Wonderful Life

I was writing today and one of my characters was thinking of a song, ‘Wonderful Life’ by Black, the name by which singer Colin Vearnacombe was known. It’s a favourite song of mine, with a haunting melody, wonderfully produced, and equally haunting lyric. It was the lyrics my character was thinking of as she struggled to keep her balance between anxiety and a tentative optimism. The song was first released in 1986, then again, taken from Black’s album of the same name, in 1987. The lyric which I and most people thought was powerful and meaningful, were described by Black himself as ironic.

The song had popped into my head as I was writing and I realised I’d forgotten anything I ever knew about Black, aka Colin and had a little nose into Wikipedia. I was shocked and sad to discover, what I may have known but had forgotten, that Colin Vearnacombe had died in 2016, as a result of a car crash; he was only fifty-three and had been in Ireland when he was involved in a car accident near Cork Airport. He’d had many, many other successful songs and albums, right up to November 2015,  two months before he died. I don’t know any of them, apart from ‘Wonderful Life’, but maybe having remembered him, I will investigate.