The Ballad of Lucy Jordan

"The Ballad of Lucy Jordan" is a song by American poet and songwriter Shel Silverstein. Originally recorded by Dr Hook, the best known versionFact|date=November 2007 is by the English singer Marianne Faithfull. Taken from her 1979 album "Broken English", it was released as a single in November 1979. It is featured on the soundtracks of the films "Montenegro," "Tarnation" and "Thelma & Louise". Lee Hazlewood also released a version of the song on his 1976 album "20th Century Lee".

The song is about a 37-year-old woman who lives in a "white suburban bedroom in a white suburban town", disillusioned with her life as a wife and mother and possibly undergoing a mental breakdown. Its ending is ambiguous. In the last verse, a man offers Lucy his hand and drives her off in a "long white car", offering her a romantic escape from the mundanity of her domestic life. The man may be illusory, the "long white car" could be an ambulance, and the line "on the roof top where she climbed when all the laughter grew too loud" may mean that Lucy commits suicide.

In an interview on ITV's South Bank Show aired on 24 June 2007, Faithfull herself said that the story she intended to put across was that Lucy climbs to the roof top but gets taken away by "the man who reached and offered her his hand" in an ambulance ("long white car") to a mental hospital, and that the final lines: "At the age of thirty-seven she knew she'd found forever / As she rode along through Paris with the warm wind in her hair ..." are actually in her imagination at the hospital.

Belinda Carlisle, lead singer of The Go-Go's and solo recording artist, also recorded a version of this song. Her version does not appear on any album and is a rare find for Carlisle fans.

Another version, recorded by Canadian Celtic group, Barra MacNeils was recorded in the mid to late 1990s.

Bobby Bare also recorded a version of the song on 2005's album, The Moon Was Blue.

Faithfull appeared on an episode of British sitcom Absolutely Fabulous as God, singing the song to a miserable, dieting Edina Monsoon.