Hey lady --- you, lady
Cursing at your life
You're a disconnected mother
And a regimented wife
I've no doubt you dream about
The things you'll never do
But I wish someone'd had a talk to me
Like I wanna talk to you
Ooh, I've been to Georgia
And California, and
Anywhere I could run
I took the hand of a
preacher man, and we
Made love in the sun
But I ran out of places and friendly faces
Because I had to be free --
I've Been To Paradise
But I've Never Been To Me...
The first song performed in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert is cheesetastic. From the opening piano notes to Charlene's breathy, overly-dramatic vocals to its inadvertent punchline, a downrignt painful mixed metaphor of a title lyric, I've decided (after years of wincing along) to accept it as the perfect stagesetter for my favorite movie of all time: laughable but sincere.
Although I realize that just because I like something a lot, it doesn't mean it is of high quality, and I also recognize that it's okay to like things that aren't particularly of the highest quality, I'm nonetheless a little embarrassed that I was able to produce the vast majority of this song's lyrics from memory when I noded them back in the days before E2's copyright policy changes (insert obligatory grumblings about the DMCA here). I only missed the outrageously melodramatic spoken bit in the middle — it is mercifully omitted in the movie, which is probably why I haven't completely learned it by heart yet — and the beginning of the verse immediately thereafter, neither of which is displayed here for copyright compliance purposes, so it's sort of moot anyway.
Quoted lyrics from "I've Never Been To Me", Written by Ken Kirsch and Ronald Miller
Performed by Charlene