A different way of seeing 3 - Red Right Hand
“On a gathering storm comes/A tall handsome man/In a dusty black coat with/A red right hand.”
Peaky Blinders fans will know this song. It's the ballad to which the credits are set, typically with Tommy Shelby striding in slow motion through smoke and mud, peak pulled low, overcoat sweeping behind.
The song was released in 1994, featuring in Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds's excellent album Let Love in. It’s been covered by scores of artists since. In Peaky Blinders itself, while mostly it's Cave's low, rasping voice creating the menace, the series has versions by Arctic Monkeys, PJ Harvey, Iggy Pop, Jarvis Cocker, Laura Marling and Snoop Dogg.
Read the lyrics and you'll think the song was written for the series.
Cave is almost obliged to sing it every time he performs - it's arguably his greatest hit. But he had grown sick of it, saying that it followed him around like a "junkyard dog".
He's in good company.
James Blunt finds It's Beautiful annoying. So do we James, so do we.
Liam Gallagher said of Wonderwall: "I can't fucking stand that fucking song."
Kurt Cobain called It Smells like Teen Spirit "embarrassing".
Other hits hated by their creators: Madonna - Like a Virgin, R.E.M. - Shiny Happy People, Robert Plant - Stairway to Heaven, the list goes on.
But for Nick Cave, there was redemption, in the unlikely shape of Snoop Dogg.
“Of all the versions, his is the one that I had a giant smile on my face after,” “He didn’t perform it with great reverence, he just fucked around with it and reignited my love for that song.”
It took a funky hip hop mess-about by a rapper to change Cave's perspective of his own song.
"He's a god/He's a man/He's a ghost/He's a guru."