Son Of An Only Child

Album: Jubilee Road (2018)
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Songfacts®:

  • Tom Odell's Jubilee Street album was inspired by a time when he was living in a terraced street in east London. The lyrics to this song were inspired by the family that lived over the road from him. He told The Sun: "Their parents would go out on a Saturday leaving the kids behind with a babysitter. It conjured up some memories of my own childhood, when my sister and I used to huddle around the TV and watch Fame Academy. I began to write and suddenly there was a story there!"
  • Odell told The Yorkshire Post that the story he came up with was "a babysitter with this young boy and then the young boy's older and he's part of this lost generation and he feels angry."
  • Odell namechecks two other songs in the last verse: Elton John's "Rocket Man" and Tina Turner's "Simply The Best." He explained it's "a doff of the cap" to both numbers.

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