a short site about The Divine Comedy

French version

Victoria Falls

Lyrics & Music: Neil Hannon

Published by: Damaged Pop Music / BMG Music Publishing Ltd.

Originally interpreted by: The Divine Comedy

 

To see the lyrics, click on the name of the version you are interested in (on the left).

 

Tabs/Scores

Informations

This is one of the rarest songs at lives: we don’t have any setlist including it before 2001, and then it has only been partially played!

It’s a two-voice song about a girl, Victoria, who has many lovers. Neil once explained that there was a girl in Enniskillen, called Victoria Scott, who liked the other boys, but not him [1].

The girl in the song is half-crazy and wants to commit suicide. Indeed, the line “Virginia creeps through her hair” can be understood in several ways. First, it’s a pun on ‘virginia-creeper’. Then it can also be an allusion to Virginia Woolf (who was suffering of a mental disease and committed suicide). Thus if Virginia is “creeping through her hair”, she’s getting into Victoria’s head, another way of saying that Victoria’s getting mad.

Virago is a publisher of dead women’s fiction.

Last but not least, the song contains references to other songs in the album: “Death to the supernatural one” (cf: ‘Death Of A Supernaturalist’) and ‘Queen Of The South’).

[1] The Liberator Q&A, 1999.