Sandy Denny / Like an Old Fashioned Waltz (Deluxe Edition) / 1974
Until the Real Thing Comes Along
wry, tender, self-aware longing shading into melancholy
This is a cover of a 1930s Tin Pan Alley standard, sung by Denny as a torch song that piles up extravagant vows of devotion while the title phrase keeps undercutting them. The joke and the ache both live in that gap between grand romantic gesture and the admission that this may only be a placeholder for real love.
devotion as performance romantic insecurity excess and hyperbole waiting/settling the gap between gesture and feeling
Who's speaking
A first-person speaker addresses a beloved directly, offering escalating promises of sacrifice; the voice is sincere in its affection but knowingly hedges on whether that affection counts as the genuine article.
What happens
The song doesn't develop a plot so much as accumulate proof: verse after verse the speaker offers bigger and stranger sacrifices, moving from vague poetic gestures toward absurd contemporary specifics, all while returning to the same refrain that measures the offering against an unnamed standard it may not meet.
How it's built
Built on a standard-song chorus-verse repetition rather than verse/chorus/bridge in the rock sense -- each stanza is a fresh list of vows capped by the same qualifying line, so the structure itself enacts the theme: repetition standing in for resolution, much as the speaker's love stands in for 'the real thing.'
Section by section
Opening verses
“be a beggar or a knave for you”
The speaker frames devotion in terms of degradation and servitude, establishing the pattern where romantic proof requires self-abasement rather than simple statement of feeling.
Middle verse
A brief shift into plainer language admits that words are failing to convey the depth of feeling, offering a moment of sincerity before the song returns to its catalog of exaggerated deeds.
Comic escalation
“I'd even punch out Mr. T”
The introduction of a pop-culture figure breaks the song's otherwise vintage diction, signaling that this rendition leans into camp and knowing humor rather than pure earnestness.
Final verse
The vows peak with an offer of literal death, the ultimate proof demanded by the logic of the song, before the refrain closes the piece on its persistent uncertainty rather than resolution.
Craft
- hyperbole
- The sacrifices escalate from tearing down stars to walking on coals to literal self-destruction, comedic and moving at once, dramatizing devotion through excess rather than description.
- anaphora
- Repeated 'I would' and 'for you' constructions across verses create a listing rhythm typical of torch-song pledges, building momentum toward the refrain's deflation.
- refrain as ironic undercut
- The recurring qualifying line functions almost like a chorus that contradicts the verses' certainty, turning romantic hyperbole into a joke on itself.
- anachronistic specificity
- Named brands and a boxing reference puncture the otherwise timeless, florid language of devotion, injecting comic bathos into an old-fashioned form.
Reading it
The most persuasive reading treats the song as a comic-melancholic meditation on how romantic devotion is performed rather than proven -- the speaker keeps offering bigger gestures precisely because gestures can't settle the underlying doubt about whether this is 'real' love. An alternative reading hears it as pure vaudevillian comedy, a novelty number whose exaggerations are meant only to entertain, with no genuine anxiety underneath. Denny's version, sung with her characteristically rich, slightly rueful voice, tends to pull the song toward the former reading even though the material is comic in origin.
Context
This is a cover of an older American popular song (originating in the 1930s, associated with various swing-era performers) rather than a Denny original; she recorded it for her final studio album, 'Like an Old Fashioned Waltz,' which leaned into standards and a more orchestral, cabaret-adjacent sound compared to her folk-rock work with Fairport Convention. I'm not fully certain of the song's original authorship details beyond its being a pre-existing standard.
Listen for
- How Denny's phrasing plays the exaggerated vows straight rather than campy, adding pathos
- The way the refrain's melody may dip or resolve differently than the confident verses, musically enacting doubt
- Instrumentation that signals cabaret/standards rather than folk-rock, fitting the album's stylistic turn
- The tonal clash when contemporary references interrupt the otherwise old-fashioned language
About Sandy Denny
Alexandra Elene MacLean Denny was an English musician who is best known for her work with the folk rock band Fairport Convention during the late 1960s. She has been described as "arguably the pre-eminent British folk-rock singer/songwriter of her time".
1947 - 1978 / United Kingdom
Full biography and catalogue