Album: Into the Blues (2007)
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Songfacts®:

  • This blues track is from the perspective of a boy who likes a girl from the wrong side of town, "the part where folks live on welfare, the part where you find needles on the ground."

    "That was someone I know," Armatrading said of the narrator. She explained the story to Daniel Rachel, author of The Art of Noise: Conversations with Great Songwriters: "He was not rich, but from good parents, and she was from a poor family. Very different backgrounds, and all his friends were saying, 'Forget her. How are you going to make this work? She's from a council estate, you're in your posh little house, it's not going to work.' That's why you hear all the: you're from a part where 'folks live on welfare.'"
  • With Into the Blues, Armatrading was the first female UK artist to debut at #1 on the Billboard Blues chart. The album was also nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Blues Album, making her the first female UK artist to ever be nominated in that category.

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