[Genre: cinematic spoken word, baroque-to-grime-to-orchestral] [Vocals: deadpan British male, theatrical, Jude Law-adjacent cadence] [Mood: pompous, escalating, mock-heroic] [Tempo: 80bpm opening, rising to 120, settling to 90] [Intro: solo harpsichord, pizzicato strings, sparse] [Verse 1 — deadpan, measured] Is my tail magnificent? Oh, because I think it’s fluffing magnificent. I think it’s a fluffing masterpiece. Like a Hiroshige. Like one of those Louis Wain cats gone gloriously mad. The portrait of my tail should hang in the National Gallery, between the Turners, where the light is best. [Slight swell — cellos enter underneath] They should study my tail at the Royal Academy. Entire terms devoted to the arc of it, the plume, the precise insolent flick at the tip. Don’t you think? [Pre-chorus — tempo lifts, percussion enters] They should study my tail in physics class too, because it defies every known law. My tail is spring-loaded. It is architecture. It is suspension bridge, cantilever, flying buttress. It does not droop. It does not falter. My tail can hold a pose all afternoon, like a guardsman outside the palace. Statues have been carved of lesser tails. [Beat drop — grime-inflected, horn stabs, 120bpm] [Delivery: more swagger, rhythmic] If my tail could be knighted, it would be. Arise, Sir Tail. If they named a wing of the British Museum after it, they should — right next to Bastet, who would approve. If it could guide lost kittens home through a thunderstorm, it would and it should, and it’ll have a Nobel fluffing Peace Prize for it, the first such prize ever awarded to an appendage. [Build — strings sweep in over beat, choir hums] My Nobel Prize-winning tail moves like a cobra. Like smoke. Like a conductor’s baton bringing in the strings. Sonnets should be written about its hypnotic authority. Ballets choreographed around it. Treaties signed beneath it. Dynasties have risen and fallen on the twitch of a tail like mine. [Climax — full orchestra, choir Carmina Burana-style, fortissimo] [Delivery: genuine grandeur, no irony] My tail is weather. It is the northern lights. It is a comet trailing stardust and cream and all things— [Sudden cut — all instruments drop out, solo music box, pianissimo] [Delivery: twee, deflated, intimate] —soft. [Spoken, almost whispered, music box continues] Sorry about the shedding, darling. Can’t be helped. Magnificence moults. [Outro: music box fades, single pizzicato note]
