“Come up and see me, make me smile

Or do what you want, run on wild.

…

There’s nothing left, all gone and run away”

Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me) (Steve Harley), Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel

Steve Harley is hugely under-rated as a songwriter. Also as a performer: his sneering snarl on this song (if maybe not in the videos) is just delicious.

The rhetoric here is hard to write … it’s all about the pause. The song has a wonderful, very-nearly-but-not-quite-too-long pause at the end of each chorus.

A pause is a powerful device for tweaking tension or letting the import of what’s just been said sink in. In poetry (and, by extension in song-writing, I guess), it’s termed caesura.

I’ve failed to find the correct rhetorical term. Aposiopesis is a special kind of open-ended pause, more of a break-off for emotional effect or threat: “Tidy you room, or else …”

Anyhow, three videos. This first is fairly straight and true to the recording, possibly even mimed (surely not)…

This next is a singalong karaoke version featuring a very dapper Mr Harley pulling at the pauses …

And a third, just cos I found it …

All from the 1975 album, The Best Years of Our Lives.