"lily" — a genre all its own

For several reasons not explored at this time, I was expecting some kind of female voice to turn up in the songs but I pretty much missed when it first happened.

That was back in the 3.2 period and the song As darkness falls. I'd 'known' the narrator of that song was female from the lyrics "you lifted me to the sky / and twirled me like a ballerina" but that had faded against the power of its soul-searching lyrics. The narrator seemed less important than the partner she was helping die.

After the 3.2 set had finally completed and after the first four songs of the 3.3 set started with subvocal channeling in the pandemic lockdown winter, I realized that two of those four new songs had female narrators talking directly to partners, the same way the narrator in As darkness falls talked to her partner.

At first I thought it was a new 'flavour' of karosong but now it feels more like a genre, a specific way of telling a story, using a female narrator. Think of a detective noir story. It's a type of song I can imagine a Tina Turner singing, especially the song that seems to give the genre its name.

If not "Lily was here" why "lily"?

The song title Lily was here actually triggered a memory. The name "lily" comes from my later high school years when I was lunch friends with a couple of girls in my year. I don't recall their names now, or how it came to be a matter of discussion, but they gave me the name "lily". One even made a leather bracelet embossed with "lily" that I wore until it wore out.

It was when the third "lily' song, Since you went away started coming forward with a female narrator speaking directly to a partner that I knew this was a genre of song rather a flavour.