Moloko - The Only Ones

"To users and losers, doubters of their daughters and sons, your angel will come."

Album: Statues [4th album]
Genre: Downtempo
Recorded:  London, England
Album Release: March 3rd 2003
Single Release:
Length: 4:14
Producer: Mark Brydon
Vocalist: Roisin Murphy [age 29]
Label: The Echo Label

Official Audio


Live in 2003

Charts, Streams & Sales

Spotify: Over 1.5 million
YouTube Music: Over 100 thousand

Instruments

Bass, drums, guitar, horns, piano, strings

Details

Murphy has said the lyrics are personal and she refuses to talk about the failing relationship with Mark Brydon in interviews because 'it's all on the records'. Her words. So let's take a look at the lyrics.

The opening track features the line 'how could you have questioned us?' Which indicates doubt, but later in the album she's more resolute 'The setting sun is set in stone and it remains for me alone to carve my own and set it free.'

The song featured here 'The Only Ones' is an oxymoron that takes the singlular one and changes it to ones. It works in a similar way to 'The Lone Rangers', the name of the fictional band from the film Airheads (1994), and encapsulates the sense of being together but apart. They aren't two, or a couple, as they used to be, but ones, two separate individuals.

Judging by the content of the lyrics, I would guess it was Murphy who ended the relationship. 'The Only Ones' includes the line

"In all this doom and this gloom and pessimistical visions, came all condemned men, all fatalists, in metaphysical fear. How could love be here?"

Artwork