Released on this day (21 March 1995) by Island Records: the album A Secret Life, gloomy chain-smoking art rock diva Marianne Faithfull’s eerie, underrated and inspired collaboration with David Lynch’s soundtrack composer Angelo Badalementi – truly a marriage made in musical heaven. Richard Metzger of the Dangerous Minds website perceptively describes it as “a tragic concept album about a doomed love affair from the woman’s point of view.” Badalamenti wreathes Faithfull’s ravaged Marlene Dietrich laments in lush, nocturnal film noir settings just as he did previously with Julee Cruise on her two earlier alluring LPs. “Sleep” is hypnotic and ominous; “Love in the Afternoon” sees Faithfull casting herself as a guilt-torn adulteress (“It's getting dark outside / I have to go / Don't want my husband / Or my friends to know / Zip up my dress …”) and the desolate “Losing” is one of the bleakest things she ever recorded (“When I let my hate pervert me / And there's no more tears for crying / I'll just kill you if you hurt me / I'll kill you ..”). But she allows herself a glimmer of hope on the yearning and romantic “She.” The album (and its sole single “Bored by Dreams”) tanked commercially but it holds up beautifully and reaffirms Faithfull’s stature as rock music’s premiere tragedienne. Badalamenti died in 2022, Faithfull in 2025. Revisiting A Secret Life is a great away to celebrate their artistry. Pictured: portrait of Faithfull by Michel Comte, 1994.
