Shakespears Sister, ‘Stay’: B-Movies hit the Top 40

Shakespears Sister
‘Stay’

Highest UK Top 40 position:
Number One on February 16, 1992

The very mention of Shakespears Sister tends to raise some questions, such as, “which one of them was in Bananarama?” and “wait, is that how you spell Shakespeare?”

First things first, then. The one from Bananarama is Siobhan Fahey, who is on the right in the picture above. She sings the “you better hope and pray…” bit in ‘Stay’. In the video, she is portrayed as The Angel of Death.

(Fahey is also the one who decided to spell Shakespeare that way, much to the eternal chagrin of all subeditors.)

Fahey started Shakespears Sister in the aftermath of Bananarama. It was originally a solo project until she found herself forming a close relationship with a singer-songwriter called Marcy Levy. Levy had enjoyed a hell of a career behind the scenes, most notably as co-author of Eric Clapton’s hit. However, her attempts at solo pop stardom had failed to take off.

Fahey invited Levy to join her in Shakespears Sister. She also urged Levy to adopt a new stage name: Marcella Detroit. Fahey’s husband (ex-Eurythmics Dave Stewart) supported the project and wrote a song specifically to show off Marcella Detroit’s astonishing vocal range.

That song was ‘Stay’.

Now, we can talk about some of the other questions that come up when you mention Shakespears Sister. Questions like:

• What is ‘Stay’ about?

• Why is Marcella so upset?

• Why is the video set on the moon?

• Just what, in general, is going on?

To answer all of those questions, we get in our time machine and travel back another 40 years. Back to 1953, when cinemas were showing a B-movie called Cat-Women of the Moon.

Cat-Women of the Moon is a zero-budget sci-fi adventure about a rocket that lands on the dark side of the moon. The ship’s crew consists entirely of manly men, except for one woman: their plucky female navigator. She has a suspiciously intuitive grasp of lunar topography… almost as if she’s been there before.

The navigator leads the men to a cave, where they are attacked by giant spiders.

They survive this trap and travel deeper inside this cave, where they find a kind of futuristic temple. This temple is the home of the Cat-Women, a tribe of hot lesbians in leotards.

Turns out, the Cat-Woman can control Earth-Women telepathically. They have been mentally manipulating the navigator all along, using her to lead the men to their temple. Their plan is to seduce the men, steal the rocket, and then use their telepathic powers to create an army of feminazi zombies, with which they will take over the Earth.

Just one problem. When the Cat-Women meet this group of sweaty astronauts—none of whom have washed their balls since leaving Earth—they are instantly overcome with lust. One of the Cat-Women, Lambda, falls madly in love with an astronaut called Doug. She ends up betraying her entire species for a man who no doubt smells of ass.

It’s a problematic movie by modern standards. The whole subtext is about how women will go crazy unless they’re getting regular dick.

But here’s the weird thing about art: everything is somebody’s favourite thing.

Fast forward to 1992. Cat-Women of the Moon is Siobhan’s favourite thing. She shows it to Marcella, who also loves it. They watch it over and over again. They’re not bothered by the extremely dodgy subtext. They see… something in it.

The pair formed an audacious plan. They decided to buy the rights to the movie, write a soundtrack, shoot some new scenes, and release the whole thing as a multimedia extravaganza.

Sadly, the label wouldn’t fund the experiment. They just wanted a regular album.

And so, the album Hormonally Yours is effectively the soundtrack for a movie that never got made. ‘Stay’ is the big third act showstopper, where Lambda begs Doug not to return to earth without her.

Which is why the iconic video is set on the moon.

There are two parts to ‘Stay’. The first part has a quite stripped-back musical foundation, often just a single organ that seems to float in zero gravity. It’s a chance for Marcella to show off her pipes, and she seizes the opportunity with both hands. This is her moment to shine.

And then, Siobhan crashes the party, with electric guitars and Bauhaus-esque yowling, dressed as The Angel of Death.

There is something of a musical battle between the two. Eventually, Marcella scares Siobhan away through the sheer force of her whistle register.

Again, that question: what does ‘Stay’ actually mean?

In the end, it doesn’t really mean anything other than “B-movies are fun”. But that doesn’t mean ‘Stay’ is meaningless.

People had their first kiss to this song. People had their first dance at their wedding to this song. People held lovers tight while listening to this song, and later lay on their beds broken-hearted while playing this song over and over.

Once an artist releases something into the wild, it acquires a meaning of its own. That’s true of all art. Meaning is not something given to us by authors; it’s something that art unlocks inside ourselves.

It’s like Cat-Women on the Moon. That dumb, cheap B-movie flick only existed to make a small profit, and yet it seems to have a real personal significance for both Detriot and Fahey — Detroit, in particular, seems to really identify with the character of Lambda.

I’ve watched the film (and you can too). I have no idea what Marcella sees in it. Lambda is a non-character with around three lines of dialogue, and they are “I love you”, “I will help you escape”, and “oh no, I’m dead.”

But when Marcella Detroit watched this movie, she felt something. And she put that something into ‘Stay’.

And then millions of people heard this song about a woman battling the Angel of Death for her lover’s soul in a moon-hospital, and all of those people thought, “yeah, this speaks to something in me.”

This song was Number One for eight weeks.

Intensely emotional pop culture is often dismissed as melodrama. That word has a sneering tone. Melodrama pushes your buttons to get an emotion, but that emotion is cheap.

(Slight hint of misogyny there as well: the melodrama label is often applied to things aimed at a majority female audience.)

And I’m not going to debate the validity of melodrama. But I’ll say this: I’m in my 40s now and, in the 30 years since ‘Stay’, I’ve learned that life offers lots of opportunities to feel numb, and few chances to feel something.

If a film about murderous Moon Women gives you emotions, that’s fine. If you’re moved by a song about a film about murderous Moon Women, that’s cool.

Feel your feelings. They don’t have to make sense.

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