Video hit Nick Cave & Kylie Minogue

Nick Cave & Kylie Minogue - Where the Wild Roses Grow

Where the Wild Roses Grow is a duet by Australian rock band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and pop singer Kylie Minogue. It is the fifth song and lead single from the band's ninth studio album, Murder Ballads (1996), released on Mute Records.

It was written by the band's frontman Nick Cave and produced by Tony Cohen and Victor Van Vugt.

The song received a positive reception from music critics and became the band's most successful single worldwide reaching No. 3 in Norway, the top five in Australia, and the top twenty in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany and New Zealand. It also received a limited promotional release in the United States. The song was certified Gold in Germany in 1996 for 250,000 copies sold, despite never reaching the top ten in that country. It charted again at the bottom of the German Top 100 in 2008 because of digital downloads after it was used in a soap opera. "Where the Wild Roses Grow" was also certified Gold in Australia for selling 50,000 copies.

Cave was inspired to write "Where the Wild Roses Grow" after listening to the traditional song, "Down in the Willow Garden", a tale of a man courting a woman and killing her while they are out together. Cave arranged this tale as second of two B-sides, "The Ballad of Robert Moore & Betty Coltrane" / "The Willow Garden", released on the CD-Maxi single version.

Although the song does not feature on a Minogue studio album, it can be found on her compilations Hits+, Greatest Hits 1987-1999, Ultimate Kylie and The Abbey Road Sessions. Minogue performed a chorus of the song during her Showgirl and Homecoming tours.

It reached number 8 in Triple J's Hottest 100 1995. In 2012, NME Magazine listed the song in the "100 best songs of the 1990s" at number 35.

Cave described writing the song: “Where The Wild Roses Grow was written very much with Kylie in mind. I'd wanted to write a song for Kylie for many years. I had a quiet obsession with her for about six years. I wrote several songs for her, none of which I felt was appropriate to give her. It was only when I wrote this song, which is a dialogue between a killer and his victim, that I thought finally I'd written the right song for Kylie to sing. I sent the song to her and she replied the next day.” - Nick Cave, quoted in Molly Meldrum presents 50 years of rock in Australia (2007) - "one of pop music's most violent and distressing lyrics" and "when Kylie Minogue sings these words, there is an innocence to her that makes the horror of this chilling lyric all the more compelling".

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and Kylie Minogue first performed the song publicly on 4 August 1995 in Cork, Republic of Ireland.

The lyrics:

They call me The Wild Rose

But my name is Elisa Day

Why they call me it I do not know

For my name is Elisa Day

From the first day I saw her I knew she was the one

As she stared in my eyes and smiled

For her lips were the colour of the roses

That grew down the river, all bloody and wild

When he knocked on my door and entered the room

My trembling subsided in his sure embrace

He would be my first man, and with a careful hand

He wiped at the tears that ran down my face

[Chorus]

On the second day I brought her a flower

She was more beautiful than any woman I'd seen

I said, "Do you know where the wild roses grow

So sweet and scarlet and free?"

On the second day he came with a single red rose

He said: "Will you give me your loss and your sorrow?"

I nodded my head, as I lay on the bed

"If I show you the roses will you follow?"

[Chorus]

On the third day he took me to the river

He showed me the roses and we kissed

And the last thing I heard was a muttered word

As he knelt above me with a rock in his fist

On the last day I took her where the wild roses grow

And she lay on the bank, the wind light as a thief

As I kissed her goodbye, I said, "All beauty must die"

And lent down and planted a rose between her teeth