"Blue Money" | ||||
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Single by Van Morrison | ||||
from the album His Band and the Street Choir | ||||
A-side | "Blue Money" | |||
B-side | "Sweet Thing" (US) "Call Me Up in Dreamland" (Europe) |
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Released | 1971 | |||
Recorded | 1970 | |||
Genre | R&B | |||
Length | 3:40 | |||
Label | Warner Bros. | |||
Songwriter(s) | Van Morrison | |||
Producer(s) | Van Morrison | |||
Van Morrison singles chronology | ||||
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His Band and the Street Choir track listing | ||||
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"Blue Money" is a song written by Northern Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison. It was the second of two Top Forty hits from his 1970 album, His Band and the Street Choir (the other being "Domino"), reaching #23 on the US charts. The US single featured "Sweet Thing", from the album Astral Weeks, as the B-side. It was released as a single in the UK in June 1971 with a different B-side, "Call Me Up in Dreamland". The song became Morrison's third best selling single of the 1970s, remaining on the charts for three months.
The lyrics have the singer promising his girl that they will paint the town together with her "blue money." Critic Maury Dean states that the theme picks up from Lefty Frizzell's 1950 #1 song "If You've Got the Money I've Got the Time." In a 1972 Rolling Stone interview with John Grissim Jr., Morrison commented about the popularity of "Blue Money" in cities like Boston and New York: "Out here I get asked to play 'Blue Money' all the time. All the kids love it, the kids in the street. It's their favorite number."
Robert Christgau, writing in the Village Voice in 1971, described "Blue Money" and "Domino" as "superb examples of Morrison's loose, allusive white r&b." Writer M. Mark described it as "a pun-filled song about time and cash." Biographer Brian Hinton compared the song's sound to Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames—"boozy horns and a nonsensical chorus." Dean praises the song's "snarly, snappity sounds" and Morrison's "jazzy baritone."