18 December 1970
So, what lips would those be? Well, the “life-like features” in a portrait of the main character’s wife: he’s filthy rich and has everything in his mansion except her in the flesh. The maudlin song and setting nudge us to assume that she has died, but that’s not actually stated in the lyrics. Maybe she just packed her bags and left his sorry, stingy arse to his marbled floors, gold-plated taps and weird tech-bro-billionaire daily routine. (“4:30 a.m. – Wake up. Drink seaweed and kale smoothie. 4:45 a.m. – Do 100 press-ups. 5:15 a.m. – Gaze sadly upon portrait of wife who left after she contracted the woke mind virus. 5:20 a.m. – Invade Poland.”)
In any case, this is a third Irish number one within three months to deal with some sort of marital sadness. Perhaps that theme had a particular resonance for the 1970 Irish record-buying public. We already know they loved country-tinged waltz-time showband ballads, which is what ‘If Those Lips Could Only Speak’ is. Like the bleepy analogue synth in a previous one of those marital melodramas, Margo’s ‘I’ll Forgive And I’ll Try To Forget’, the tinny mandolin here gives it a sort of kitsch poppiness. Otherwise, Dermot Henry’s thin delivery shares with other country & Irish vocalists of that era the sing-song style of primary schoolchildren reciting a poem. And – oh no! – we get a spoken-word middle section. If those lips could only not speak.
