Lyrics
There's loads of people trying to suss out the scene 1
Sniffing about and sticking their noses in
Rebel
Rebel
Rebel
But she was the littlest rebel
Blue suit with nylon weave
She wears jet-black high heels
She throws Nikes down the well
She's the littlest rebel
Rebel
Rebel
Rebel
But she was the littlest rebel
She consigns them all to hell
She's the littlest rebel
Her tormentors jet past in Nissans
She says, "Are those cars? Are those shoes?"
She consigns them all to hell
She's the littlest rebel
Hips like Shirley Temple 2
She's the littlest rebel
And she doesn't kiss and tell
She's the littlest rebel
Rebel
Rebel
Rebel
But she was the littlest rebel
A sophisticate wastrel
She's the littlest rebel
She doesn't kiss and tell
Cos she's the littlest rebel
She's the littlest rebel
Well ... she's the littlest rebel
Rebel
Rebel
Rebel
And she was the littlest rebel
Rebel
Commentary
< Post in progress >
“The Littlest Rebel” takes its title from a 1935 film directed by David Butler and starring Shirley Temple (see Wikipedia). Temple (1928 – 2014) was seven years old when the film was released. “Rebel”, in the context of the film, signifies the secessionist Confederate states at the time of the American Civil War. The film was regularly shown on British and American T.V., but had been broadcast on the UK’s Channel 4 on Sunday 21 May 1989, shortly before the album on which it appears, Extricate, was recorded. Shirley Temple-Black, a long-serving diplomat by this point, turned sixty and published her autobiography, Child Star, in 1988.
Footnotes
- “Suss” as in to investigate, understand, or discover the truth about something. The phrase “suss the scene” appears in “Australians in Europe“. ↩︎
- Temple, as noted, being the child star of the titular movie. Difficult to know how to interpret this line: is having hips like Shirley Temple a complement or not? Either way, it seems dubious. M.E.S. amusingly pronounces “Temple” to rhyme with “rebel” in the preceding line (“Reb-el”/”Tem-pel”). ↩︎
Sources / Links
- The Annotated Fall: “The Littlest Rebel” [Archived]
- Ford, Simon (2003). Hip Priest: the story of Mark E Smith and The Fall. London: Quartet Books.
- Mackay, Tommy (2018). 40 Odd Years of The Fall. Place of publication unknown: Greg Moodie.
- Pringle, Steve (2022). You Must Get Them All: The Fall on Record. [paperback edition]. Pontefract: Route Publishing Ltd. [Online store]
- Smith, Mark E. (2008). vII. The Lough Press & AMarquisManipulationProductions. [AKA the Blue Lyrics Book]
- Smith Start, Brix (2016). The Rise, The Fall, and The Rise. London: Faber & Faber. [Text available online in archive.org]
- The Track Record: “The Littlest Rebel”
- Wikipedia: The Littlest Rebel
- Wolstencroft, Simon (2014). You Can Drum But You Can’t Hide: a memoir. Trowbridge: Strata Books. (2nd edition published by Route Publishing, 2017).
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