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Petula Clark - TV Tropes

  • ️Tue Nov 30 2021

Petula Clark (Music)

"When you're alone and life is making you lonely,
you can always go downtown."

"In some ways, I've always approached singing as acting, and the voice is just like a way of carrying the song."

Petula Sally Olwen Clark CBE (born November 15, 1932 in Ewell, Surrey) is an English singer and actress whose career spans eight decades. She began performing during World War II as “the British Shirley Temple”, singing for British troops over BBC radio. As she grew up, she branched out into acting. In the 1950s, she moved to the Continent and began recording in French.

Clark is best known as part of the first wave of The British Invasion. After a decade of success in Europe, she scored her first American hit with “Downtown,” written and produced by Tony Hatch, which topped the Billboard chart. More hits done in collaboration with Hatch followed: “I Know a Place,” “My Love,” “This Is My Song,” "The Other Man's Grass Is Always Greener," "I Couldn't Live Without Your Love," and “Don’t Sleep in the Subway,” among others. She was nominated for nine Grammy Awards over a four-year period, winning twice.note 

As an actress, Clark's best-remembered role was alongside Fred Astaire in Francis Ford Coppola's 1968 film version of the musical Finian's Rainbow, a performance which earned her a Golden Globe nomination.

Tropes associated with Petula Clark include:

  • Colorful Song: "Color My World" cites multiple colors in the environment: yellow sunshine, green grass, blue sky, as a metaphor for how her lover brightens up her world.
  • Grass Is Greener: "The Other Man's Grass Is Always Greener" is a song built around this turn of phrase. It encourages the listener to "be thankful for what you've got".

    "The other man's grass is always greener
    The sun shines brighter on the other side
    The other man's grass is always greener
    Some are lucky, some are not
    Just be thankful for what you've got"

  • Neon City: Bright city lights are fun, dazzling, and distracting in "Downtown":

    "Just listen to the music of the traffic in the city
    Linger on the sidewalk where the neon signs are pretty
    How can you lose?"

  • Omniglot: She has recorded in English, French, German, Spanish, and Italian.
  • Separated by a Common Language: In the UK, "subway" generally refers to an underground pedestrian street crossing, but "Don't Sleep in the Subway" is referring to the usual American sense of an underground public transit system. The title was inspired by the Broadway musical Subways Are for Sleeping.
  • Train Song: In "Don't Sleep in the Subway", sleeping on the subway train is considered settling:

    Don't sleep in the subway, darlin', the night is long
    Forget your foolish pride, nothing's wrong
    Now you're beside me again