I'm actually not sure who they are, now that the guy from the Clean and the guy from The Feelies are out of the band.

Also, I was going to mention Husker Du's "Green Eyes" before reading your post, Jon, but it occurs to me today that it's not actually a song about a woman with green eyes.

Dolly Parton's "Jolene" is written to a woman with "locks of auburn hair... and eyes of emerald green." Great, great song, albeit a real bummer.

And while the text is mum on the point, I'm certain - CERTAIN - that Red Molly (Richard Thompson "1952 Vincent Black Lightning") has green eyes to go along with her red hair and black leather color scheme.

Quick thoughts on the Merritt kerfuffle: if I remember the favorite album list he did, one of the ostensible smoking guns against him, it was a list of favorite albums (or maybe pieces of music) per year, like Gary Giddins' postwar jazz roadmap. So if 9 of his 10 favorite recordings of 1974 were by black artists, but he chose Court and Spark as number 1, and if only number 1s showed up on the list, it would be really easy to get a skewed sense of his musical tastes -- and that's ignoring the problems involved with extrapolating someone's poltics and/or racial views from what he listens to. Similarly, if the Times said "Pick 10 of these 100 albums to discuss," and 90 were by non-white artists and he picked the 10 by white artists, well, yeah, then SFJ might have a point. But if 50 or 60 are by whites, 30 by African-Americans, and the others are from Africa, the Middle East, Peru, and Southeast Asia, and he picks half a dozen albums of show tunes, a couple folkies, Sinatra, & someone else (maybe Randy Newman's Good Old Boys...) that's not particularly illuminating, and certainly not conclusive proof of anything except that he, SFJ, & the woman whose name escapes me have different tastes in music. The whole episode is pretty weird... and I really gotta get back to work.

the guy from the Clean

You're thinking of Justin from the Chills. Britta replaced him.

it occurs to me today that it's not actually a song about a woman with green eyes.

The lyrics are gender-neutral though, so it doesn't really matter.

You're thinking of Justin from the Chills.

Der, you're right. The guy from the Clean is the guy from The Bats.

The lyrics are gender-neutral though, so it doesn't really matter.

Ach, I'm kidding around, man.

Great, great song, albeit a real bummer.

OTOH, going back to what triggered all this talk about green eyes, it can't be a bad thing that Jolene would make the "brown-eyed girl" look quite plain by comparison.

Red Molly (Richard Thompson "1952 Vincent Black Lightning") has green eyes to go along with her red hair and black leather color scheme.

I thought that too. Or maybe the green eyes were in the very similar song about Shane and Dixie from Mirror Blue.

I feel obliged to note for historical context that "brown-eyed girl" is sorta pop-music short-hand for "brown-skinned girl" - riffing back on Chuck Berry's "Brown-Eyed Handsome Man."

It was understood as such when the song came out and there was a bit of kerfuffle that it was talking about an interracial romance.

I just searched RT's website and neither of those songs mention green eyes.

Interesting, Hec. I knew the context of the Chuck Berry song, but not the Van Morrison. (Which came out around the time I started kindergarten.)

But "Jolene" (in both the Parton version and the Olivia Newton-John version that's on her live album) is definitely supposed to be A Beauty.