The Girl In The Yellow Dress

Album: Rattle That Lock (2015)
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Songfacts®:

  • David Gilmour told Uncut the story of this song, which contains lyrics penned by his novelist wife Polly Samson. "The basic backing track was recorded in 2004, with a jazz trio in this room (Astoria)," he said. "It's been waiting for something to turn it."

    "Polly wrote a beautiful lyric about a girl dancing in a jazz club wearing a yellow dress that comes from a picture that we have by Johnny Dewe Mathews," Gilmour continued. "I recorded it again at Abbey Road with a different band, including Jools Holland on piano, Robert Wyatt playing coronet and Rado Klose – who has been a friend of mine since I was born – on guitar."
  • The song features double bass by English jazz musician Chris Laurence. He previously played on David Gilmour's On The Island tracks "Red Sky at Night" and "A Pocketful of Stones."
  • Asked by NPR if there a distinction for her between writing a narrative for her fiction work and the narrative for a record, Polly Sampson replied that the penning of this song, "felt incredibly similar to writing a short story."

    "The added advantage is that there's someone prompting me," she added. "There is no blank piece of paper, because the music is there."
  • The animated video was created by Los Angeles-based filmmaker Danny Madden, whose other credits include Euphonia and Confusion Through Sand.

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