Joan Armatrading / This Charming Life / 2010
Diamond
adoring, insistent, buoyant
A straightforward declaration of devotion built from stacked hyperbolic vows and a central gem metaphor for the beloved. The song trades narrative complexity for incantatory repetition, functioning more as a ritual of reassurance than a story with development.
devotion and vowing idealization of a partner constancy through hardship desire and possession love as effort/labor
Who's speaking
A first-person lover addresses the beloved directly throughout, using 'you' as both audience and subject; the voice is sincere and largely uncomplicated, with little self-doubt beyond a passing admission of possibly overdoing the devotion.
What happens
There isn't a plot so much as an accumulation: the speaker opens with a string of impossible feats promised in the name of love, moves into naming the beloved as a jewel beyond price, then pivots to weathering literal and figurative storms together, before the song loops back through its gem imagery and opening vows to end where it began.
How it's built
The song is built on cyclical repetition rather than linear verse-chorus-bridge logic — the seafaring and mountain-climbing vows open and close the piece, bracketing a central hook comparing the beloved to a diamond that recurs three times. This circularity reinforces the song's theme of steadfastness: the music doesn't progress toward resolution because the devotion it describes is framed as already complete and unchanging.
Section by section
Opening vows
The song begins with grand, almost folkloric promises — crossing seas, scaling peaks — that establish the speaker's devotion as boundless and performative. The repetition of the vow structure mimics the obsessive quality of infatuation, each line restating the same commitment with only the object of conquest changing.
Escalation to the fantastical
The vows crescendo into fetching the moon and fending off rivals, pushing the declarations from the merely strenuous into the impossible and faintly possessive — the beloved is something to be defended and won, not just adored.
The diamond hook
“Every part of you is like a diamond”
This is the song's emotional center, shifting from action-based vows to a static image of the beloved as a precious object. The line that follows about something being costly to keep introduces a rare note of ambivalence — love here carries upkeep and risk alongside admiration.
Weather bridge
The storm-and-sunshine imagery broadens the song's scope from infatuation to endurance, framing the relationship as something built to withstand ordinary adversity rather than just romantic spectacle. It's the closest the song comes to acknowledging a future with friction in it.
Closing repetition
Returning to the seafaring vow and the diamond hook, the song declines to resolve or develop further — instead it reaffirms its opening claims, treating repetition itself as proof of sincerity.
Craft
- anaphora
- The repeated 'I'll' constructions at the start stack escalating feats (riding seas, climbing peaks, fetching the moon) to build intensity through accumulation rather than argument.
- extended metaphor
- The diamond comparison running through the hook frames the beloved as rare, valuable, and demanding careful handling, linking romantic desire to the language of possession and preciousness.
- hyperbole
- Promises to ride oceans, scale mountains, and capture the moon exaggerate devotion to mythic proportions, signaling sincerity through excess rather than realism.
- weather as metaphor
- Rain, sun, and clouds stand in for life's hardships and good times, letting the song claim resilience without detailing what that resilience is tested against.
Reading it
The most direct reading is that this is an uncomplicated love song in the tradition of grand romantic promise-making, where excess and repetition are the point rather than a flaw — the devotion is meant to feel total and unexamined. A slightly more skeptical reading might notice the possessive undertones in the rival-fending and the 'precious to have, expensive to keep' line, suggesting an awareness that idealizing a partner as a flawless object has costs or tensions the song doesn't fully explore; but the lyric doesn't develop this tension, so it remains a minor shading rather than genuine ambivalence.
Context
This Charming Life (2010) came in the later stretch of Armatrading's career, a period in which she continued to write, perform, and self-produce without the chart visibility of her 1970s peak. I don't have confirmed biographical details tying this specific song to events in her life, so any claim about its origin would be speculative.
Listen for
- the stacking rhythm of the opening vow lines and how repetition builds intensity without lyrical variation
- the tonal shift at the diamond hook from action to static imagery
- the brief admission of possibly trying too hard, a rare moment of self-awareness
- the way the song's structure loops back to its beginning instead of resolving forward
About Joan Armatrading
Joan Anita Barbara Armatrading is an English singer-songwriter and guitarist. Her first major commercial success came with her third and fourth albums, Joan Armatrading (1976) and Show Some Emotion (1977), and she continues to play live and record studio albums.
b. 1950 / United Kingdom
Full biography and catalogue