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

Belgium (albums): #1
UK (albums): #18 [1x silver]
Spotify: Over 1.5 million
YouTube Music: Over 100 thousand

Instruments

Bass, drums, guitar, horns, piano, strings

Details

• 'Statues' was an album made during the turmoil of splitting up. Roisin Murphy and Mark Brydon, or Moloko as they were also known, were not only collaborators in music but in the romance department as well. Indeed, Moloko began after the pair got together in the mid-90's and ended when they called it quits. Only, it would have, except they were contractually obligated to make one more album, 'Statues', as the name suggests, came at a time when the pair were frozen in time, apart, but together, for one last go around, whether they liked it or not.
  
  
  
  The result is a record fraught with a sexual tension lingering in the past. It's a remembrance, not only of their relationship, but of their history as a group, their shared journey through life and the music business. Murphy has said the lyrics are personal and she refuses to talk about the relationship 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 on in the album Roisin is 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?"
  
  For what it's worth, Murphy went on to have a successful solo career after Moloko split, while Brydon has been largely absent from music since the end the group, except for the occasional remix.
  
  
  

Artwork