27 November 1970
Only a few weeks after Freda Payne’s epic ‘Band Of Gold’ ended its run at number one, here’s another 1970 Irish chart-topper already from a woman with a song calling out a dysfunctional marriage. What’s more, it’s by a country & Irish showband act – and the singer is even a blood relative of Daniel O’Donnell. Were feminism and progressive change really taking root in the provincial dancehalls and rural heartlands of conservative Catholic Ireland? Would the ’70s see our social transformation and modernisation?
Well, no. The rumble of the Belfast-Dublin contraceptive train may have shaken things slightly during the ’70s, but Ireland’s social progress backs right up the line during our scarily regressive ’80s. The heroines of those Freda Payne and Margo hits, if domicile in Ireland and looking for access to legally-recognised civil divorce, would be waiting until 1996. In any case, we wouldn’t want to have been pinning our hopes in 1970 on a country & Irish act – a scene even today not noted as a hotbed of radically engaged discourse. Turns out the song about marriage breakdown by an Irish act at number one in Ireland was just a song, not the signal for revolution.
Still and all, it’s refreshing to hear an Irish woman voice such assertive and modern sentiments at the top of our charts – and Margo’s wee brother Daniel hasn’t dared even an inch of such real-world engagement in the whole of his career. Lyrics aside, though, ‘I’ll Forgive And I’ll Try To Forget’ is basic two-chord waltz-time country & Irish fare. You wouldn’t think of Margo as one of the great Irish voices. Ironically, for all my talk about modernity, it’s the retro analogue synth which catches my ear. And whatever about the body text, the song title hints at an outcome of weary, resigned acceptance.
So what about the real-life unhappily-wed Irish people of 1970, with no prospect of civil divorce or social sympathy? Well, perhaps they just had to accommodate their pain vicariously with the melodrama of ‘Band Of Gold’ and ‘I’ll Forgive And I’ll Try To Forget’, along with that of foreign TV dramas and sentimental novels, then were left to sit silently by the bleak fireside of their loveless marriage and weep.
