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Coleen: The Indie Queen Coleen McLoughlin’s journey from naïve ogre-loving WAG to best-selling author and junior style icon has been well documented, but perhaps her most surprising chroniclers have been the Pitchfork-approved stars of US indie rock. This unlikely trend began when Ted Leo & the Pharmacists included the track Colleen on their album, Living With The Living. Though they choose to disguise their titular heroine by cleverly adding an extra L to her name (a signifier we will see repeated), it is clear the Washington band are narrating McLoughlin’s rise to fame through their chosen medium: chugging pub-rock. The song opens thus:”Colleen – never to be crowned queen, never an evergreen/ Floating above the scene as still as a figurine.” Leo immediately announces himself not only as a man with RhymeZone at the top of his favourites list, but as someone who understands the isolation felt by a dumpy 15-year-old schoolgirl whose relationship with England’s greatest young footballer, Wayne Rooney, has just been discovered. The lyrics, “Floating through your routine every day since you were fifteen/ And as rosy as you make it seem, I know life for you ain’t been a dream” allude to McLoughlin’s uneasy relationship with the press and public and the castigation she received for spending tens of thousands of pounds on candy-pink velour rompersuits and Burberry bikinis. The song paints a bleak portrait of an innocent thrust into fame and when Leo sings “Everyone wants something from Colleen” we keenly feel her pain. Perhaps because the story of a tangerine-tanned idiot sat uneasily alongside ye olde worlde fables of bears, monkeys and pixies Joanna Newsom did not include her own tribute to McLoughlin, Colleen, on her recent album, Ys. Thankfully, it made it onto her new eponymous EP. Elfheaded Newsom channels the sound of traditional English folk music as she picks up McLoughlin’s tale, this time in the first person. “I must have been a thief or a whore/ Then surely was thrown overboard” begins Newsom, in clear reference to the time McLoughlin’s then boyfriend, now fiancé was found by the tabloids fucking a fat 52-year old prostitute in Whiston, Merseyside. This, unsurprisingly, was our heroine’s lowest ebb. Newsom, an insightful and empathetic narrator, plunges McLoughlin into a metaphorical sea of confusion (“It picked me up and tossed me round/ I lost my shoes and tore my gown”) that leaves her drained (“I forgot my name and drowned/Then woke up with the surf a pounding”), but reborn. The public perception of McLoughlin changed almost overnight and with sympathy the press helped rebuild her: “Well they took me in and shod my feet/ And taught me prayers for chastity/ And said my name would be Colleen” They also helped her to bury the transgressions of Rooney: “I was blessed among all women/ To have forgotten everything.” It is here we meet the Happy Thin Pretty Coleen. England’s New Rose revels in her fresh fame (“I dive with a wildness in me/ And am so sweetly there received”) and meets Rooney’s lank-haired new wonderpal Ronaldo: “He said its name translated roughly to He-Who-Easily-Can-Curve-Himself-Against-The-Sky.” However, Newsom reminds us that the pressure to stay slim (“the welting weight for every season”) and struggles with her public image (“But still I don't know any goddamned ‘Colleen!’”) still trouble our heroine. While last night Rooney’s brace helped Manchester United to victory over AC Milan, McLoughlin's pursuit of happyness continues. Cecile Schott, who records under the name Colleen for the lovely Leaf, has a new album that points to more pain for McLoughlin. Les ondes silencieuses is a record of spectral majesty that picks up Newsom’s water born wordplay (the title translates as ‘the waves of silence’) and uses clarinets, spinets and a viola de gamba to wordlessly depict the hidden turmoil of her sweet muse. Poor Coleen. Her tan still burns brightly but her shaded heart cannot forgive. Ted Leo & the Pharmacists - Colleen [mp3] [source: Buy] Joanna Newsom - Colleen [mp3] [source: Buy] Colleen - Les Ondes Silencieuses [mp3] [source: Buy] Posted by: Scott 25/04/07