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 and covered 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 to the films Montenegro, Tarnation and Thelma & Louise.

In an interview on ITV's The South Bank Show aired on 24 June 2007, Faithfull, one of the performers who has recorded Silverstein's song, said that the story she intended to put across in it 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.

Cover versions

• 1976: Lee Hazlewood, on his album 20th Century Lee
• 1979: Marianne Faithfull, from the album Broken English
• 1996: Belinda Carlisle, for her album A Woman and a Man
• 1996: Barra MacNeils, from the album The Question
• 2000: Dennis Locorriere, on his album Out of the Dark
• 2005: Bobby Bare, on his album The Moon Was Blue
• 2009: Wiwa
• 2010: Lucinda Williams, on the Shel Silverstein tribute album Twistable Turnable Man with contributions by several recording artists