Songfacts®:

• First And Last And Always was the debut album for The Sisters of Mercy, and the only one with Wayne Hussey, who played guitar and wrote the music to six of the songs on the set, including this one.
  
  The lyrics are full of rich imagery, with lead singer Andrew Eldritch (who wrote the lyrics) growling about facing a watery grave if Marian cannot save him. Eldritch was new to writing lyrics, and has said that he was in an "altered state" while writing them, as he was doing a fair amount of drugs at the time. To a sober ear, the words are a disconnected series of thoughts, but Eldritch says they were connected in his mind when he wrote them. The lyrics work not so much because of their meaning, but because of their sound: how they accompany the music and accent his very deep voice.
• In a 2013 Songfacts interview with Wayne Hussey, we asked him to name his favorite Sisters of Mercy song, and he cited this one. Talking about how the song came together, he said: "Andrew [Eldritch] and I worked at different times of the day in the studio. I would work during the day, which is why poor old Dave [producer David M. Allen] was absolutely exhausted by the end of it: because he was trying to work with both of us. 'Marian' was something I came up with in the studio and there I wrote the whole song, music and the backing track. I wrote 'Black Planet' the same day, actually. Then Andrew came in in the evening: 'Oh, I don't like that.' I was, like, whatever. I went off. I came back in the morning and there were finished vocals on both of them. That was how it was working on the album."
  
  Hussey adds that when he listened to the song about 25 years later, he was struck by the "weird alchemy" on the guitars, which held up very well. "It sounds really spacious, but very full," he said.
• The last verse is in German. The translation:
  
  What I can do and what I could do
  I just don't know anymore
  Give me something beautiful again
  Drag me from the sea
  I hear you calling Marian
  Can you hear me calling?
  I am here alone
  I hear you calling Marian
  Without your help I am lost in this place