In perfect synchronicity, Kmatt wrote,
"...Levi Stubbs himself can, of course, tell us this story better than anyone, but Billy Bragg’s “Levi Stubbs’ Tears” adds the layer that comes darn close to telling my journey with this music. Short of the accident, running away, and returning ghosts—I’ve often added this to my other list of perfect pop songs...",
as I, a couple hundred miles away, was listening to Mr. Braggs' "best of","Must I Paint You A Picture", because one can only type "Levi Stubbs" so many times before that guitar work comes strutting up to the frontal lobe. The story told in "Levi Stubbs' Tears" is a perfect composite of all the paranoiac elements of the H-D-H produced Four Tops records such as "Ask The Lonely", "Bernadette", "Standing In The Shadows of Love", and "7 Rooms of Gloom", yet it's presented as a folk-pop record sans any H-D-H gimmicks. It's a testament of not only the strength of the song and the record, but to Mr. Stubbs that anyone who has heard it knows exactly what the title, and it's association with the world within the song, implies.
It's also a desert topping and a floor wax. It's talking paranoia with the Tops man
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