BY HEATHCOTE WILLIAMS 

Why’d ya do it, she said, they’re mine, all your jewels

You just tied me to the mast of the ship of fools


“Why D’Ya Do It”, from Marianne Faithfull’s 1979 album Broken English has been described as one of the most honest “love” songs ever written or recorded, an unrelenting, and utterly unself-conscious tirade of abuse, betrayal and anger aimed at the very soul of an unfaithful lover.


Betrayed by her boyfriend of the time, seething with jealousy and fury, Faithfull poured her every frayed feeling into the performance, until naked emotion disguised even the brutal frankness of the lyric. Indeed, although sensitive ears might well still recoil from some of the more explicit lines in the song, there can be few people who have not at one time experienced its meaning – and fewer still who could name another song that says the same things so perfectly