Q – Been on a Matthew Sweet kick lately and had always heard Winona was written as a love song for Winona Ryder. So I did a search and actually found this 1992 interview with Matthew Sweet where he says it was none other than our Lloyd that suggested the title. True story, Lloyd?
<Another song on Girlfriend with a link to loneliness and movie actresses is “Winona,” with its plaintive chorus, “Won’t you be my little movie star.” “Actually, Lloyd Cole suggested I call it that,” Sweet explained. “I didn’t have a title for a long time and he knew that I liked the movie Heathers. He thought that we should call it `Winona’ because I wanted a kind of a country title and at the time she was still a lot more obscure. First of all it didn’t occur to me that there would be a lot of people giving attention to anything I did. And second of all it didn’t occur to me that people would think that it was about her. Then by the time the record came out she had actually heard the song through a guy at Rolling Stone and supposedly liked it so I thanked my friend for sending it to her because at the time I didn’t think the record was even going to come out. It was a really dark period and I thought, `Well at least Winona Ryder heard my record.’ “>
A – All true as far as I’m aware. What MS doesn’t admit is that he was somewhat obsessed with WR at the time and the song was obviously about her. I just persuaded him to fess up.