1971Released
4:10

Did You Know?

Interesting facts and trivia about Cross-Eyed Mary. By Songfacts®.

This was written by Jethro Tull frontman Ian Anderson, who has described the character Mary a "schoolgirl prostitute type." She lives a wretched existence offering her services to the dregs of humanity. Anderson says that the important issue in this song and the album as a whole is seeing the spirituality in all people, even a prostitute. Said Anderson, "There are these human types that would be thought to be undesirable and unpleasant, but are all God's creations one way or another, and there must be within these people some very essential humanity, even some goodness, some good side to their character or personality which was laudable."

The "Mary" in this song is a good person reacting to bad circumstances. Anderson has pointed out that she is kind of a Robin Hood prostitute: she takes as much money as she can from her clients who can afford it, but would give away her services to those who can't.

The character "Aqualung" has a cameo in this song, presumably as one of Mary's customers.

Top Listeners

Song Analysis

Key, BPM (tempo) and time signature of Cross-Eyed Mary.
CKey
MajorMode
4/4Time Signature
86BPM

Album

The album Cross-Eyed Mary is released on.

Released By

The record label that has released Cross-Eyed Mary.
Parlophone UK
© 1996 Parlophone Records Ltd, a Warner Music Group Company
℗ 1996 Parlophone Records Ltd, a Warner Music Group Company

See your Spotify stats (with number of plays and minutes listened) and discover new music.

Music data, artist images, album covers, and song previews are provided by Spotify. Spotify is a trademark of Spotify AB.

5.8MArtists
73.6MSongs
12.3MAlbums
6.3KGenres
2.5MLabels
493KPlaylists