. I remember when people wrote the name of a crush on their pencil case. Or maybe a pop star. Do pencil cases still exist ?

It's just about shallow songwriters isn't it? Who write love songs about girls just to make money.

I thought it was obvious, " I love you for the PRS cheques that you bring" it's a song about cynicism in the music industry.

Mind, some people have " Every breath you take" as a wedding song.

The Beautiful South always annoyed me as I couldn’t make out the lyrics. No enunciation!
Don’t seem to have missed much.

I see the lyrics to Perfect 10 as him loving her whatever size she is.

She could be sweet 16
Bustin' out at the seams
It's still love in the first degree

We’re seeing him again in November too, seen him loads of times and he never disappoints.

@tripleginandtonic @TallSturdyGirls
Yes if you read my previous posts I appreciate it is "ironic" (How many people who have not RTFT are going to say that)
However my point is how many "ironic" songs do you need to have in your catalogue that say something ironically vile about women.
So

Perfect 10
Happy Hour
Don't marry her
36D
Property quiz
I love you (but you are boring)
Woman in the Wall
till you can't tuck it in
Half hearted get

etc

A bit much irony I think and not pleasant for a female to listen to
coupled with the toothless mumbling and shit rhyming

Enjoy your Beautiful South
And stop telling me it is supposed to be ironic

At that time, people didn't tend to google lyrics. And people complained if men didn't share their emotions, but then complained if they shared too much. Not like now, at all.

Thanks OP, I love that song and it's made me have a proper listen to the lyrics...

I think it's about the woman wanting more emotional connection and asking for him to share what's going through his head and troubling him as he's distant from her (relationship run its course maybe), and he's being sarcastic saying about the robbery and the murder, when really there isn't that much going on at all to share.

I loved the Beautiful South growing up. I think a lot of their lyrics can be taken as ironic like their name. A band immensely proud of their Hull roots and they called themselves The Beautiful South

@Keepoffmyartichokes Paul Heaton is from Merseyside

If this is an actual question, I don’t think anyone except the writer can answer it! Who knows what was meant?

Yes, I've seen them in WH Smith (now TG Jones in my area). Love a pencil case and still got one. And yes, you'd write all sorts of stuff on them, plaster them with stickers.

I am 54 years of age so old enough to have been a huge Housemartins fan and also, the Beautiful South.

It's just their usual irony, for me. He views her statement of 'keeping it all in' as an accusation. There are things that he just can't be bothered to discuss with her; he just wants to be left alone!

He's from Cheshire, however 2 members of the band are from Hull, The Beautiful South was formed in Hull and Hull features in some of their videos.

So you don't think Woman in the wall is sympathetic to women being abused then? Not many me writers tackle issues lije thus.

Hi I am obviously older than you lot I remember when singers like Briana Corrigan refused to sing lyrics like 36D

The lyrics appear to be a scathing attack on glamour models with lines such as, 36D, so what? Is that all you've got?' but the content caused such offence to vocalist Briana Corrigan that she refused to sing on the track. "She found offence with a number of our songs," says Hemingway, "and many times we changed lyrics when we realised that she was right." With the line, You cheapen and you nasty every woman in this land,' Heaton's feelings on the subject are crystal clear but Hemmingway later commented, "We all agree that we should have targeted the media as sexist instead of blaming the girls for taking off their tops." He also said, "The misogyny of the song was not intended at all...I sometimes regret that the song was released at all."

This was about all the hit records that cash in on a woman’s name (I wrote this song for you!).

The list of names, as the name is interchangeable, tongue in cheek to have a song with a whole list of names - that the record can cash in on.

The bottom of my - pencil case (not ‘my heart’) is funny, unexpectedly and again highlights the superficial.

So it was just me who thought the robbery and murder were part of his past and not hyperbole/imgaination? ….its just I had a few uncles who I were sort of rough but were guarded/didn’t say much and so it wasn’t that much of a leap to think in their younger years there would be some skeletons that it was better not to know.

Love The Beautiful South! This thread has got me wanting to listen to a whole bunch of their songs right now (but I'm at work and don't have headphones so I won't).
Prettiest Eyes and A Little Time are my favourite.

I lived in hull in the 80s. Drank in the same boozer as The Beautiful South. Also lived in Newcastle in the same period. Used to see Briana Corrigan busking on the Quayside. Before her Beautiful South days.

Yes It was Cheshire when he was born in Bromborough, its Merseyside now much to the annoyance of some residents as there are some posh bits. I work in a hotel/restaurant in Bromborough and some of the older clientele still put "Cheshire" as their address.
I love the fact that his mum and dad are "Doris and Horace" quite old fashioned names for the time.
Makes me think of my mothers parents 💕 Dorothy & Herbert, though my gran used to call him Horace if he was in trouble 😂

I love Paul heatons songs. Never taken them seriously