A couple people asked about the last song at Underground last night. It was “As Tears Go By,” the 1964 single from Marianne Faithfull, who died on Thursday at the age of 78. Since none of us have the same timeline, I’m not going to assume that anyone reading this saw the same glut of posts about her that I did, or is immediately familiar with the singer at all. So, for background, read this obituary from the BBC. 

Marianne Faithfull had a rough ride through pop stardom (here’s a gift link to an NYT story that explains more), but she persevered over and over again. She was legit cool. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards wrote “As Tears Go By,” her first hit, but she also wrote with them and is said to have influenced multiple Rolling Stones songs. Her career revival album, Broken English, was post-punk and post-disco and influential on subsequent generations of musicians, as well as club DJs. Later on, she would collaborate with the likes of Jarvis Cocker, Blur, Nick Cave and others. She’s part of a generation of nonconformist musicians who really set the stage for what we now know as alternative or indie music and it’s no exaggeration to say that there are loads of musicians (especially women, especially women who resist stereotypically feminine branding) whose names you wouldn’t know if it weren’t for her.

Anyhow, here’s last night’s set list, which begins and ends with Marianne Faithfull. 

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