The Meaning Of: LIKE A LADY
Crissi Cochrane
Welcome to The Meaning Of, a series of blog posts exploring the meaning behind each song from my 2020 album, Heirloom. I’ll explain the stories that inspired the songs, and reveal some of the roots and references that helped shape my musical and lyrical choices. If there’s something particular that you’re curious about that I haven’t revealed, leave me a question in the comments below, and I’ll be pleased to answer it.
The third song on Heirloom - and the oldest song of the bunch - is Like A Lady.
I brought this song to Adam Rideout-Arkell when we were recording Little Sway, which means that this tune was written in the summer of 2013. At that time, there were a few songs on Little Sway that I wasn’t in love with, and I wanted to cut or replace them. I think Adam thought I was crazy for suggesting we introduce a new song in the home stretch of production (rightly so), and FACTOR wouldn’t allow me to deliver any less than the number of songs I had outlined in my grant application or else repay a huge chunk of my grant, so Little Sway was released with all originally proposed songs intact, and without “Like A Lady”.
I sat on this song for years. I once tried to play it for Mike, and couldn’t get past the first lines because of the utterly crushed look on his face. I resigned myself to burying “Like A Lady”; there is no song that is worth more than he is, no matter how I felt when I was writing it. As a writer, you learn the boundaries of what you can and can’t say about the people around you. Unfortunately, you sometimes learn this through trial and error. Sometimes, that writing is just experience, just ephemeral. Alternatively, you can commit to your savage words and wound people for so long as they care to remember that your song exists. Luckily, time passed, things changed, and “Like A Lady” wasn’t so hurtful anymore.
Fast forward four years, and I’m putting together a set list for a show celebrating International Women’s Day. I decided to take a chance and unveil “Like A Lady”. At the show, I played it with that kind of electric anxious thrill that comes from pulling something off for the first time. Kev Kavanaugh, who photographed me several times around the release of Little Sway, was at the show and said to me, “You’ve never played that song before? You’ve GOT to play it.”
I’m not sure exactly how Mike finally heard the song in its entirety, but I know that when he did, it was when The Walkervilles were in the rear-view mirror, and he had no love lost about the version of him I was addressing in my song. I remember the night I was writing “Like A Lady”: I had worked all day (all week, all month, all year, so on) at the University in the lonely little job that I disliked but needed to pay the lion’s share of our bills - I’ve been nothing but your paycheque - while Mike was in Toronto with the band - you’ve been living it up in the city, you left me here, working the grind. At the time, I was listening to a lot of Erykah Badu, and I wanted the first lines of the song to have some of the power of the first lines of Badu’s song, “Tyrone” - I’m gettin’ tired of your shit, you don’t never buy me nothin’.
I don’t remember where the Walkervilles were that night, but it was probably a private gig, somewhere exclusive and wealthy, where they’d be enjoying gourmet cuisine and cocktails in their matching tailored suits before being adored by gorgeous men and women and falling asleep in luxurious hotel beds. Meanwhile, I was sleeping on an air mattress in the living room of our one-bedroom apartment, drinking whiskey straight from the bottle and crying. Whiskey wasn’t my first choice, but I had run out of weed and Mike wouldn’t let me visit our friendly neighborhood pot dealer all by my lonesome - god knows your baby needs a toke, so why won’t you hook me up baby? Can’t a lady buy her own?
But wait, you ask me, why was I sleeping in an air mattress? Because I had been waking up with itchy red welts all over my exposed skin, so I was pretty sure we had bed bugs in the bedroom. Joy.
So, this is the vignette that “Like A Lady” frames. A frustrated, tired, lonely girl who just wants to smoke a little weed.
The only other sort of “scene” in the song is in the chorus - if you’re only here tonight, why don’t you treat me like a lady? There’s a persistent disconnect when your loved one is often traveling for work, especially if it’s a type of work that makes texts and phone calls really scarce. Even when they physically return to you, there’s an emotional distance there that you both need to cross in order for them to truly come home to you. Sometimes you get there before they leave again, and sometimes, you don’t. God, I am so glad that those days are done.
Sonically (and thematically), I think this song takes a good deal of influence from Amy Winehouse’s “Addicted”, which is one of the first Amy tunes that I learned how to play. In it, she’s telling her girlfriend to stop bringing her man around because he keeps smoking all Amy’s weed. I liked how casually she could address this interpersonal drama around weed in a song, so I didn’t hesitate to do the same (albeit a lot more minimally) when it was part of the vignette of “Like A Lady”.
LIKE A LADY - CRISSI COCHRANE
This isn't how you treat your lady
I've been nothing but your paycheque
I've been holding out for you, baby
But you're making me feel like a fool
You've been living it up in the city
Yeah, you left me here working the grind
I come home to the bottle, baby
Cause you're taking your damn sweet time
Come on, baby, come on, baby, yeah
Now I've been thinking you owe me
And maybe I'm wrong - I've been alone too long
But you can't always be right
And if you're only here tonight
Why don't you treat me like a lady
Treat me like a lady, come on
This isn't how you treat your woman
God knows your baby needs a toke
So why won't you hook me up, baby
Can't a lady buy her own
Come on, baby, come on, baby, yeah
Now I've been thinking you owe me
And maybe I'm wrong - I've been alone too long
But you can't always be right
And if you're only here tonight
Why don't you treat me like a lady
Treat me like a lady, come on
Treat me like a lady, come on
Come on, baby, come on, baby, yeah
Now I've been thinking you owe me
And maybe I'm wrong - I've been alone too long
But you can't always be right
And if you're only here tonight
Why don't you treat me like a lady
Treat me like a lady
Treat me like a lady, come on
Come on, baby, yeah
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